The dialogue used in the trailer will minimal and potentially only two or three lines, one of which will be a sound bridge. The dialogue used as the sound bridge has to be incredibly strong as it will carry the entire trailer and will have to explain what the plot will roughly be whilst being suited to the character and brief enough to sound like a realistic extract from a phone conversation.
My partner is in charge of the sound elements of the trailer, however as I'm in charge of mise-en-scene I feel I need to oversee the dialogue my partner is pitching for the trailer to ensure the dialogue is suitable for the scene it will be used in, the scenes it will be used as a sound bridge between and the character who is saying it. As, for example, the character could not talk in modern day slang if he was dressed in 19th century clothing and could not be shouting loudly if the location the character was in was a library.
The key dialogue will happen in the 'Phone box scene'. This scene is where the lead male character is going to be on the phone talking to a friend about the mystery surrounding the girl who was recently announced missing. This dialogue will be used as a sound bridge over scenes where the male lead is researching the girl on his laptop, walking through the woods and finding the gravestone of the missing girl. This means, like I said at the beginning of this post, this piece of dialogue has to explain the plot of the film, be suited to the character and sound like a believable brief extract from a phone conversation.
My partner came up with the following dialogue ideas for the 'phone box scene':
I'm incredibly pleased my partner has come up with some ideas for the dialogue himself and I'm impressed with how thought-out the suggestions are, however, sadly, there are a few problems with some of them. This first suggestion: "I don't understand... the dead girl... she died 100 years ago... why is the report so recent?" has a real element of confusion to it which doesn't seem particularly suited to a male whose hobby is investigating crime reports and being a crime enthusiast - by my thinking, he will probably have come across similar cases before and so not be quite as confused as this line suggests. Also, the male character is only aware of the girl being missing, not dead, by this point in the film, so he would not say 'the dead girl' in his dialogue as to him she is only missing despite him finding what he thinks is her reported death from 100 years ago.
The second suggestion is much better, really getting across the main plot twist that the girl has 'been dead 100 years' and really puts across the male character's investigative side by saying 'I've got to find out'. However I believe the line needs to be clearer in explaining what is happening in the plot as it doesn't mention the missing girl, doesn't mention how he knows she died 100 years ago etc.
The third and fourth suggestions are similar to the first, the character seems overly confused and I don't believe a crime enthusiast who has been reading crime reports, understanding official crime language and is clever enough to follow and piece together crime mysteries would really say "what's that about?" or "I don't get it".
These lines form a good basis to work from, however I really think my partner and myself need to get into the mind of the male character more and really understand what he would and wouldn't say, taking his crime fascination and investigative backroom into account.
Working on my partner's script ideas, I think the following lines would be more suitable, both for the character and the strength/purpose of the sound bridge:
[Phone box exterior] "This crime report is different...[scene change to phone box interior, male lead character on the phone] the girl pronounced missing a few days ago, I think there's more to this case than the authorities are letting on. [scene change to male lead on laptop in bedroom] I did some searching online and the girl's name and description matches a murder report from over 100 years ago... [scene change to male lead in the woods, finding the gravestone, illuminating the date] I know I said I wasn't going to transfix myself with another investigation... But I just can't let this one go."
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