Update: “Moneyball”
The movie Moneyball has a new trailer, a 30 second spot. I can’t find an embed version, but you can see it on YouTube here. Here is the original 2:20 spot:
http://movieclips.com/e/AVgtG/0/150.326/
Teddy Pasternak, who expressed concern in another GITS post here about the movie’s first trailer, watched this 2nd spot and provides this analysis:
As a follow up to the heated discussion the other day, this spot tells the story in 30 seconds. It’s focused, it does a great job getting the story across and it leaves you intrigued and wanting more. Here’s a little secret about TV spots. They are supposed to work without the visuals. The music and dialogue should carry the message and this spot does just that.
Just for fun, I made a transcript and here it is. Notice how to-the-point the message is:
“I need more money.”
“We’re a small market team. Find players with the money that we do have.”
BASED ON A TRUE STORY
“There’s a championship team that we could afford because everyone else undervalues them. Like an island of misfit toys.”
“We’re gonna shake things up.”
ABOUT TAKING A CHANCE
“You don’t put a team together with a computer.”
“Billy Bean is trying to reinvent a system that’s been working for years.”
“I say it’s just getting started.”
AND CHANGING THE GAME
“What is happening in Oakland?”
“It defies everything we know about baseball.”
MONEYBALL
“Just plain crazy!”
Compare that to the unfocused trailer we discussed the other day. I think they’re on the right track. :)
And more from Teddy:
A couple more thoughts about this. There has been talk for years about the demise of the 30-second TV spot. With DVR, Tivo, Smartphones, the internet etc., advertisers have been forced to come up with other ways to promote movies. But for some reasons the TV spot still rules. It’s incredibly effective as a marketing tool as it reaches a (mostly) captive mass audience. Superbowl spots still costs upwards to $3M.
From a story point of view the TV spot is like a logline. Can you boil down the story to a few sentences and effectively communicate your message in a few seconds? And I don’t mean “Angelina Jolie is a sexy assassin. Explosions. Oh, and there’s a love story. Starts Friday.”
It forces you to focus on the essentials. So when you talk about story concept, this is the result. It trickles down to the very last part of the movie making process — how can the studio sell this? I believe that is quite possibly the first or maybe the second thing an executive is going to look at when evaluating a script.
The Moneyball spot is a good example. It introduces a conflict, a hero that will tackle that conflict, the opposition and a possible outcome. Like a good logline. My two cents.
As I mentioned previously, perhaps the seemingly scattershot approach of the 1st trailer is part of the studio’s marketing strategy, an attempt to throw everything out there to source which of the story narratives have the most resonance with the most promising target demo, and now this 2nd spot reflects them narrowing their messaging.
Again the interesting thing is to think about this part of the process — marketing — from a screenwriting perspective. Those narrative elements the studio is disseminating to consumers arise from a script, which is an adaptation of a non-fiction book. As with this project, that means there is a direct connection between what you write and what they sell.
An interesting exercise would be for you to write a two-minute spot and a 30-second spot for the script you’re currently working on. Does the script for those spots track? Is the message coherent? Do you have significant set pieces to exploit in the trailer?
Finally what’s your reaction to the new Moneyball trailer?