Oddities in the YouTube Section of Cyberspace

Several months ago I posted a video contest entry on YouTube--it didn't win.

The video sat for about three months, gathering around 600 views, until last weekend when interest in the video exploded. It is now up to almost 8,000 view, 14 comments, and seven rating and I am not quite sure why. The real interesting thing, though, is the comments and where they are from.

So far, and assuming that the information in the commenter's profiles is correct, I have gotten comments from Great Britain, Romania, Norfolk Island, Brazil, New Zealand, Germany, and the United States. Some of the comments have been positive and others negative. The major problem that commenters seem to have is that the trailer doesn't tell what the story is about.

I always thought that trailers were marketing tools whose soul purpose was to entice people into spending hard-earned money for the chance to see the movie. Whether or not the trailer tells what the story about is moot if it, the trailer, gets people curious enough to go see the movie. Case in point: the first Transformers Movie trailer. That one caught my interest and led me to pay cash-money to see it at the theater.

So, what is the purpose of a trailer? Convince people to see the movie? Tell what the movie is about? Both? Neither? That is truly the question.

 

Technorati tags: filmmaking, the nines, contest, trailer, film