Auto news on Youtube Jan 29 2019

Hi my name is Derek Lieu and this is: The Art of Making Trailers.

Why do trailers show so much of the movie?

Focus group testing!

Thanks for watching. Don't forget to like, comment–

Just kidding.

Not about the focus group testing; that part is true.

But because I'm a trailer editor I'm less interested in why trailers show so much,

and more interested in how to avoid making a trailer which FEELS like it's showing too much.

"I'm not machine,

I'm not man,

I'm more."

Like I said, focus group testing is a huge part of the big budget movie trailer industry.

Trailers for blockbuster movies go through rigorous testing to maximize their appeal.

The marketing department gets a bunch of people to watch trailers, and/or TV spots currently in production.

Then they ask a bunch of questions all the way down to how much people liked the individual shots.

The long and short of it is, these focus groups typically preferred trailers...

...which show more of the story over trailers which show less.

Therefore, we get a lot of trailers which show more.

And this is why it's not going to stop anytime soon.

Robert Zemeckis, the director of Cast Away

(which has a trailer notorious for showing the ending of the film) said this:

"We know from studying the marketing of movies, people really want to know...

exactly everything that they're going to see before they go see the movie; it's just one of those things.

To me, being a movie lover, and film student, and a film scholar, and a director I don't.

What I relate it to is McDonald's.

The reason McDonald's is a tremendous success is that you don't have any surprises.

You know exactly what it's going to taste like.

Everybody knows the menu."

I know several trailer editors, and none of them gleefully or maliciously put the best shots in their trailers,

But they know it's a delicate balance between showing cool looking shots, and not showing too much.

So what exactly constitutes showing too much?

Is it showing the most impressive shots?

Is it showing any shots from the last third of the film?

During my PAX West panel about making game trailers...

I asked one of my guests, Jake Rodkin from Campo Santo, for advice to fellow game developers.

He said:.

"In a shot that people are seeing when they don't know the entire story of your game...

...and they don't know the entire context.

An audience member is just going to look at it and say: 'That looks really awesome.

I want to do that in the game.'"

The most important word in that quote is "context."

Which led me to this conclusion:

People feel spoiled when the biggest questions posed by the trailer are then answered.

Now, trailers should leave you with a lot of unanswered questions.

So when you're done watching you need to seek out the movie or game for answers.

"Unfortunately, no one can be TOLD what The Matrix is..."

But there are some basic questions you do want answered in a trailer.

What is the premise?

Who are the characters?

What do they want?

These need to be answered.

Otherwise the audience won't be interested at all.

What I think crosses the line is when the trailer answers the how, why, and what then questions.

Let's look at some examples.

Cast Away is a film about Tom Hanks getting marooned on an island.

"HELLO!?"

This premise naturally leads to the question: "Will he get off the island?".

At 2 minutes into the trailer we find out:

Yes, he does make it off the island.

This is a pretty cut and dry example of showing too much.

There is literally ONE big question posed by the trailer.

It's kind of mind boggling that showing the end was even a consideration.

Then again Cast Away made over 400 million dollars at the box office.

So I guess people didn't care that much.

Another thing to consider is: maybe people just didn't want to see a movie...

...where they know Tom Hanks might die at the end.

This goes back to what Robert Zemeckis said about the audience wanting to know what they're getting.

Another type of trailer which feels like it shows too much.

Is the kind which keeps on saying:.

And then...

A good example is the trailer for Angelina Jolie's film: Unbroken.

The trailer opens with an American military plane firing its machine guns at an enemy.

And then...

We flashback to the soldier as a child where he gets in trouble, and is beat by his father.

And then...

We see the boy trained to be a runner, and winning a race as a man.

And then...

We see the man get to the Olympics.

And then...

We see the man win the Olympics.

And then...

The man joins the army.

And then...

The man get shot down.

And then...

The man is adrift at sea.

And then...

The man is picked up by the Japanese.

