This DVD trailer demonstrates two popular, if misguided techniques often used by beginning filmmakers who aspire to produce and/or direct their first feature film. One deceptively simple — if usually useless — approach to raising money for a film is to produce a trailer for said prospective film and try to shop it around as a “sample” of the finished work. That seems to be the thinking behind this project pitch from director David Austin. It rarely works…and is even less likely to work when it’s as amateurish and apathy-evoking as “Kung Fu Teenage Bigfoot.”
The other technique that beginners employ, again in use here, is to string together as many boffo, outlandish adjectives in the title as possible, a la “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.” This, of course, is amusing only to those who come up with a title like “Kung Fu Teenage Bigfoot.” Sure, it tells us a lot about Austin’s main character, I suppose, but this trailer does absolutely nothing to make the viewer care about what the film is about. Truth be told, I barely remember the trailer — lots of narrator-babble about a Sasquatch-like man in a cheesy monkey suit kicking the snot out of anyone who represents the encroaching civilization — and I just watched it a couple of days ago. That’s a bad sign.
This trailer did nothing to make me want to go see this as a finished film, let alone inspire me — or any viewer, I’m guessing — to finance the film, thus defeating the purpose of making the trailer in the first place.
However, I could be wrong. After all, I’ve had this trailer in my box o’review tapes so long, Austin may have made the feature film by now…but somehow, I doubt it.
