The Trailaurality Awards

As we pause to undertake our annual review of the state of the industry in trailer music, we wanted to acknowledge a few of the most notable releases of the past year. As in years past, such releases tend to move the trailer as an art form forward in some way—whether in its treatment towards a given audiovisual trope, the creative push away from generic conventions, or tasteful use of bespoke elements such as musical arrangement or editing to lend a trailer an enhanced sense of persuasive ability. Here below are four such trailers that go well beyond any given trope or cliché, pointing even towards possible new trends in trailer music as we head into 2023.

Best Audiovisual Edit and Overall Trailer: Babylon

With this trailer Damien Chazelle (La La Land) and Justin Hurwitz prove themselves a director/composer collaborative duo on the level of Tim Burton and Danny Elfman or Alfred Hitchcock and Bernard Hermann—moreover, they also prove that such collaborations are alive and well in cinema. The pure bombast of Babylon’s trailer is underpinned by deliberate obscuring of the diegetic source of music. They accomplish this through a variety of audio mixing and recording strategies that help it stand out, such as the decision to deliberately record some lines in intimate scenes in poor audio quality. The result is frequently kinetic, visceral, and through the aural edit, not so much seen as felt. As a tour through the early days of Hollywood, contemplating the medium of film itself (coincidentally, a theme also explored this year in Spielberg’s The Fabelmans), the edit does much to hold together a trailer that barely maintains its coherence, and intentionally so—beholden to the church of spectacle.

Best Pre-existing Music Selection: Black Panther: Wakanda Forever

The latest addition to Wakandan lore stretched beyond the limits of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, as the world has had to grapple with the untimely passing of Chadwick Boseman. The initial trailer for Black Panther: Wakanda Forever squarely grappled with this through a clever musical arrangement that segues neatly from Bob Marley’s “No Woman, No Cry” to Kendrick Lamar’s “Alright”. It’s an emotional journey rooted in loss and ending in an affirmation of strength and joy, guided closely through an edit that navigates the emotional turmoil, addresses the grief, and moves forward. Put simply, the trailer editors were tasked with an edit that does justice to something that transcends the world of cinema, and they succeeded.

Best Sonic Design: M3GAN

In the most surprising uses of licensed music of the year, Taylor Swift’s “It’s Nice to Have a Friend” is given the horror treatment in the service of James Wan’s latest. Best known for the SAW series, Wan ventures deep into the uncanny valley with this story about an android doll gone deeply awry. Usually when existing songs are used in horror trailers, a parody or ironic arrangement is used—often in a style resembling a nursery rhyme, intentionally jarring against macabre footage. For this trailer, however, the effect is more subtle—and often it’s the existing lyrics that are re-contextualized against the on-screen action. Moreover, first establishing the song as-is and then introducing its trailerization later deepens its impact as its contrast between the familiar version and the horror remix is maximized, again mirroring the visual. The glimpses of the (in)famous doll’s dance scene are just the icing on the cake.

Best Musical Biopic: Weird: The Al Yankovic Story

Music biopics have picked up in popularity since the mid-2010s and seem to have no sign of stopping. While some play it by the book, as in the recently released trailer for I Wanna Dance With Somebody focusing on Whitney Houston and her music, there was an opportunity to play with the parodic nature of Al Yankovic’s career, as this trailer delivered. Daniel Radcliffe hams it up as Yankovic, delivering one-liners galore as well as a rendition of Yankovic’s breakout hit, “Like a Surgeon” (parodying Madonna). What makes this trailer so notable is not necessarily its particular editing style—though it is stylistically rich, full of synch points and other editing accoutrements. Rather, Weird points another way forward, to trailers covering musical biopics that take liberties according to the artist covered; Weird’s trailer appropriately lives up to its name, and for this has become a standout of the year.

Whether in terms of expanding our sense of what a musical biopic can entail as done in Weird: The Al Yankovic Story, stretching the limits of licensed music and rearrangement as we find in in M3GAN, judiciously sequencing and segueing between tracks as Black Panther: Wakanda Forever delivers, or giving way completely to spectacle and using music to facilitate this as experienced in Babylon, it’s clear that not only is there no single way to advance the trailer form forward, but it is so much richer for the variety of approaches that can be taken towards its sonic design. What these trailers indicate is that the best trailers have not taken a predictable form-by-genre. While there are enduring, proven editing techniques, the most outstanding trailers tend to stretch and even confound musical expectations in ways that particularly pique audience interest. They enmesh the music licensing and editing decisions with the unique facets of the films and audiences they serve.

— Curtis Perry