Hail the Coming Attractions

The use of VO is a standard (if overused) trick in the trade, because a good trailer must impart a lot of information in its two minutes: Who are the characters? What obstacles must they overcome? Why should you care? (And, of course, do you get to see the good-looking people in this movie with their shirts off?) If the movie is the novel, then the trailer is "the short story," said Mark Woollen of Mark Woollen Associates in Santa Monica, known for his more arty trailer style for unusual films such as "I {heart} Huckabees" and "Garden State."

Woollen said he prefers to edit trailers without VO, where the film itself, with its own dialogue and scenes, reduced to its most concentrated broth, tells the story. Sometimes Woollen doesn't even use dialogue, as with the teaser he did for actor/director Zach Braff's "Garden State," in which he just used a song to create mood. (A teaser is a shorter trailer, about a minute or so, shown on the Internet or in theaters; a TV spot is 30 seconds).

As the awards went on, best summer blockbuster went to "War of the Worlds." Best comedy to "Napoleon Dynamite." Best drama: "Collateral." Most original was "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy," which got a big round of applause from this insider audience because the trailer made fun of trailers, with a VO warning viewers that they were going to see "plenty of the usual shouting" and special-effects clips and scenes to show "how funny it is."

Yet the most anticipated moment of the evening, if that is the right word, came with the Golden Fleece Award, bestowed on the trailer that takes the biggest film turkey and transforms it into a swan. (We'll get to who won in a minute.)

The Golden Fleece is no diss. Far from it. It's a badge of honor. The producers in this category enter themselves.

"It's not a bad award," said Evelyn Brady, who, along with her sister Monica created the Golden Trailers. "It's the greatest award. They did their job. They sold it."

Because selling is the point. "They made a silk purse out of a sow's ear," added Monica Brady. A studio might spend $600,000 making a trailer, a crucial cog in the marketing machine, building anticipation. In fact, there are now Internet sites (another trend) where you can watch trailers on your computer all day long.

"It is a big business," Woollen said. "Everything rides on the opening weekend. There is a lot of pressure and thought and second-guessing."

Some trailers, for lower-budget films, may be cut in a weekend. Others take a year of effort, with constant feedback from the studio (and sometimes the directors), as little bits are added or subtracted. Some trailer editors are given a final complete film to work with, others a rough cut, and in some cases, they are sent dailies from every day of shooting. That's why some trailers include footage that never appears in the final movie.

Often times, several trailers are cut for different demographics: a more music-driven, louder, faster version for the MTV generation, and a slower, more dramatic, wordy version for the older adults.

The Brady sisters say that as audiences have grown more sophisticated (and perhaps more cynical or informed) so too have the trailers, which employ high-end computer graphics and sound tracks that aren't necessarily in the final film, with cut-aways and sputter-shot edits and fast fades. And whether you love 'em or hate 'em, trailers are poised to become more omnipresent in our world, on the Internet, TV and -- coming soon -- the tiny, digital screen on your cell phone.

Like the films themselves, big-budget trailers are tested before focus groups. It's not unusual for a trailer editor to be asked by the marketers to tinker with the product -- downplaying, for example, that the movie is in German or Mandarin. Or making a downer of a movie, like "In the Bedroom," about the death of a son, more upbeat. Or using every bit of flesh. As Daniel Gross (an editor with The Grossmyth Company), who won best foreign/independent for "House of Flying Daggers," said, "I want to thank my wife, Ann, who made me lengthen a couple of those kissing shots."

One of the evening's presenters boiled it down to this: "You guys are geniuses. To make these [expletive] movies look so good."

The trailer editors here explain that their non-trailer-making friends often harass them for enticing them to see movies that stink. "They're, like, 'I can't believe you got me into the theater to see that,' " said Scott Storm, a director/editor at Hammer Creative in Los Angeles. But, ahh -- that is the art.

A famous example of a great trailer for a lame movie was the one for Ben Affleck's "Pearl Harbor." The 2003 Golden Fleece went to the surfing movie "Blue Crush."

This year's Golden Fleece nominees were "Cellular," "The Machinist," "September Tapes," "Stander" and -- the winner -- "White Noise," starring Michael Keaton as the guy who hears dead people talking to him on his stereo.

The guy who accepted the award for Joe French of Empire Design in London, which cut the "White Noise" preview, took the stage and just said thank you. That was interesting. For all their creativity, the trailer-trade practitioners prefer to melt into the background. Perhaps it's the result of having to downsize his or her own ego to take another director's vision and pare it down into what is essentially an artistic commercial.

"I don't think any kid says they want to grow up to cut trailers," said Woollen, who, like lots of others in the trade, wants to make his own movies (and then have someone else cut the trailer).

But at this stage of the game, as these trailer makers accept their trophies (tall golden pedestals topped by Airstreamesque trailers), it's quick and dirty. Up. Down. And done.