The Film Pie - Matt's Favourite Movie Trailers: Part 1

Details: Written by Matthew Toomey; Created: 09 March 2009

Over the next two weeks, I’m going to list through some of my favourite movie trailers of the past 10 or so years.

I do like a good trailer for two reasons – (1) it created my initial interest in the film, and (2) it provides a neat summary of the film which I can go back and watch after I’ve seen the movie.

I regularly download trailers but only keep the ones I really like. On my hard drive are about 100 or so. When I look through them, the one thing that strikes me most is the choice of music. For a trailer to be effective, and generate interest (at least with me), it needs to find the right music to match the film’s overall tone. What many people won’t realise is that the music used in a trailer often comes from another movie.

Other qualities of a good trailer include creative editing and some decent catch-words (whether they be spoken by the narrator or written on the screen).

Having gone through my trailer collection, I was able to narrow it down to 20 that I think are the best. I’ll list 10 this week and 10 next week. I’ve listed the Youtube link so you can watch them for yourself (if you’d like to do so). If you haven’t seen the film already, this might be just the impetus to get you to do so.

Here we go (in no particular order)…

Blow (2001)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R6_B63TfWwE

Garden State (2004)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=la53nY41c9M

Requiem For A Dream (2000)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6Ay3m4ntxQ

Seabiscuit (2003)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8fnYdEGeXbM

Magnolia (1999)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S1nYjKphdSk

Night Watch (2004)