Jaws Re-imagined, in Trailer Form
By Steven Pate in Arts & Entertainment on Nov 15, 2011 7:40PM
Movie trailers can be an enjoyable appetizer before the main feature, an infuriating obstacle when you pop in a Blu-ray or a montage of spoilers in the shape of an advertisement. They can also be just plain inexplicable. Last month we were reminded at how deceptive movie trailers can be when a woman filed a lawsuit because the Drive trailer misled her into expecting more of a Vin Diesel action spectacle.
All of this is a testament to the power of the film editor to create many different things from the same raw material, an ability put on display at the Association of Independent Creative Editors' trailer editing event, Camp Kuleshov. AICE assistant editors were given an assignment: to take footage from one or all of three films (Jaws, What About Bob, and Lost In Translation) and cut together a 90 second trailer for an entirely new one.
The contest takes its name from Russian filmmaker Lev Kuleshov, who edited a shot of an actor looking into the camera together with a shot of a plate of soup. He then took another print of the exact same shot of the actor and put it together with a shot of a little girl. He did this a third time, with a shot of a little girl's coffin. Each time, even though the actor's expression bore no relationship to the juxtaposed scenes, audiences reacted to each as if the actor were expressing the appropriate emotion (hunger, affection, grief). Kuleshov had an airtight case for the power of editing in the construction of film meaning. This demonstration of the Kuleshov effect by Alfred Hitchcok is our favorite of the many you can find on YouTube.
The winners of Camp Kuleshov Chicago were announced last week, and we cannot argue with the judges. Michael Lippert's Learning to Stand (kind of like Splash, only with a shark instead of a mermaid, and Bill Murray rather than Daryl Hannah) and 2nd runner-up Aaron Porzel's Were-shark, a b-movie style monster movie, are creative and convincing. But Caleb Helper's winning entry, Shark Song, where Jaws has been turned completely on its head, becoming a Disneyfied, feel-good movie about "A man, a shark, and their song," made us cackle with laughter. We can't embed the video, but recommend recommend you trade 90 seconds for a laugh or two by checking it out.