And then...

The man is in a prison camp.

And then...

This trailer posed these questions:

"Will the boy become a great runner?"

"Will the man survive the war?"

"Will they survive being adrift at sea?"

"Will the man survive the prison camp?"

Three out of four of these questions get answered.

The important lesson here is:.

The audience for a trailer is trying to understand what the story is about.

The more time spent on any one plotline, the more likely...

...the audience will expect the entire movie to be about that one plotline.

This is why these trailers feel like this show so much.

By the end the audience has seen three or four stories when they came in looking for one.

Another one of my favorite examples of a trailer showing too much is for Wes Craven's thriller Red Eye.

The trailer starts with a fake out setup where it pretends to be a meet-cute romantic comedy...

...between Cillian Murphy and Rachel McAdams,

But it turns out it's a thriller where he's quietly holding her hostage on a plane.

"As fate would have it, my business is all about you."

The question here is: "Will she get away?"

105 seconds in, the trailer is tense and, intriguing but in the following 15 seconds...

She escapes the plane,

runs through the airport,

drives a car down the freeway,

fights killing Murphy in an apartment,

and then there's a rocket launcher for some reason?

I laugh every time I see it because that 15 seconds is basically saying:.

AND THEN AND THEN AND THEN AND THEN AND THEN AND THEN AND THEN AND THEN...

To this day I'm amazed how quickly the trailer squanders all its built up suspense in such a short period of time.

And then...

So, aside from not answering the big questions...

How does a trailer avoid looking like it's showing the entire story?

Well, how about not asking the big questions in the first place?

Take a look at the trailer for The Matrix.

All of these shots are from the very end of the film.

Neo has learned kung fu.

He knows there is no spoon and all that,

and he is going to use his newfound skills to save Morpheus and the crew.

Why don't these shots feel like spoilers?

Because here are the questions the trailer asks.

What is The Matrix?

Who are these apparently not human villains?

What is the real world, and what is the fake world?

Notice, none of these questions are: "Will Neo learn to become The One?"

Virtually no time is spent showing Neo as the ignorant, bumbling John Anderson.

Therefore, we don't know that him becoming Neo is a pivotal moment in the film.

We also don't know Morpheus gets captured, and needs to be saved.

Therefore him jumping out the window, and dangling from a helicopter,

doesn't feel like something is being spoiled.

For all we know this is from the middle of the film.

My guiding philosophy for trailer editing is:

"It's more important to avoid the appearance of showing too much...

...rather than avoiding what might be considered spoilers."

I think of what questions I'm posing to the audience,

and to what degree I'm answering them (if at all).

How much context the trailer gives or withholds affects the audience's experience.

Balancing the line between telling too much or not enough is extremely tricky.

But dancing on that line is what makes for the most engaging trailers.

Thanks for watching.

Let me know in the comments below your favorite trailers...

...which tread the line of exciting without making you feel like you saw too much.

I hope you enjoyed this look at the art of making trailers.

If you want more videos like this please like, and subscribe.

And, have fun!

For more infomation >> How and Why Trailers Spoil Movies - Duration: 7:45.

-------------------------------------------

Why do we get hiccups? - Duration: 6:02.

(ringing)

(beep)

- Hi it's Doug.

Hiccups, you get them, I get them,

but I got to wondering, do animals ever get hiccups?

Well see for yourself, check out these video clips.

(hiccups)

(hiccups)

(hiccups)

(hiccups)

(chirping)

(chirping)

(hiccups)

(hiccups)

(hiccups)

Someone named Dhara has a question about hiccups.

Let's give her a call now.

(ringing)

(beep)

- Hi Doug.

- Hi Dhara.

- I have a question for you,

why do we get hiccups?

- That's a great question.

Hiccups are annoying, (hiccups)

and kind of weird right?

We get used to the idea (hiccups)

of hiccups, but I mean think about it.

