Superstition Mountain

[TerryJameson]

Brand new here. My name is Terry Jameson, and I'm the producer of the new horror movie Superstition Mountain. Check out the trailer and let me know what you think!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5mpax8psQzk

[newb]

Nothing in the trailer made me want to see this.


sorry....you asked

[neverending]

It looks really derivitive and the sound is really overmodulated.

Really.

As a teaser all it really says is that it borrows from millions of other movies. If it told a little of the story and what makes it stand out from every other horror film of the past 20 years I might be more interested.

[TerryJameson]

What do you mean by derivitive?

Sorry, just me being dumb, but I don't understand. I'd like to make it better, and I do value your input.

[ChronoGrl]

:p

It's a nicer way of saying "unoriginal."

But, honestly, there's nothing wrong with derivative per se as long as this particular derivation is done well (I think that Shutter the original is a great example - while it's a completely derivative JA ghost movie, I found the direction and acting clean with a lot of good jumps to it).

If your film is going to borrow from other films that came before, just make sure that it's a true derivation... Otherwise, see how you can make it stand out from its predecessors.

[urgeok2]

Originally Posted by TerryJameson

What do you mean by derivitive?

Sorry, just me being dumb, but I don't understand. I'd like to make it better, and I do value your input.

it's hard to say from the trailer which didnt really show anything ..

but all i could think of is a low budget blair witch..

Cloerfield upped that ante - it's tough to go backwards.


but who knows - my biggest impression was that - i really cant tell anything from the trailer.

(looked like there might be a couple of interesting characters though)

[TerryJameson]

Thanks for schooling me on my vocabulary. I feel dumb, but what can I say? I'm a filmmaker and it's been a long time since English 101...

What makes Superstition Mountain different from Cloverfield and Blair Witch is that it's real, but that's hard to get across in a trailer. The goal of every trailer, and every movie for that matter, is to make the audience feel like it's real, and with good SAG actors that's easily done. Both Cloverfield and Blair Witch had good actors (arguably :)

Any suggestions on how to get that across? We've been mulling this over ourselves...

Thanks for your time and input, btw!

[neverending]

You need to tell us something about the story....

[TerryJameson]

I actually cut this trailer and showed it to a hundred college kids, and they overwhelmingly said the same thing.

So then I cut another trailer that DID tell more and showed it to them, and then 87 of them flipped back and said they liked the mysterious nature of the first one better. Maybe I'll try to cut another one that's somewhere in the middle.

I hate these new six minute trailers that show you every good shot in the whole movie, you know? There's films where I honestly don't remember if I watched the whole thing, or if I just saw the trailer that showed me the entire movie, and I want to stay away from that.

[ChronoGrl]

Ok. So I actually finally watched it.

1. I think that you make your edits/cuts far too fast. I generally enjoy teasers that cut away quickly, but this did it too quickly at the beginning of the teaser.
2. I found myself saying, "Wolf Creek" meets "Touristas" meets "Blair Witch"... But not in a good way and, to be fair, I'm a sucker for those movies (Chrono loves the slasher), but I just didn't feel as though this does anything new for the genre (or that it makes a particularly compelling derivation).
3. To tell you the truth, I feel as though the hand held camera thing is starting to get over used (Blair Witch, Cloverfield, Diary of the Dead), so unless the movie itself is really clean, I'm not as turned on as I used to be (that's what she said). I think that you can make your movie distinguishable without going overkill on the teaser; choose a focal point instead of the babes jumping in the pool and the kids making out. It just SCREAMS derivative. I was more interested when you were "interviewing" the guys at the end.
4. Not that horror titles are anything to salivate to, but I am also not a fan of the movie title. To me it says, "This is cheesy." If that's your point, that's fine. If it's not, well...