New technology has made it much easier for studios to perform a crucial sleight-of-hand: altering the director's finished images for the trailer.
"There was always a standard of not manipulating footage of the feature films. . . . You wouldn't do slow-motion, speed-ups, do things visually with the film that the director hadn't already done," said Kevin Sewelson, a partner in leading Hollywood trailer-maker Seismic Productions. "Now it has all changed to where we are manipulating images . . . and doing it a lot more this year than last."
Virtually all trailers are created on digital editing systems introduced in TV commercial and feature film production. Avid Technology Inc., based in West Tewksbury, Mass., won a technical achievement Oscar this year for its digital systems on which editors can quickly create stunning visual effects.
Take the preview for MGM/UA's upcoming supernatural thriller "Stigmata."
"We're layering a lot of shots, four or five, one on top of the other, and we play with the speeds as well," said the studio's new vice president of creative advertising, Seth Gaven, who joined MGM/UA last month after six years with Los Angeles trailer specialty house Intralink Film Graphic Design.