If you were sitting there talking to someone,

but all of a sudden started

saying an actual word, like popsicles.

And then as you're talking you just, popsicles.

What's so weird and frustrating about hiccups,

is the sound just suddenly comes out of you.

It's something you have no control over.

You've probably noticed that sometimes hiccups

happen after you eat or drink something too quickly.

But sometimes, it seems like they happen randomly

for no reason at all.

And everyone seems to have a favorite trick they use

to try to stop the hiccups.

One person I talked to said she does a handstand

in order to stop them.

And that at least for her it works every time.

Have you ever tried to stop the hiccups?

What's something you've tried or heard about?

Now would be a good time to pause the video and discuss.

Okay, you ready?

Well maybe one of the most surprising things

about hiccups is that there's no one way

that's been proven to stop them.

But why do they even happen?

What is it that's happening in your body

when you get hiccups?

The answer to this wasn't obvious until we had ways

to study what's going on inside your body.

Things like X-ray machines and MRIs that allows us

to see inside the body.

It turns out that what's happening has

to do with a muscle in your body.

When you think of muscles, you might think

of the ones in your arms.

But there's a muscle located in a surprising place,

the bottom of your chest.

It's called the diaphragm.

It's a large muscle too, it actually forms

a dividing wall between your chest,

that's this part of your body,

and your abdomen or belly.

The part of your body that contains these organs.

What does this muscle do?

Muscles are things you can flex.

You can cause them to tighten up or pull.

And not just to show off how strong you are.

You flex your muscles all the time,

like when you go to lift something with your arms.

In order to lift that thing, you have

to flex your arm muscles like your biceps right here.

Like all muscles, your diaphragm is something

you can flex too.

You can cause it to tighten up or pull.

But flexing your diaphragm isn't something you do

to lift things.

Instead, watch what happens when you flex your diaphragm.

Here I've made a little model of the human chest.

Here's the chest itself,

and inside there are your lungs.

This straw represents your throat.

Watch as I flex this diaphragm.

You see that?

Look what the lungs are doing here.

So you see flexing your diaphragm causes your lungs

to expand and contract.

This is how we breathe.

Our lungs need to us to constantly inhale

or pull in new air, and exhale

or push out old air that we're done with.

But the lungs by themselves can't do this.

That's what our diaphragm is for.

By using special tools like MRI machines and X-rays,

scientists were able to discover exactly

what happens when we get hiccups.

It turns out, even though most of the time you can

control your diaphragm muscle,

and decide when to breathe in or out.

Sometimes the muscle goes out of control.

It just suddenly flexes all on its own.

Normally when you breathe,

you can try this yourself and feel it.

The muscle flexes and relaxes nice and slowly.

But when you get the hiccups, the diaphragm starts

to behave weirdly.

It does very sudden flexes.

Flex, relax, like this, flex, relax.

Each time it flexes suddenly,

it very quickly forces air out of your lungs

which rushes through your throat and makes that familiar

hic sound when you hiccup.

Why would your diaphragm do this?

Why would it just suddenly start flexing.

That's maybe the most interesting thing

of all about hiccups.

And that's this, nobody knows.

Hiccups are truly a mystery.

No one, not even scientists or doctors have figured out

why the diaphragm has these sudden movements.

Or how to stop them from happening.

Luckily, for most of us when we do the hiccups,

they stop after a little while.

But one man is not so lucky.

According to the Guinness Book of World Records,

Charles Osborne from the U.S. state of Iowa

is said to have had the hiccups for nearly 68 years.

That's all for this weeks question.

Thanks Dhara for asking it.

Now for the next episode,

I reached into my question and chose three questions

submitted to me that I'm thinking about answering.

When this video's done playing, you'll get to vote on one.

You can choose from how do binoculars work?

How were the first roads made?

Or who invented football?

So submit your vote when the video's over.

I wanna hear from all of you watching.

There are mysteries all around us.

Stay curious, and see you next week.