HA6S Theatrical Trailer and Logo

HA6S Theatrical Trailer
I've been working on a theatrical trailer for HA6S. I was thinking that we could do at least one trailer for the entire project and release it to Youtube really early (kinda like when they release real theatrical trailers a year before the movie's release). This would be in addition to teaser trailers that we can do for individual episodes.

You can download what I have so far here:
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=JI2757XR
(This is a wmv file. If you want to see it, but don't like wmv's let me know and I'll try to convert it.)

Let me know what you think.
Right now it's basically a slide show of some of the art set to music. The final version should be a little more like an actual movie trailer (except that it won't be animated, just stills). The music is a really up-tempo jazz piece called A beautiful Mine that I think goes really well with Hey Arnold!
I only took the artwork from this forum from registered HA6S staff members. If you don't want your artwork to be in the trailer, please let me know asap.

HA6S Logo
I was also thinking that it would be cool to have a HA6S production logo, kind of like the Warner Brothers logo or the Paramount logo. We could put the logo(s) at the beginning of trailers and at the end of the comics somewhere. Does anyone have any good logo ideas?

^ Pretty nifty.

Also, it gives me an idea for individual ep. previews... Short animated comics (there's a word for it... anamatic?). Like panels from the comic being promoted, set to music and/or dubbed. Similar to what you've got there, but... different?

Here's an example of a fanmade one for the Venture Bros. (Slight mature content warning) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=egEDnYwDr_Q

Yeah, we could definitely do that!

Dubs are kind of iffy because some people love them, but a lot of people hate them. It's just not the same without the original voice actors, although we could definitely do narration.

I was thinking about adding narration for this trailer and at least see what it sounds like.

Wow trailer looks good!

And is that the song your gonna use for the trailer? Cuz if you want, i know a good song you can use while there's like narration on it. Its called Sing Sing Sing by Benny Goodman x]
hehehe you probably heard of it..

And by dubs do you mean like taking sound clips from Hey Arnold and putting it in the trailer?

I meant some of us recording dialogue from the comic. But yeah, that could be iffy unless someone here's good at doing voices. xD

18log wrote:And is that the song your gonna use for the trailer? Cuz if you want, i know a good song you can use while there's like narration on it. Its called Sing Sing Sing by Benny Goodman x]
hehehe you probably heard of it..

I think I've heard that song before. Isn't it kind of a 1930s or 40s swing?
I think I'll stick with this music for now, and turn down the volume of the music when I add narration.

We can have more than one trailer, though, if you want to make a different version. Or, you could even take my final version and add different music to it if you want. A lot of movies have more than one version of a trailer. Since we're doing a whole new season I think it's ok to have a lot of trailers.

Haha, I'm totally up for a theatrical trailer! 'Tis good advertising, after all.

I really like how you have that film rating thing at the very beginning. Niiiice touch. XD

I'm going to have to say no to voice actors (i.e. dubs) for various reasons. 1) I'm having a feeling that we'll be doing injustice to the original voice actors and 2) I don't really want to give the impression that we're actually making animated clips with fan voice actors. Neh. I'm okay with someone narrating, but they gotta have a "narrator's voice", if you know what I mean. Using existing voice clips from T.V. shows is fine with me.

Deepvoice07 did an EXCELLENT job combining voice clips and video clips to create this one trailer for his fanfic "Cafeteria Confessions", which you can see here: http://www.livevideo.com/video/5F3083945F5E46E08372D11662ADFB16/cafeteria-confessions-traile.aspx. It's short and sweet.

For our theatrical trailer, it's length should be cut down to 1 minute, at the max. I like the song, though! XD Very classy and jazzy.

In terms of selecting artwork for the trailer, be very selective. When showing a comic page, only show certain panels, not the entire comic page, for a little bit of mystery. I don't really want them to see the whole page, more like a handful of panels. And Candence's mentioned video has a nice feature to it, where they zoom in/out and move across a panel, so you're not seeing the whole thing at once. It helps make the video longer hahahahaha...

And yes! We do need a logo! lol it's funny because we don't have one yet... oh jeez. I'm guessing that we're going to have "HA6S" written in the HA! font, though... Sorry, no ideas yet but if it's a simple design, I can try to animate it. I have some simple Flash MX knowledge. Of course, if anyone else is a pro at animation, please, take a jab at it!

