Author’s Statement
HERE is my trailer!
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Well it’s finally finished, and I feel pretty satisfied with how it turned out. The point of the trailer is to misrepresent the film Avatar into seeming like a standard sci-fi war film between the heroic humans and the sinister alien race, rather than a rehash of Fern Gully, Pocahontas, Dances With Wolves, etc.
The most important thing I learned through this is the importance of music in creating an intended mood, especially in a trailer like this. The actual theatrical trailer for Avatar used happier music than I did to start with, and there was noticeably a “tribal” touch underlying it. The original also showed the beauty of the world of Pandora, while I tried to keep the planet seemingly treacherous (especially 0:38-0:42).
The main point of my video is to show that in our current digitally networked society and culture it is possible to subvert the original intention of a text, whether for political or comedic intent. My video has some glorification of the military included on purpose as an antithesis to James Cameron’s Anti-Imperialistic themes. The mechanized warfare shown in the film was implicitly demonized so I set out with an intent to romanticize the technology of the humans.
I think that Jaron Lanier would be torn in terms of my project, as his article World Wide Mush makes it clear that he would not like the fact that I was doing this without thought of being paid for my work, though he would like that I completed this trailer on my own with a single intended theme and purpose rather than collectively working with a team over the Internet. I am also mostly sure that Lanier would dislike the fact that I have had access to a copy of the film (through the Internet) and the ability to edit it. He would probably say that since I am not profiting from this video that I haven’t made anything creative or new.
Henry Jenkins on the other hand would most likely be happy that I am able to produce this recut trailer, the video adding something important to the “remix culture” he describes in this article with his conversation with Owen Gallagher. My remix, along with so many other remixes, challenges Intellectual Property Law by asserting itself as wholly creative content despite only using content I did not create.
Technical Points
I began by bringing a copy of the movie into Final Cut, cutting it up into smaller and smaller pieces so that I would not have to render more than I needed, as it was a high quality version of the two and a half hour film and even short clips would take several minutes to complete.
At first I was going to use The Great Eatlon (the music at the beginning) for the entire trailer, as the pace quickens and becomes more “epic” as it goes on, however I decided to change to Guardian at the Gates by Audiomachine (the music in part of the actual trailer) halfway thru as it really added to the film’s reclassification as a war film (and also the montage of various action scenes I utilized in the same way as so many other trailers).
What should really stand out is the complete lack of Jake as a protagonist, the entire Avatar system (making the title less applicable to my trailer, although I lacked the ability to create a title with the quality of the rest of the video), the scientists, the reason for why the humans are there and why the Na’vi want to kill them (making them the wrong doers and seem extremely violent whenever they are shown),
I am really lucky with some of the shots Cameron gave me, such as the arrows on the massive construction vehicle at the beginning (which gave me the ability to add in some dread around 0:22 and lead into the Corporal’s speech). I was able to accurately connect the Corporal’s speech at the beginning to the second one towards the end by leaving out any shots showing the size of his audience in that scene. Starting at 1:00 is the second speech and I cut and moved various parts of his speech (the long shots of the room came in handy cause you can’t see his mouth) to simplify the plot. Another lucky break was that two speeches were done in the same location (but the lighting changes during the second speech, giving the scene some more intensity as it went on). I cut out the parts about bombing the Na’vi and took great attention to make it seem as if the film was centered around one large epic battle between the races. There is no mention of any negotiations between the two and if you take close notice at no point in the trailer are the Na’vi given any dialogue, their war cries not excluded to push them more in the way of monsters than “humanoids” (what the Corporal calls them). At 00:57 I was able to use a shot of the Toruk (the large red dragon-thing) because Jake is excluded from the entire plot and it would not be a spoiler to show him having tamed it. (Trivia: In the real theatrical trailer around 0:49 it shows Jake’s Avatar fighting the Corporal at the end of the movie, although it just seems like a random mech fighting a Na’vi warrior in the brief clip they use).
To keep the humans the good guys I also eliminated the Unobtainum plotline and all dialogue from Giovanni Ribisi’s character (as he is basically a generic, corporate a-hole).
I used a few of the intertitles from the theatrical trailer, the first starting at 1:36, as they really helped me change the music and tone without having the visual element seem disjointed. They also added to the quickening pace of the music and the intensifying of the action.
The most important part of my trailer, I feel, is from 2:32 to 2:39, when Tsu’tei dies on the back of the airship. In the film he dies a heroic warrior’s death, killing several of the marines to a background of “sad” tribal music. The moment the marine fires and the music starts again I feel that the audience would almost certainly be rooting for the humans. I was also able to show Trudy’s death at 3:19 because she was never introduced as a character. I hope that a viewer could spot the warpaint on her face and ship and assume she was allied with the Na’vi, although looking back now this might be a bit confusing.
I’ve seen a lot of trailers where there is a short little clip after the music stops and it shows the title of the film, so I decided to include one. This is the only time I show Sigourney Weaver’s character, though I hope that anyone who has seen Avatar would laugh at the “you gonna shoot me?” question and “I can do that” reply as in the movie he does in fact shoot and kill her. The thumping bass hit at 3:46 was actually lifted from the end of the Tron Legacy trailer, as without it the Corporal’s line is not as poignant.
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