TRAILERS Cloverfield redefines teaser trailer?

Benjamin Lee discusses how the unconventional marketing for 10 Cloverfield Lane has broken all the rules of film promotion ... and succeeded - on a low budget, (major) star-free production. You could reflect on this as part of evidencing your grasp of (Key Concept) Institution - the article explores both the industry typically works and the countertypical approach for this JJ Abrams movie.

Here's a sample:

The roll-out of a new trailer has become a tiresome exercise. Ten-second teasers precede a 6o-second teaser, which is followed by a two-minute trailer, accompanied by another two-minute international trailer, and perhaps finished off with some TV spots and a final internet-only trailer.

By the time the year-long masterclass in overhype is finished, not only do you feel as if every major plot detail has already been divulged, but you’re also sick of the film in question. Would anyone be excited if yet another Batman v Superman trailer was released this week? Perhaps it’s inevitable that movie marketing has become so overstuffed and overexplained. Audiences are bombarded with entertainment choices from more mediums than ever, and box office success can now be predicted by how many times trailers have been viewed and whether a film trended on social media.

Which is probably why so many weathered film fans were shocked and impressed in January when JJ Abrams released a trailer for 10 Cloverfield Lane. Before it premiered with prints of Michael Bay’s 13 Hours, no one knew the film existed – at least not in that incarnation. After chatter about a sequel to 2008’s equally secretive monster hit Cloverfield died down, Abrams, the film’s producer – and general master of all things mysterious – quietly announced the production of a film called The Cellar and then, just to confuse us, Valencia.

It was met with little fanfare. Only when the trailer was revealed did audiences – and the industry – realise there was to be another film under the Cloverfield banner. It’s a deviously constructed and perfectly vague example of how a trailer should be made. As with the film itself, we know something sinister is taking place, but we don’t know exactly what it is. It’s the equivalent of a juicy click-bait headline: we have to click on the YouTube link to find out more.
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It was also bravely launched a mere two months before the film hit cinemas, Abrams smartly realising that, if it had been released any earlier, a contemporary audience would be expecting more secrets to be revealed pre-release. Then last weekend, a $15m (£10.6m) budget film, shot mostly in one location by a first-time director with no major stars (Mary Elizabeth Winstead and John Goodman, as great as they are in the film, aren’t draws at the box office) that no one had heard of three months ago made just less than $25m amid widespread critical acclaim.

Guardian (2016): Has JJ Abrams' 10 Cloverfield Lane broken the movie trailer template?
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