Tendra91 wrote:In terms of selecting artwork for the trailer, be very selective. When showing a comic page, only show certain panels, not the entire comic page, for a little bit of mystery.

That's a pretty good point. I'd like to try having some character head-shots and that way we could re-introduce some of the main characters in the trailer. I'll try putting together an example a little later today so you see what I mean.

Tendra91 wrote:And Candence's mentioned video has a nice feature to it, where they zoom in/out and move across a panel, so you're not seeing the whole thing at once. It helps make the video longer hahahahaha...

I can definitely zoom in on the clip before it goes into the video. I don't think I'll be able to pan across a panel using windows movie maker. Maybe if I had Vegas or some other pro software...but I don't, so I can't. Sorry (it's expensive).

Tendra91 wrote:For our theatrical trailer, it's length should be cut down to 1 minute, at the max. I like the song, though! XD Very classy and jazzy.

I was definitely going to shorten it up quite a bit...I just hadn't edited the audio track yet. That's why there was music playing with nothing visual going on at the end. I don't know that we have to edit it down to 1 min. max, though (it will probably end up being that long anyway, but let me see what I come up with...I read somewhere that the average theatrical trailer length is 2.5 minutes).

And that would be so cool if someone could flash animate a logo!

Okay, okay, whenever I listen to the song of the trailer, I can imagine this detective-like logo for the HA6S project, like a flashlight going all over the screen in attempt to find the word "HA6S" to the beat of the first 10 seconds of the song. We just have make the film rating quiet (no song) and then start the song once the film rating sign has passed.

So I can try to make a 10 second animation, but it might take a long time (2 weeks?) to make it. I need to relearn some Flash MX stuff.

I finished some character head-shots using screenshots from the show. I think it would be better to have original drawings for these, but this will have to do until we get those.

tendra91 wrote:We just have make the film rating quiet (no song) and then start the song once the film rating sign has passed.

That's an easy edit. No problem...and the flashlight sounds like a great idea. Could it be a football head shaped light (kinda like the bat signal)?

Here are some quick narration voice-overs I came up with.
There always seem to be two different types of trailer narrators:

1) An excessively perky voice (which probably works better for HA!)
2) A coarse voice usually used for thrillers and action movies. These trailers always seem to begin with "In a world where..."

So, here's the perky version...although I don't think I sound perky enough:
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=H9JJ81UE

And here's the serious raspy version:
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=NGZRLP5J


I think my biggest problem is that I don't have a very good microphone. The mic I was using leaves a bit of a hissing noise, which I tried to edit out...but that left me with a bunch of crappy sounding artifacts. It also likes to pick up the "ch" sound and the soft "G" sound more than other sounds.
If I ask the right people, I might be able to borrow a studio condenser mic...if you guys think my narrator's voice sounds ok???

Oh yeah, forgot to mention that I got my years mixed up on that second video lol. I also tried it in my regular speaking voice for a baseline, but there was a really loud truck outside and then my mic's battery died.

You're trailer is tight. I can only imagine how great it will look like with After Effects or a similar programme.

Maybe the logo should be a silhouette of Arnold's head? Or his head could be a gigantic blimp in the sky. Or both? Haha.

I wish I had something like After Effects or even a really basic version of Vegas. lol Anything's better than Windows Movie Maker, but it's all I have, along with Audacity for audio editing. Do you have After Effects?

You gave me an idea for the logo, though. How about a hot air balloon with the balloon part being Arnold's head, and in the basket you see the rest of the HA! kids??? lol, that actually might look too creepy.

I wish I had After Effects! =;(
I only have Windows Movie Maker and Video Impression 2. Both of which I cannot stand.
But maybe there's someone in here. We do have a good amount of people.


Haha, but that does sound cool though and it's not really creepy at all...

danettemarie wrote:Haha, but that does sound cool though and it's not really creepy at all...

I guess it was just the way I pictured it at first that was kind of creepy. I pictured Arnold with a huge smile and then ropes harpooned into his head to hold the basket up.
Now I'm picturing it in a way that doesn't seem so creepy: Arnold has a little smile kind of off-centered, and that half lidded look in his eyes...kind of a cross between his day-dreamy expression and his glances of approval.

