two trailers - one good, one bad

March 19, 2006

To get back into the swing of things here, I’ll direct you to a post I wrote on my character animation blog about the differences between the Cars trailer and the Over the Hedge trailer.

Just for a little background on me, I was one of the animators on Over the Hedge and think it’s quite an enjoyable movie.

What I didn’t say over there (well, I did but in “code”) that I will say over here is that it is obvious from the Cars trailer that there is a complete story there. Just like all of the Pixar films to come before it. You’ve got the MC car (Owen Wilson), the IC car (Paul Newman), their relationship (“I can drive faster and better than you”) and the OS (city car goes to the country).

Furthermore, it looks like there is the usual two stories per Pixar film (a la “The Incredibles” and “Finding Nemo”) with an obvious love relationship with the Porsche.

Watching the Over the Hedge trailer you wouldn’t know that the same sort of structure exists.

RJ the Raccoon is the MC, Verne the Turtle is the IC, they have a well-developed relationship (unlike most Dreamworks films) and OS is very strong (new suburb destroys their forest home).

As I’ve suggested before, I think showing all the throughlines or potential throughlines in a trailer is of utmost importance - it almost compels the audience member to go see it, to go find out how it all works out (the meaning).

Structure should always trump gags.