The 2020 Trailaurality Awards

It’s been a year (or rather, what feels like many years), but despite the all-but-closure of movie theatres around the world, the industry has managed to soldier on, perhaps most obviously through an accelerated shift to streaming services. Disney+ has received multiple exclusives (Mulan, Soul) once designated for the silver screen. Elsewhere, the entire Warner Bros slate has moved to HBO Max, gaining exclusives like Dune and the much-anticipated fourth instalment of the Matrix series (albeit not without vocal grumbling by the Christopher Nolans of the world).

In the midst of such a sea change in economics and strategy, it’s worth asking whether this has changed the shape of trailers that are now predominantly Netflix-native. The short answer? Not so much. In fact, the service that dared most to be different, Quibi, was something we found to besimply watered-downrather than innovative, per se—and that assessment was born out after a paltrysix-month shelf life.

This is not to say that 2020 didn’t feature a rich assortment of uniquely persuasive, tightly-edited bites of sound and image, however. Let’s run down some of the highlights.

Best Use of Pre-existing Music: Hamilton

By mid-2020, die-hard Hamil-fans had been listening to Lin Manuel’s melodies for four years (or more, for those following the musical’s development). Of course, the trailer for Hamilton’s release—what became a Disney+ exclusive, setting a pattern for the broad shift from theatres to streaming—uses key cuts from the score. What set this trailer apart from others in the musical genres was the way it remixes the opening track with later numbers. The editors at Hit House Music and their composer/arranger, William August Hunt, delivered something special for this unique musical, lavishing it with details like the step-change in key at 0:28. Small details like audio of the audience cheering remind the audio viewer that we’re watching something distinct from the theatrical adaptation—we are being promised the original Broadway experience, in full fidelity.

Best Editing: i’m thinking of ending things

Swinging away from conventional and well-integrated to intentionally disparate and unnerving, here we have Charlie Kaufman’s latest, engaging in his trademark enchant for the esoteric. The sound of the dog shaking off water at 0:45 moves quickly from commonplace to unnerving as it simply doesn’t cease; it serves as a jumping-off point for increasingly dream-like scenarios, as well as an unlikely motif. Incidental flute and harp music round-off the surreal scenario.

Best Overall Campaign: Mank

In October last year we covered one of the first trailers for Mank, the ambitious art-imitates-life-imitates-art telling of Herman Mankiewicz, the co-writer of Citizen Kane who based said film roughly on himself. Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross extend the success they first experienced with trailer scores a decade ago with The Social Network, delivering a mesmerizing score befitting of the slow-motion swirl of a visual montage that gives us glimpses of Mank’s life. What cinches the campaign, however, is the way the trailers then incorporate the score of Citizen Kane in a clever turn of self-reference.

Best Use of Eccentric Instrumentation: The French Dispatch

If ever there was a case to be made for the persistence of the auteur-director as we continue into the 21st century, alongside Kaufman there is a strong one for Wes Anderson, whose palettes, both visual and aural, are nearly instantly recognizable. So it is for his next work, the fictional French Dispatch. Long-time collaborator Alexandre Desplat once again delivers a whimsical harpsichord, itself a throwback to 70s baroque pop, successfully instilling an “out-of-time”, anachronistic feeling—not quite 17th century, nor 60s, nor even now—that befits Anderson’s parallel universes.

Best Musical Biopic Trailer: Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom

2020 continued the recent trend of producing an embarrassment of higher-profile musical biopics, but Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom receives the nod this year due mainly to the unique way the live musical performance is emphasized and honoured here. Indeed, a live music session frames the entire piece; we’re immersed in the moment before any title cards, and the session bookends the trailer.

To state the obvious once again, 2020 was tumultuous, not only having the pandemic to contend with, but also the necessary provocation that we collectively need to continue to work towards racial justice. Our coverage for 2020 was informed in part by both of these realities. We hope you’re keeping well during this difficult time, and we are looking forward both to what this year might hold for trailers and how we might begin to envision a post-pandemic world, both the film industry and for the general public.

— Curtis Perry