Here's our first crack at a trailer. Condensing an hour movie into a minute is much more difficult than I expected. I'd LOVE some feedback as I am far to saturated to have any objectivity. I can see why people hire specialists to make trailers.

It's a 4.9 mb wmv file, that seemed to be the best compression vs. quality that I could churn out. The Quicktime version was 11 meg, that's a little steep.

Direct link to the file: http://www.forgottenstars.com/trailer.wmv

I laughed my butt off at the ending and the trailer gave me wood (get it?). It was really well done. Could use a bit more "drama" through music/slower vignettes, etc. Maybe build up with drama (to surprise the viewer on what the movie is about) before the reveal. I can see where you're headed with this. Great work. Hope to see the whole thing one day.

You've got a great website to go along with that, btw.

I thought the trailer was terrific. :cool:

hilarious trailer bro!

"Sure, he took a lot of heat for hawking cigarettes and vodka." :lol:

Why the decision to do a film like this, btw?

Missed most of the trailer laughing at Hitler...and his barber.

Poke

Why the decision to do a film like this, btw?

ZenSteve,

Easy answer. First, in looking at our resources we realized, hey, we have a dummy (from an old murder mystery.) That's gotta count for something.

Second, we'd never undertaken anything like this, never filmed anything, didn't know any "real" actors. And I'm pretty good with Photoshop and the Prelinger Archives is such a huge resource of archival footage. With the "documentary" format, we could get talented people to commit to one day of shooting their interview, it was easy for them to cheat without a lot of preperation since half their dialogue would be over photos and such. And it meant a limited number of locations, very simple set ups and camera placements. And I could fake all kinds of photos with no expense - ungodly amounts of time, but no expense.

So we completely contrived something that played to our stenghts, compensated for our weaknesses and came out pretty well. It still took close to two years from first draft to final edit but it's been well recieved by all the local movers and shakers and we're waiting to hear from festivals.

Thanks for asking; people are begining to cross the street when they see me coming for fear of yet another "movie story."

That looks hysterical!! How long is it going to be? Id say you did well on the trailor!

That looks hysterical!! How long is it going to be? Id say you did well on the trailor!
Thanks - the final version is 43 minutes - we had a 52 minute one that sagged a bit so we cut some of our favorite bits. Painful but I think it works better.

Are you actually selling the DVD now, rrk1962?

That's what the website suggests... haven't seen a post down in "Members' DVD Sales" forum, though.

Thanks for the heads up - I'll post there sometime this week. I'm preparing for a return showing here; the first was really for cast, crew and friends and was more of a screening. This is the real deal with press and advertising, it's taking all my free time.

Great trailer! Should be very funny! The vintage style looks amazing. What's the latest news?

I went to the first screening of this film. It was very funny. I brought a friend with me and made sure to tell her as little as possible. When she realized that one of the stars was a dummy I got a lot of evil looks. "This had better not be a kids film" she said. I told her to trust me that it should very good. I was not dissappointed. And my friend had a great time.

I also saw in last weekends paper that "forgotten stars" had another screening. Sorry I couldn't make it. How did it go?