In a world where… in movie trailers is really beginning to piss me off.
I’m sick of hearing about these mysterious side effects seem worse than actually having the condition the medication is treating: 4 hour erections and anal leakage spring to mind.
I’m sick of commercials aimed at stupid children. Seriously, any pasta in a can is made of pasta goop and ketchup. Being “fun” doesn’t improve the taste. The same goes for toys in crappy cereal. Screw you, Kap’n Crunch and your mouth-lacerating, tasteless wheat offal.
One reason you hear so many words over and over is because there are a limited number of words you can use in advertising that can sound good without actually legally meaning anything. Subway’s “Eat Fresh” springs to mind. They’re not saying their food is healthy or high quality, because they’d have to back that up. But “fresh” sure carries those connotations without being legally binding.
I know people quote this line often when joking about movie trailers but is it or was it really used that often? I can’t remember it actually ever being used recently.
“Up to” falls in that category as well. “Save up to 50%!” means I could be saving 0%. Likewise, prices listed as “starting at” which invariably means “You will actually be paying a hell of a lot more than this”.
Any product involving scents named after things that don’t have scents. I’ve seen products that supposedly smelled like fresh air, snow, silk and diamonds. I’m sorry but your product smells like chemicals, not small shiny rocks.
IMHO, Boniva is what they should have called Viagra. In fact, until I listened to the commerical (Sally Fields is the spokeshuman, right?), I thought it was a new Male ED pill.
Since we’re a bunch of commercial skeptics here, try this experiment - listen to commercials without watching them, and watch them without listening to them. You’ll be shocked (or maybe not) at how filthy they are. They use the combination of visuals and words to mitigate the filth (I assume to get them past censors), but our poor old brains are getting the message loud and clear.
I can’t believe I’m the first one to bring this up, but Don LaFontaine, who did the voice-overs for basically every movie trailer, recently died. He said he invented the “in a world where” introduction to get people into the spirit of the movie quickly. I haven’t heard it lately, but it seems like it will outlive Don’s passing.
Any google hits instantly bring up Don, him being credited for using it, and the Seinfeld clip. But for the life of me I can’t find any actual trailers that use this or even a list of trailers that use this line.
I don’t doubt it’s use but why is it so hard to find examples?
He usually did it for movie trailers shown in the theater (not on TV), so you’d had to have to brought in a videocam, and risked getting arrested for piracy to get a sample.