Then maybe some of the kids in the basket are holding up a banner saying Hey Arnold! 6th Season or something. The rest of the kids are doing random things...like maybe Helga is pulling down on a rope attached to the propane tank to make the balloon go higher, and Gerald is on the ledge of the basket holding on to the rope with one hand and looking out into the distance with a spyglass with the other hand (so yeah, I guess he still has ropes in his head).

It's almost like a cool piece of pop-art...like a quirky album cover or something.

If I could draw, I'd sketch it out; but seeing something that I have drawn is a very traumatic experience.

That sounds like a sick idea. =]

Haha, I'm sure if you gave it a try. Or sketch using stickfigures or simple shapes.

lol, I better not. Even my stick figures are required to come with warnings telling people with heart trouble or pacemakers to look away.

This is the expression I imagined on Arnold's face, though: https://i.servimg.com/u/f86/13/86/34/72/wiki10.png

but I don't want to be too presumptuous and assume that this is what everyone else wants to do for the logo.

True... Generally, logos are supposed to be simple, but I really like the idea of the hot air balloon. It's really cool.

funnybones021 wrote:That's an easy edit. No problem...and the flashlight sounds like a great idea. Could it be a football head shaped light (kinda like the bat signal)?

Here are some quick narration voice-overs I came up with.
There always seem to be two different types of trailer narrators:

1) An excessively perky voice (which probably works better for HA!)
2) A coarse voice usually used for thrillers and action movies. These trailers always seem to begin with "In a world where..."

So, here's the perky version...although I don't think I sound perky enough:
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=H9JJ81UE

And here's the serious raspy version:
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=NGZRLP5J


I think my biggest problem is that I don't have a very good microphone. The mic I was using leaves a bit of a hissing noise, which I tried to edit out...but that left me with a bunch of crappy sounding artifacts. It also likes to pick up the "ch" sound and the soft "G" sound more than other sounds.
If I ask the right people, I might be able to borrow a studio condenser mic...if you guys think my narrator's voice sounds ok???

Oh yeah, forgot to mention that I got my years mixed up on that second video lol. I also tried it in my regular speaking voice for a baseline, but there was a really loud truck outside and then my mic's battery died.

lol I noticed the 2009 slip. XD I think your voice is more suitable for the "perky narrator". And I think it would be okay if we posted several variations of the same advertisement. It shouldn't be too big of a deal.

------------

A hot air balloon logo would be cool. I was kind of thinking that we might have several logos for the HA6S project. I think we should stick with an appropriate font design for the HA6S project (again, probably the HA! font) and have several different surrounding designs, like a flashlight for one or an air balloon for another.

tendra91 wrote:I think your voice is more suitable for the "perky narrator".

Yeah, that raspy version was just me kidding around. I was asked to record a few voice-overs for local commercials and PSA's when I used to work for a local radio station. I think I did 4 total...and 3 of them liked my regular speaking voice, and on the fourth one they asked me to use an extremely perky voice. I thought it sounded horrible, but everyone else liked it (it was an advertisement for a swimming pool lol).
Anyway, can anyone think of a good narration script for the trailer? The sample link that I recorded seems to have lots of holes, especially at the beginning.

tendra91 wrote:A hot air balloon logo would be cool. I was kind of thinking that we might have several logos for the HA6S project.

Excellent idea.

The HA! font would probably be the best to use. It's a good looking font, easy to read, bold, eye-catching, everything you could ask for in a font. My only problem with it is that you can't use lower-case letters...but it's still probably the best font to use.

Yeah, I'm thinking that we'd have to do different font sizes to sub the lower case letters

I was just thinking that a nice logo could be a silhouette of Arnold's head with HA6S. Very simple. I also think it could be fun to other characters, like Helga and Gerald. The silhouette also doesn't necessarily have to be black.
I don't know. Just an idea that I've been sitting on.

I realized something! For the trailer, if you want, you could download the free After Effects trial.

I didn't know that After Effects has a free trial. I'll have to check that out.

Yeah, just go to their website.

Man, I love free trials. =]

I created an Adobe account, but I didn't want to download the software yet since the trial period is only 30 days.

Maybe we could try to get an idea of exactly what we want to do with the trailer before I install anything, so that we don't risk running out of time. I'll try to find an After Effects manual or some kind of tutorial so I can have an idea of how to use it once we're ready to go.

I'm actually starting to have second thoughts about narration within the trailer, and even the music that we use for the trailer. Any other thoughts on this?

I was also thinking that if the trailer turns out well, maybe we could do a Spanish version.