Collins: What the movies can learn from Mad Ave

Simon Collins argues that movie-makers waste a lot of time and talent that could be used by the ad industry

In space, according to the poster for the 1979 sci-fi classic Alien, no one can hear you scream. In my local cinema, by contrast, everyone can hear you groan. But that doesn’t stop me groaning like a moose in labour when I mistime my arrival and find myself sitting through the trailers.

Whose idea was it to call them ‘trailers’, by the way? I hate to get all etymological so early in the piece but a trailer is something that trails, right? Something that follows something else? Film trailers do precisely the opposite; they precede the films they advertise – always by weeks, sometimes by months. And they don’t just play in cinemas, they also run on TV and cable channels and pop up on websites and social media. All of which makes them pretty effing hard to avoid.

So they should be called something which reflects that and describes their function more accurately. They should be called film spoilers; all the best moments in the film plus a voiceover which provides just enough of the plot to give even the stupidest patron a pretty good idea of how it ends. It’s TMI on an epic scale. I know some people don’t like surprises, and it’s entirely possible that there are people – actuaries, chartered accountants – who read the last page of a book before deciding whether or not to buy it. But for the rest of us, not knowing what’s going to happen in a work of fiction is kind of integral to our enjoyment of it – and I can’t be the only person whose response to movie trailers is very often the converse of what the film-maker wanted: “Well, no point paying to see that now. Might as well wait until I’ve forgotten what it’s about and watch it for nothing on Netflix.”

TV stations, who always have one eye on the ratings and know how quickly a pissed off viewer will reach for the remote, have a damage limitation protocol. “…And if you don’t want to know the result of that match,” the anchor tells us, “now’s a good time to go and have that dump.” Or words to that effect. So maybe cinemas could take leaf out of their book? Maybe trailers themselves should be preceded by a caption or announcement saying something like: “You are about to see clips from another film. This will seriously compromise your enjoyment of the full-length version, so if you don’t want that to happen we suggest you head back to the bar for the next ten minutes, or close your eyes and make a noise like a vuvuzela.” But that would still leave the problem of TV and the internet.

A much safer advertising strategy from the get-go would be to think about films as products, and specifically as chocolate chip cookies. Bear with me. In the same way that most films consist of short bursts of drama/humour/violence/special effects separated by longer stretches of more utilitarian narrative, a well-made chocolate chip cookie consists of small pieces of delicious chocolate surrounded by comparatively bland expanses of biscuit. But if the creative director of a chocolate chip cookie manufacturer’s ad agency presented his or her client with a campaign which involved giving away the chocolate bits separately, for free, the agency would lose the business and the creative director would soon be driving for Uber. The agency would be much more likely to recommend advertising which told consumers what makes these particular chocolate chip cookies better than all the others in the biscuit aisle. And chances are that would result in a campaign which drew attention to the quality of the ingredients.

The credit sequence at the end of most films is considerably longer than the ingredients list on any pack of biscuits, of course. But most of us make the decision to see or pass on a film because of the answers to just two or three key questions; what’s the genre, who’s in it, and perhaps who made it.

It is entirely possible to make compelling advertising which supplies the answers to such questions without giving away any part of the story. The Alien poster referred to earlier is a good print example. But it’s been done just as well on film. The trailer for the 1988 film Dirty Rotten Scoundrels told you everything you needed to know about it in 30 seconds, ie. that it is a comedy set in the French Riviera starring Steve Martin and Michael Caine. But rather than a montage of footage from the film the trailer is a stand-alone scene featuring the two stars doing something entirely in character, and on location, but without divulging anything of the plot. But what would that have cost? I can hear agency producers shrieking – to get two major movie stars and a full crew to go to the South of France! Well I imagine it cost virtually nothing, because they were already there.

When you’ve making a TV commercial for, say, chocolate chip cookies, every production minute is accounted for and the difference between a one-day shoot and a two-day shoot can be hundreds of thousands of dollars. But feature films take months and sometimes even years to make, and in the course of that the crew and cast often find themselves on location for weeks. There are always days or even weeks when, for one reason or another, nothing can be done so those cast and crew while away that time on the tennis court or the beach or in the bar – while the metre keeps ticking. What better way to use that down-time and that expensive crew and cast than shooting the 30 second script your ad agency wrote for just this contingency?

I doubt whether the producers of Dirty Rotten Scoundrels planned it like that. I suspect they probably came up with the idea after a long lunch one day in Nice. After all, nobody had ever done it before. But what’s amazing is that as far as I know nobody has done it since, either. And what a gap in the market it is. What a niche for an agency to occupy. Of course, it wouldn’t be the kind of work which would suit all creative people. You’d have to be the kind that’s prepared to fly to places like New York and Paris and Alaska and hang out with people like Johnny Depp and Scarlett Johansson and the Cohen brothers. And make films with them. Nightmare.

Simon Collins [right] is ECD of 1 Kent Street, Sydney. This article first appeared in Campaign Brief magazine.

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