TRAILER BLAZE

We turn the focus on the people in the Bollywood trailer business

We turn the focus on the people in the Bollywood trailer business
They only have a minute. To take your mind off the popcorn,to tease you with the story,to sell a 70 mm spectacle in hundred quick frames or in the case of Love Sex Aur Dhoka,the grainy footage of voyeurism. When 24-year old Aditya Joshi of Trailer Wizards had to cut the trailer for Dibakar Banerjees digital film,he decided on a montage of CCTV footage: a guy and girl cosy up in the cereal aisle in a supermarket,lovers fight,a man tries to tape his own suicide,a man dry humps a carpet. The camera,says the trailer,will destroy you. We wanted to keep the camera as the central character and show that the people are aware that it is on. As far as the sex scenes go,we were told not to use them in the trailers, he says. Sex scenes or not,the trailer has already gathered over 1 lakh hits on the movies official website in less than a month.

Joshi and his two friends started Trailer Wizards in Mumbai a year ago and have already cut trailers for Quick Gun Murugan,Priyadarshans next Bam Bam bhole and Anurag Kashyaps next,That Girl in Yellow Boots. The best part of this job is that we get to see these movies first, says Joshi. On the other side of town is Mukul Misra,who has also watched Karthik Calling Karthik ,3 idiots,Veer,Wake up Sid,Wanted and other films way before their release date. Misra works for Trigger Happy,another set-up that has cut trailers for many talked-about movies in the last three years.

Cutting trailers in Bollywood has become more professional over the last five years. While earlier,a films editors stitched together a few scenes,nowadays the task is outsourced to professional firms who come up with a fresh storyboard. We can no longer expect the audience to be fooled with a few beautiful picture montages. Now it is sent to us for a fresh perspective,a creative one. Which is why the trailers look good, says Mriidu Khosla,who heads Pixion Trailer House at Pixion studios in Mumbai. The 27-year-old,who studied filmmaking at the New York Institute of Technology,has been making trailers for the last two and a half years. Its a good business,with a big budget production house paying anywhere between Rs 6- 8 lakh for a movies trailers.

Like ad spots,trailers have a short shelf-life. We have to get people in the movie halls in the first two days. After the release,movie reviews and word of mouth take over, says 34-year-old Misra,the former head of on-air promotions at Sony Television India.
Making trailers is not exactly a breeze. The process begins with the marketing team narrowing down on which part of the movie can be sold. Second,the story has to be conveyed. Third,it could be an Aamir Khan movie. Trigger Happy has also worked with Aamirs Ghajini and 3 idiots. Misra is all praise for the actor-producer but agrees that he made them work hard. It was his idea to have two trailers. The first showcased the love story. The second was more action-centric. It worked,since people understood that the film was about both, he says.

It takes a week or two to cut a trailer. It involves watching the first cut,meetings on what emotion has to be delivered and adding the right sound and copy. And,of course,timing is key. The decision on how many trailers are needed depends on how much time we have for its marketing. For example,for Om Shanti Om we had 12 weeks before the release. So we could run many promos, says Misra.

Today,every movie involves a publicity blitzkrieg across mediafrom coffee chains to gift shops,websites to reality shows. And Bollywood has its own demands. It is easier for people in Hollywood to make trailers since they have one good story and they have to sell it. The Indian viewer is not one person. Here the trailer is competing with the 2-3 songs from the same movie that are doing the rounds, says Misra.

Trailers dont come into play only after a film is made. For example,we cut pitch trailers before the shooting begins. We make a two-minute trailer since the cast is already signed on we use them and it is shown to the producers. We have done this for Ibrahim,an Aamir Khan and Imran Khan-starrer,which will start shooting soon, says Khosla. She has even cut trailers for documentary films. For international film festivals like Sundance and Cannes,the jury asks for trailers before the film is sent. They decide on the film from the trailers. And so it is crucial, says Khosla.

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The trailer also has a different moniker nowadays. Chin2 Singh,an independent film editor,who has worked on the trailer for Kashyaps Gulaal,says,We earlier used to say that we make teasers for movies,a 15-second teaser,or a longer 30-second teaser. Now a trailer is termed as the first look of the film,it has all the big scenes. Its not just a tease.