BOB GARFIELD: Haven't seen all of this year's Oscar-nominated flicks? Don't worry. Before the envelope is opened and the winner announced, you'll see one last concise spin-down of each movie's highlights. For many of us, these trailers are all that we ever see of most films, but are the actual movies really well-represented by the trailers created to sell them? "Not necessarily" is the answer suggested by a recent contest held by the Association of Independent Creative Editors. The AICE invited assistant editors in the advertising business to create new trailers for old movies. The catch was that the new version had to place the movie in a different genre. Platoon, for instance, as a love story.

SOLDIER: You homosexual Taylor?

SOLDIER: I hate to tell you that's precisely what I saw.

SOLDIER: Be cool. They're scared, man. They're scared.

SOLDIER: Oh, they're scared, huh? What about me, man? [SOUNDS OF A FIGHT BREAKING OUT]

SOLDIER: Come on, man. Go.

SOLDIER: Get him.

SOLDIER: What happened today is just the beginning. [MUSIC FLARES]

BOB GARFIELD: That entry was submitted by Dan Aronin. It got second place. First place went to Kevin Halleran, an assistant editor at the New York editing house Wild Child. He too considered re-spinning Platoon, but in the end he decided to re-position...The Sound of Music.

KEVIN HALLERAN: Pretty much as soon as I popped it in and started watching it, just the idea of a horror film, doing a Village of the Damned sort of thing with the kids just kind of came to me, so I went with that. There is a scene where the governess, Julie Andrews, she asks Christopher Plummer, you know, she says --what's wrong with the children? He says in this very dry tone -- there's nothing wrong with the children. And that was sort of the kind of thing that as soon as I heard that, I just laughed out loud and said oh, my God, that's going to perfect. [LAUGHTER]

BOB GARFIELD: Well let's listen to what the original trailer of the Sound of Music sounded like.

KEVIN HALLERAN: [LAUGHS] Okay. [MUSIC] [BIRDSONG]

ANNOUNCER:The celebrated play that delighted the world--actually photographed amidst the wondrous beauties of Salzberg, Austria with Julie Andrews, Academy Award winner for best actress of the year in Walt Disney's Mary Poppins, now in the new and glorious role of Maria.

NUN: [SINGING] HOW DO YOU SOLVE A PROBLEM LIKE MARIA?

BOB GARFIELD: No, [LAUGHS] let's fast-forward four decades to your entry, Kevin Halleran, and how Sound of Music comes out in the trailer park version.

KEVIN HALLERAN: Okay.

CAPTAIN VON TRAPP: This is your new governess, and these are my children.

MOTHER SUPERIOR: His wife died several years ago, leaving him alone with the children, and I understand he's had a most difficult time managing to keep a governess there.

CAPTAIN VON TRAPP: You are the 12th in a long line of governesses.

MARIA: What's wrong with the children, sir? [WOMAN SCREAMING]

MARIA: Oh-- oh-- spiders!?

CAPTAIN VON TRAPP: [ECHOING] There's nothing wrong with the children.

CHILDREN: [S L O W L Y SINGING] RAIN DROPS ON ROSES AND WHISKERS ON KITTENS BRIGHT COPPER KETTLES [THUNDER] AND WARM WOOLEN MITTENS...

CAPTAIN VON TRAPP: What's that?

MARIA: The children. [GHOSTLY VOICES]

BOB GARFIELD: [LAUGHS] You can almost imagine their eyes glowing-- [LAUGHTER] the kids' eyes, like in Village of the Damned. I have a number of questions for you, Kevin--

KEVIN HALLERAN: Sure.

BOB GARFIELD: The first one is: How could you? How could you?

KEVIN HALLERAN: Well, it's easy, I-- [LAUGHS] I'm not big on nostalgia, so [LAUGHS].

BOB GARFIELD: I want to congratulate you for not using the phrase "in a world where." [LAUGHTER]

KEVIN HALLERAN: Well, you know [LAUGHS]--

BOB GARFIELD: Which seems to have become the stock term for all movie trailers.

