skip to Main Content

Professional Trailer Editor Reacts: Murder Mystery 2 — Official Trailer

Comedy trailers are really fun to cut, but how can the edit make a trailer as funny as the movie? To answer that, let’s break down and analyze the trailer for ‘Murder Mystery 2’, starring Adam Sandler and Jennifer Aniston.

When cutting a comedy trailer, the key is energy – you’re always trying to inject energy and keep that pace up as you cut the best jokes in the movie that you can possibly string together to form a cohesive story. That’s all a comedy trailer is.

Recap & Analysis

There is a lot to talk about editorially with what’s going on here.

In the film 'Murder Mystery 2', a van crashes into a restaurant. A man and woman emerge from the van.
The opening to the trailer for ‘Murder Mystery 2’ immediately grabs your attention

To start, there’s a cold open, where the main characters blast in. It’s a cool opening, very attention grabbing, and it also shows us the main characters right at the start. Adam Sandler delivers a light-hearted line that’s sort of funny, and then the trailer starts to string a series of story beats and jokes together.

Murder Mystery 2 Stills
The date card is shown at about the halfway mark

Act two begins with the plot complications, and then drops the date card – this is very typical of a comedy trailer around the halfway point. Dropping a date card is also a great opportunity to either elevate your music, or transition to a different theme, which is what the trailer does.

Murder Mystery 2 copy cards

Towards the end of the trailer, there’s a little bit of copy in the cards, “This mystery…”, “Is deux or die”, with the word ‘do’ being spelled ‘deux’, the French word for ‘two’. It then builds to a final joke, and the main title.

The trailer for 'Murder Mystery 2' in Adobe Premiere Pro
The trailer uses lots of cuts to add energy

Look at the density of the cuts going on here in the back end. Again, it’s a by-product of an increase in intensity, faster cutting, faster music with a higher BPM as you’re moving into a climax.

Trailer Tip #1: Trailer Cards & Sound Editing

One of the most important points about this trailer is at the beginning, where Adam Sandler’s character is on the phone to the groom. Listen to a short clip of this section of the trailer again:

Can you hear that? The music stops, and a suck back is used. It’s a cymbal suck often, and it’ll suck out the music. You stop on one beat of the music, you deliver a reaction line in the clear, and then you begin the music again.

A suckback is used to cut the music in Murder Mystery 2
A suckback is used to suck out the music (1), a reaction line is delivered (2), and then the music is brought back in (3)

You can feel the rhythm of this part of the trailer: “…getting married!”, “What?”, Boom! the music begins. Since the music has stopped, you have the opportunity to restart it at a later point in the music.

With a stop that quick, you probably can’t start a whole new music cue,  as that might be a little bit abrupt feeling, but if it’s similar in tone, you could probably get away with it.

Trailer Tip #2: Speed Ramps

Here’s another thing that’s used often in comedy – speed ramps on the visuals. Check out the helicopter shot below:

It’s not just done because it looks neat and it’s fun to play with speed ramps, it’s done because it’s keeping the energy up in the comedy trailer.

Because there’s a very distinct movement on the screen that’s been created with the speed ramp, it allows you to have a motivated sound effect that goes underneath that speed ramp. In this case (and almost every case), it’s going to be a whoosh.

Wrap Up

If you want take two things away from this analysis, it should be:

1. Cymbal sucks into your music stop downs, on the final beat of a section of music (on a downbeat)

2. Speed ramps on movement within your visuals

Use those two things throughout a comedy trailer and you’re going to really put a lot of life into it, that should take you pretty far. Hopefully you’re working with something that’s pretty funny to begin with, so use all of your tricks.

For more tutorials about creative editing in general be sure to visit our training page. Or more specifically, trailer editing – sign up for our free video series and get more information about our full course.

 

 

Leave Your Thoughts & Comments Below:
Back To Top