Trailers, more relevant than ever
Zealot trailer editor and creative director Simon Greet will return to the company’s Sydney office after a year in Los Angeles and New York, and he says the internet has made film trailers more relevant than ever.
“The advent of the internet and the proliferation of trailer sites has created a huge market and appreciation for trailers. They are now an artform in and of themselves, and the online trailer communities are hugely important as key audiences,” Greet told Encore.
According to Greet, this appreciation has raised the bar for trailers, setting higher standards.
“You’ve only got to look at the trailers for blockbuster Hollywood movies from 10 years ago to understand how much better trailers are today and how savvy the audience has become. This makes our job as trailer makers tougher, but it also makes the work better,” he said.
Greet recently worked on the trailer for Animal Kingdom, but because most Australian films are independent and are not developed within the studio system – fitting within a given genre and targeting a very specific demographic – he believes the challenge is to present them as broadly appealing as possible.
“Australian films are less formulaic and predictable. The challenge is working out how to market films that don’t fit squarely in a box,” he explained.
From his time in the US, Greet says the main lesson he learned was how to balance the creative with the marketing considerations.
“The Americans are really good at clarity, economy and cleverness in their theatrical marketing, which makes a lot of great US trailers feel like they are compressing time. Doing all that while keeping an eye on the film’s strategic marketing goals to make sure you’re hitting the key demo is incredibly difficult, but ultimately really rewarding and a wonderfully disciplined way to work. They are very clear about who they are trying to reach and how they wanting to reach them,” said Greet.
