It’s so rare that a trailer is actually a well-made piece of film that it’s always worth noting, even if it’s advertising a film of dubious merits. (Also worth noting the astonishingly bad ones, of course.) So far, the trailers for The Shallows, the upcoming thriller directed by Jaume Collet-Serra and starring Blake Lively and a shark, have been more or less run-of-the-mill. But this one, released Wednesday, is great. It’s all in the audio. Rather than use the film’s score, the music is a loop taken from the opening to “Relax My Beloved,” by Alex Clare. The song actually has a vocal line, which is wisely omitted here.
Instead, whoever made the trailer has layered samples from Coronet’s 1951 mental hygiene film Developing Self-Reliance, produced by Esquire publisher and hand-washing enthusiast David A. Smart. (Coronet was the Chicago-based studio that would eventually introduce the world to Mr. Bungle in 1959’s delightful Lunchroom Manners.) Developing Self-Reliance is minor even for a classroom film, as you can see:
But the snippets of narration are a perfect match for Blake Lively’s initial solitary surfing expedition. And the Alex Clare song has a loud musical break that can be cut in after the shark attack. By cleverly chopping up audio from multiple sources, the filmmakers have accomplished the impossible: a trailer for a Blake Lively film that momentarily erases the memory of Savages.
