tent-pole movies, one moving picture can be worth several thousand words when it comes to sounding out the sizzle of a fantastical tale.

Case in point: A three-minute animated clip of The Goon, a movie based on Eric Powell’s comic book series, has been making the rounds in Hollywood in search of studio financing since its debut at Comic-Con International in San Diego last month. Created by Venice, California-based Blur Studio, the meticulously rendered sequence (embedded above) presents profanity-spouting characters Frankie and Goon (voiced by Paul Giamatti and Clancy Brown), who’d be utterly out of place in family-friendly cartoons churned out by DreamWorks and Pixar.

Blur Studio creative director Tim Miller recognizes that even with David Fincher attached to produce, the R-rated adaptation of Powell’s Dark Horse Comics series might be seen as a tough sell.

Enter the ass-kicking trailer.

“We believe that having a short teaser or trailer is key to communicating our vision for the film,” Miller told Wired.com. “Just by watching a few minutes of animation, so many questions are answered about the project: character, dialogue, tone, art direction, animation style and proof of the ability to execute all of the above at feature-film quality. It streamlines the discussion enormously.”

The trailer-first, movie-later phenomenon works both ways. Would-be directors get a chance to show off their chops by creating DIY clips made with inexpensive video software. On the other side of the equation, busy studio types get a quick and easy-to-digest peek at what a project might look like on the silver screen, without committing to a big budget.

“I can’t listen to story pitches,” Hellboy director Guillermo Del Toro told a Comic-Con crowd this summer. “But if you’ve got a portfolio of drawings or a short film, fucking show it to me!”

Tron: Legacy’s Teaser Roots

TV commercial director Joseph Kosinski proved the point a few years ago when he crafted a two-minute Tron: Legacy proof-of-concept VFX piece with effects house Digital Domain. The clip, unveiled at 2008’s Comic-Con International, persuaded Disney to put Kosinski in charge of the sci-fi sequel slated for December release.

“With this kind of movie you want to know what the world you’re getting into is going to look like and feel like,” Tron: Legacy co-producer Justin Springer told Wired.com. “We pitched Disney, ‘Let us prove that we can get all these technologies working together to bring Joe’s vision to life.’ We built out this entirely new world, which takes a whole stew of cutting-edge technologies.”

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Authors: Hugh Hart

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