Wednesday
25Jun2008
Take a Closer Look: This Trailer Has No Credits
Wednesday, June 25, 2008 at 10:22AM
On August 26th, a movie called
Virgin Territory will
arrive on DVD. We recently showed you
the trailer because we found it surprising
that a movie with
Hayden Christensen,
Mischa Barton, and
Tim Roth would go
straight to DVD without anyone knowing the damn thing had even been made. It
turns out, we buried the lead.
Our readers were quick to notice things I didn't pay
attention to when watching the trailer. For example, someone believes they heard Tim Roth re-named Tim Ross, which you
might think is a one-off mistake. Ross is a common name; could've happened to
anybody, even Big Voice Guy. I mean, after all, the on screen credit does say
Roth.
But then I became convinced of the sloppiness of this
trailer when another reader commented, "The credits read 'Written & Directed by
The Director Himself.' Now I REALLY want to see it!"
So naturally, I had to investigate this more carefully.
Yes, indeed, at the 1:31 mark of the Virgin Territory trailer, Mr. Voiceover
says, "Hayden Christensen...Mischa Barton...and Tim Ross." Embarrassing.
But that's nothing compared to the credits that pop up
at the end of the trailer. We've blown them up a little bit so if you squint,
you can see what we're talking about:
As one of our readers astutely suggested, they're using
some template here and never went back to put any of the actual credits in.
That's why Something Else Films in association with This and That Productions
present Something Else, Else Something, Another Person, and And Another One
Still in a movie that has no name, apparently.
We can see that The Music Person composed and conducted
the music, and The Producer produced. And, as mentioned earlier, The Director
Himself wrote and directed this anonymous film, and we shouldn't be surprised;
he's very good. There are actual credits to this film; you just won't see them
here.
In fact, the only specific attribution on this list of
credits is the website, which is for the terrible zebra/horse racing flick
Racing Stripes.
So was this an oversight or does the company who made
this trailer not care? Or is there a third option, one in which the people who
made the trailer didn't think anyone would watch this anyway and purposely went
about making Virgin Territory look unprofessional? In a weird way, I kind
of hope it's Option C, although I wouldn't want anyone doing that to my movie,
even if it could only get a DVD release.
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