KEVIN HALLERAN: Well, oddly enough, originally I was going to do a voiceover, and it was going to begin with "in a world where," and fortunately my voice just wasn't cutting it, and I decided to go with some titles instead, but-- it actually came very close to beginning with "In a world where" -- and if I could have thought of the second half of that line, it probably would have happened. [LAUGHTER]

BOB GARFIELD: Well what was the title that you did use on screen to open up your trailer?

KEVIN HALLERAN:Well it began with some sort of establishing shots of Austria, so it began with "A land of innocence, a woman of faith (for the nun) and then an unholy evil (for the children).

BOB GARFIELD: [LAUGHS] I've got to tell you, I don't think that's necessarily false advertising after all. I can't abide that picture. [LAUGHTER] What was your favorite entry apart from your own?

KEVIN HALLERAN:Actually my favorite by far was one for Forrest Gump which was done as sort of like a stalker-thriller kind of thing, and I thought it was hysterical and I thought it was so well-done. I was actually really bummed that one didn't win any of the awards.

BOB GARFIELD: Let's hear what that sounded like.

KEVIN HALLERAN: Sure. [SOMEBODY'S FACE SLAPPED]

BELOVED JENNY: Quit it. [BREAKING GLASS OR CROCKERY] Forrest! What are you doing? You can't keep doing this, Forrest.

FORREST GUMP: I can't help it. I love you.

BELOVED JENNY: You don't know what love is.

FORREST GUMP: I'd go and visit her every chance I got. [EERIE VOICES HUMMING]

MOTHER GUMP: [SCREAMING] What are you doing, Forrest?!

FORREST GUMP: But at nighttime, I'd always think of Jenny. [HIGH-PITCHED VIOLINS] I thought about her a lot.

BOB GARFIELD:Now, Kevin, the maker of this trailer, and you yourself, had to -- in fiddling with the, I guess you would call it reality of the original film, had to cheat, didn't you? You had to take scenes out of sequence--

KEVIN HALLERAN: Sure.

BOB GARFIELD: -- and I guess misrepresent what the narrative really was.

KEVIN HALLERAN: Right.

BOB GARFIELD: Is that how ordinary trailers are put together as well?

KEVIN HALLERAN: You know, it really is. Yeah, an editing generalist is sort of you're combining different elements to create a piece of fiction, and trailers, you know, yeah, moreso than ever, cause obviously you're trying to get a 90 minute movie across in 2 minutes, and, and also make it exciting and make people want to try to see it. So you've got to throw, you know, as much in there as you can, even if it doesn't really make sense in the context of the film, it makes sense in the context of the trailer itself, so it's really sort of its own little world, apart from the film, you know?

BOB GARFIELD:It would suggest that there is no conclusion about a film's quality or even its story line that we can draw from the trailers we see before the feature film we've paid to get into.

KEVIN HALLERAN: You're absolutely right. I mean you know, how many times does that happen? You see a trailer, and you're like - wow - that looks really good. You go see the movie and you're like - was that the same movie I saw the trailer for? But the bottom line is, you know, I think people are getting more aware. You know, they've seen enough bad movies, and I think they, they need a little bit more than just a good trailer nowadays. They'll be like - well, the trailer looks funny, but I've never heard of any of these people in it, and you know - the director's last film was awful. So-- I don't think just the trailer is enough to sell people any more.

BOB GARFIELD: Kevin, thank you very much, and congratulations again.

KEVIN HALLERAN: Thanks a lot. Thanks for having me.

BOB GARFIELD:Kevin Halleran is an assistant editor at the New York editing house Wild Child. He took first place in a recent contest to create a movie trailer that recasts a classic movie in a new genre. The contest was sponsored by the Association for Independent Creative Editors. [MUSIC]

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Coming up, the true story of a regular guy --okay, maybe a little irregular -- who went up against Tinseltown.

BOB GARFIELD: This is On the Media, from NPR.

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