The Future of Trailers is Fan-Made

Share on Facebook posted 07-08-10 by Max Tedaldi

Do you remember the first time you saw the trailer for Cloverfield? I had just settled into my movie theatre seat with a big bag of popcorn, an extra large Coca-Cola, and an inhuman hunger to watch Optimus Prime and his Autobot army pulverize Megatron and the Decepticons in Transformers. My mouth dropped, my pulse raced, and a cool wave of goosebumps gushed from my neck to my fingertips. “Holeeee Shit!” was the only phrase that I could muster after the screen went black. Mind . . . Blown. Transformers wasn’t bad either.

That is the power of the film trailer. It can evoke a level of excitement that makes the equivalent movie poster look like that moment in Avatar when you got an itch on your forehead and had to briefly remove your 3-D glasses. The trailer is an attempt by a film’s producers to excite audiences into buying a ticket.

Recently, dedicated fans and skilled editors have begun to ask the question: Why can’t the reverse be true? Why can’t we claim the awesome power of the trailer as our own? Why can’t audiences use the trailer in an attempt to excite movie producers into creating a movie? If fans have a great idea for a film adaptation of their beloved source material, in the words of Green Lantern Fan-Made Trailer creator Jaron Pitts, “It’s a lot easier to show someone than tell someone”.

Sure there are plenty of fan-made trailers on YouTube that will make you yearn for the sophisticated delicacy of your younger brother’s three-minute-long rant on why Digimon is superior to Pokemon. But there are also some trailers out there that will make you feel the way you did the first time you saw the trailer for Cloverfield. Here are the best of the best! Some made with the intent of getting financial backing for a professional project and some made with sole intention of making you piss yourself. I still think Minesweeper would make for a dynamic suspense thriller!

SUPERHEROES

Green Lantern

Jaron Pitts is a prophet when it comes to the art of the fan-made trailer. His trailer for Green Lantern was passed around by producers of the actual 2011 film as the gold standard for what they wanted to achieve with their “legit” trailer. If you want a complete rundown of the technical and creative aspects involved in creating this sumptuous visual treat check out the 30ninjas exclusive interview with Jaron Pitts here.

ThunderCats

To give you a sense of the level of dedication and time some of these trailers involve, I present to you ThunderCats by WormyT. Sure, the editing and assembling of 29 separate films is impressive, but what is truly mind-boggling is that he did the special effects frame-by-frame in Photoshop! I can’t even fathom how long that took. Props to you WormyT! Also, Brad Pitt as Lion-O is inspired casting!

Deadpool

Ever since Ryan Reynolds stole the show in X-Men Origins: Wolverine, fans have been craving a look at the Deadpool project that was green-lit (couldn’t resist the Green Lantern pun, I apologize). This trailer spliced scenes from Crank and Wolverine to create this short and sweet teaser.

LITERATURE & ORIGINAL STORIES

Iron Sky

The story behind Iron Sky is an inspirational one for wannabe filmmakers everywhere. Amatuer Finnish filmmaker Samuli Torssonen started making Star Trek and Babylon 5 parody movies in 1992. He made a total of five films in the Star Wreck series. What began as simple animation evolved over the course of several years into advanced CGI and 3D techniques. The most recent one, Star Wreck: In the Pirkinning, was downloaded over 700,000 times and inspired the inception of Torssonen and his team’s next project, Iron Sky. The crew developed the idea of “fighting Nazi’s in space” and by 2008 they had created a teaser trailer of what they conceived the film looking like. They brought the teaser to Cannes that year and left the festival with €5 million from investors. To be completely honest, did a film about fighting Nazi’s in space ever stand a chance of not being made? The trailer is pretty slick too!

Breaking Dawn

I can’t claim to endorse any film that involves Mormon values infused into a werewolf-human-vampire love triangle where no one actually gets laid. I also can’t endorse a film that has middle-aged moms clamoring for young boys with a level of hysteria usually reserved for the readers of Bop magazine. An aside – Seriously!?! If it were middle-aged dads freaking out over teenage girls people would be totally creeped out. But I can endorse a video with over 22 million views. I’m convinced that the high view count is a result of the Twilight-fueled madness, but the trailer is well done. I’m just waiting for a Twilight for guys movie where a lonely, pimply gamer is confronted by a sexy ninja and a voluptuous pirate who both crave his love.

World War Z

World War Z was Max Brooks’ Romero-esque follow up to The Zombie Survival Guide. It’s a lot like The Things They Carried, with a healthy infusion of brain-munching of course. This one is begging to be made into a feature length film. The audiobook version of the novel features the voice talents of Alan Alda, Jürgen Prochnow, Mark Hamill (woot!), and John Turturro, so you know the source material has Hollywood appeal. In fact, after a bidding war, Brad Pitt’s production company Plan B entertainment secured the film rights and the project is currently awaiting a script that does the novel justice. We’ll keep our eyes peeled for this one!

Technotise

Jaron Pitts’ triumphant return to the fan-made trailer genre! After the success of his Green Lantern trailer, Pitts took his burgeoning talent with post-production programs like After Effects and applied them to a live-action trailer of the 2008 animated Serbian film Technotise: Edit & I. The trailer helped to fuel interest in the project and, shortly after Pitts posted it on YouTube, Technotise was picked up by Legendary pictures with Laeta Kalogridis attached to the project. For those of you who don’t know who Laeta is, she executive produced a small indie film last year called Avatar.

VIDEO GAMES

Halo

The actual Halo film has been delayed more times than the “L” train on a Monday morning, so I won’t hold my breath for the supposed 2012 release. I guess until then I will just have to get my Halo film fix here. How awesome does that gravity hammer look?!

The Legend of Zelda

Amazing production values, accurate character design, sick CGI, and a banging soundtrack all contribute to one of the best April Fools pranks ever. On April 1st 2008 IGN released this trailer and the collective geek world altered the earth’s gravity with a simultaneous jump for joy. Cities were then flooded by the streams of tears shed with the subsequent April Fools reveal. I’m still not over this one.

Tetris

A brother dies. A hero is born. Get in line for adventure. Tetris is here! That’s a pretty epic tag-line for a fan-made trailer that seems like a faithful retelling of the Wachowski brothers’ Speed Racer.

I know that after playing Tetris for a few minutes my dreams are invariably block-based, so I can only imagine what would happen if I watched an entire film dedicated to tetrominoes.

Minesweeper

Leave it to collegehumor to create a movie trailer so inane and faithful to the source material that you can’t decide whether to laugh or get excited for a potential film.

“Why are you here soldider?!”.
“I’m here because I’m bored!”

So true.

Street Fighter Legacy

Joey Ansah was best known for his portrayal of Desh in the Bourne Ultimatum when he directed Street Fighter Legacy. The goal of the project was to create a Street Fighter film that fans would actually enjoy, to potentially drum up interest for a feature length project. What?! JCVD’s Street Fighter and Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li weren’t enjoyable? Street Fighter Legacy is completely faithful to the the video game with dead-on costumes and muscle twitch for muscle twitch technique accuracy. Legacy has almost 2 million hits, so hopefully Ansah can get the film rights from Capcom before they give Guile orange hair again.