“Good Night and Good Luck” Trailer

One of this year’s class assignments involved taking a movie and making a trailer out of it. I decided to use one of my favorite films, “Good Night and Good Luck,” a story about Edward R. Murrow’s fight against Senator Joseph McCarthy’s unconstitutional investigations and prosecutions in his crusade against communism. (I also used a sound byte from the film in one of my DJ mixes here.)

I made a point to not watch the original trailer before editing this, so I had nothing to go off of or bias my editing decisions. After putting my trailer together, I watched the official one and thought it didn’t suit the subject matter of the film at all. The soundtrack and editing style is implying action, as if Murrow and McCarthy were going to duel it out old school style outside of CBS news or the capitol building, whichever is most convenient. But this film is nothing of the sort. It’s a somber drama that, while suspenseful, has no semblance of action at all. Though, it was fun to compare what clips I did and didn’t use, as well as the pacing. My version is much slower than the original’s, which I suppose is a subconscious attempt at matching the film’s style.

My version of the trailer:

Original trailer:

“Good Night and Good Luck” on IMDB