A really annoying thing that happens to me with school is that whenever I learn something new or cool I find myself unintentionally applying it to all aspects of my life. We learned about all the tools that poets have at their disposal which was all pretty sweet but that made me think about how people form interests. Or better yet how advertisers catch your interests. I recently saw a commercial for an upcoming TV series and I thought about how even if the premise was absolutely horrible; trailers often highlight the best parts about shows and movies to make them seem awesome. In its own way, advertising is an art.
The commercial I saw was for a show called Arrow. I didn't know much when I first saw the trailer other than that it was based off the DC comic book hero Green Arrow. I personally love Green Arrow as a comic book character but I honestly didn't think that he could hold his own television show. Add in the fact that CW (the network that will be airing Arrow) had just finished off their block buster series Smallville and suddenly the whole situation smelled of desperation. If you are not familiar with Smallville it was a 10 season show that was the origin story of Superman. Now you ask any red blooded American and they can instantly tell you who Superman is; but Green Arrow is a bit more obscure and I doubt many would know much about him. This is the main reason I think the show will not be successful but as for this blog I want to focus a little bit on the trailer itself.
The trailer starts right off the back with Oliver Queen. He was a ridiculously wealthy boy but a boating incident left him stranded on an island for five years. After his rescue Queen decides he wants to clean up the filth from his home city and dawns the identity of the Green Arrow. Note: Green Arrow is not batman. Green Arrow is not batman lite. He just happens to be a young billionaire masked crusader. Now that we have cleared that up we can focus on the trailer which attempts to promote the show in a couple ways. First the music through out it attempts to get you pumped and the trailer starts with an action sequence and an explosion in the first fifteen seconds. The color green is also subtly and sporadically used to get the audience to connect with the character of the Green Arrow. The trailer also showed no hesitance in using multiple action sequences. The deliberate usage of all these factors to promote a single show is pretty astonishing to me and just like any other piece of art I think there are many ways to craft it.
Diverging away from the trailer itself I have to give my personal opinion. I will probably watch Arrow but will be very disappointed in CW if they attempt to just make it into their next cash cow. The reason Smallville worked so well was because the characters had great development, the writers took their time and effort with every episode, and it humanized Superman to the point at which the audience could relate. If the network tries to sell some cheap, low quality super hero show I guarantee that it will be gone just as soon as it came.
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