Trailer Talk: You always remember your first

Hello, hello! Welcome to the show. I'm dreamrot, normally of the blog at the top of all of your alphabetical lists, $7 Popcorn. I'm going to be popping in here for what will be a weekly to bi-weekly segment here at the LAMB called Trailer Talk (unless I come up with a better title...then it will be called that).

Let's get right to it...

Do you remember the first time you were really and truly excited to see a movie trailer? I don't mean sitting in the theater, watching a preview for some movie and thinking 'Wow, that was awesome! I am so really and truly excited now! I can't wait to see this movie!' No, I mean looking forward and anticipating a trailer itself. The first time you went out of your way to find a preview for a movie not just to know what the movie was about, but because the trailer's release was as exciting at that moment as the movie's release would be.

I remember. For me, it was November 1998. There was a rather unheralded movie coming out the following May that no one knew anything about yet. There I was, cliché as it might sound, in my mom's basement waiting to download a Quicktime video. Watching, desperately and impatiently, as it slowly downloaded on my 56kbps connection. Embedded flash players and high speed connections? No, we didn't have those yet. And streaming Quicktime on a 56k connection was the kind of thing that I just didn't have the patience for. No, I'd search the page's source code and find the link to the file to download it myself. Unless that was illegal. If that wasn't allowed, then I did nothing of the sort. No, not me officer.

Downloading a two minute video took commitment though. It required dedication. You could download it or you could do ANYTHING ELSE with your computer, but you couldn't do both at the same time. Dammit though, this was Star Wars.



Watching it for the first time, you see the logos, and then the mist with something you can't identify walking out of it. The music slowly builds. It could be a trailer for anything, really. Then, after about 35 seconds...BAM, the familiar John Williams score and you know, you just KNOW that this is what you've been waiting for. You see all of the characters, find out a little bit about who is who. The worst part about it is that you know it's still six months until the movie gets released.You sit there and scream "Why, George? Why? Why must you tease me so!" Or was that just me?

It was exciting. Everyone I knew, especially online, was geeked about it.  It was all we talked about for days. People went to the theater just to see it. A trailer!

Since 1998, of course, there have been many highly anticipated trailers released online. Just think back to earlier this year when the first Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull or Batman Returns trailers were first released. Were they as big as The Phantom Menace trailer? No, probably not. Trailers are a big thing though. The blog-o-net gets very excited when a big trailer gets released. It's news. And, it's a huge thing.

What is a movie trailer? At it's heart, movie trailer is nothing more than a commercial for a movie. An advertisement! If it were soap, you'd fast forward through it on your Tivo! Sometimes though, just sometimes, it transcends that and becomes a experience. The same way that we have blockbuster movies, we get blockbuster trailers.

Now the question goes out to you, my fellow LAMBs, what trailer were you most excited to see? What was the first trailer you ever really anticipated seeing? The first time you went out of your way and got really excited about a trailer being released. You know my story, now tell us about yours in the comments, or write about it in your blog and leave a link in the comments here.