Ever wondered who is behind the coolest custom trailers you see at Revue Cinema?
We spoke to Nathan Boone in his home studio on his trailer process and how small cinemas are creating community in Toronto.
Photos by Eli Stange
As Torontonians gradually return to full-capacity outings this season, one local editor is helping independent theatres reintroduce the moviegoing experience to their audiences.
Since 2017, Nathan Boone has been editing and designing custom trailers of classic films for several local theatres. Largely forgoing plot exposition, these trailers instead perfectly capture the mood and style of their titles in miniature.
“My goal with every one of them is to recontextualize the movie using music … to look at the movie a little bit differently,” Boone said.
This approach offers an antidote to modern movie promos which often reveal more than potential audiences might want to know. “I go out of my way to make the trailers as clear as possible in terms of showing people what’s good about it, but as vague as possible [for plot], for as many surprises as they can have,” Boone said.
As one might expect, these stylized trailers work equally well for curious newbies and nostalgic fans, the kind of 50-50 split one might find at any retro screening.
“[It’s] half for people who have never seen the movie, and half for people who’ve seen the movie 100 times. The person who knows Alien or Jaws like the back of their hand — what if we can show it in a different context? Make them think ‘I’ve gotta see that again at the theatre,’” Boone said.
An experienced filmmaker and photographer himself, Boone’s trailer work began as a collaboration with Brendan Ross, founder of the neo-noir-themed Neon Dreams Cinema Club which screens as part of Revue Cinema’s programming.
Boone initially drew inspiration from distinctive trailers of decades past and classic title sequences from legendary designers such as Saul Bass (Psycho) and, in particular, Dan Perri (Star Wars).
After completing a popular edit in 2017 for a Neon Dreams-curated screening of Michael Mann’s Thief, Boone found himself deeply inspired by this new creative outlet and working regularly for The Royal, producing 88 trailers to date for them.
The Royal shut down operations due to the pandemic in March 2020 and focused on undergoing renovations. Since the summer of 2021, they hosted Bar Volo out of the lobby as a bottle shop and beer patio, and pivoted into a venue for festivals and private events, according to co-owner Dan Peel in a statement to Exclaim! Magazine.
When Revue Cinemas — Toronto’s oldest standing movie theatre, built in 1912 — reopened its doors to the public in September of 2021, Serena Whitney, director of programming and creator/lead programmer for Drunken Cinema, reached out to hire Boone as Revue’s in-house editor.
Understandably, ongoing pandemic restrictions ultimately slowed demand for trailer work, but Boone continued to engage with his community of local, avid moviegoers. Over the pandemic, Boone and Ross hosted online charity screenings every month dubbed Neon Streams.
“It was a great way to stay connected with the people we missed from the theatre,” Boone said, “[a way] to make new friends and entertain people over the pandemic with something that was safe and nostalgic.”
Each screening came with a request for viewers to give to a charity of its hosts’ choosing, including Black Lives Matter Toronto, Indian Residential School Survivors Society, The Stop, Duke Media Foundation, Daily Bread Food Bank and Impact Skateboard Club — who received 100 per cent of the night’s donations. Viewers were encouraged to engage with each other.
“We missed hosting [screenings] the same way you’d miss hosting a party. So we thought, what if we showed movies we wouldn’t normally screen, online with a chat open for people while they watched. It was really successful,” Boone said.
As streaming libraries risk making physical ones obsolete without offering the same volume of potential content, many movies are in danger of being ‘lost’, or made inaccessible to any potential audience. Theatres with curated screenings encourage interest in titles that may be historically or culturally significant, as well as the continued restoration of image and sound quality.
For Torontonians, many of these important titles are captured in Boone’s ‘supercut’ promo for “Toronto Plays Itself”, a screening series of movies set in our city organized by the Paradise Theatre in Bloorcourt Village in 2019. Its lineup included titles both popular (Scott Pilgrim vs. the World) and relatively obscure (Outrageous!).
In some cases, titles are obscure enough that their revival is directly tied to an exclusive screening. “Some of the movies shown at [local] theatres are not available in any other way, that does happen,” Boone said. “There have been times when I’ve had to cut trailers from other trailers — every one is different.”
Today Boone actively works primarily with Revue Cinema with over 60 trailers already custom-made for them, including their niche film series Neon Dreams. Boone’s new trailers can be seen regularly through their upcoming programming.
Movie fans uncertain of whether to return to cinemas so soon after capacity restrictions have been lifted can take some comfort in the level of care that independent venues are uniquely capable of.
“The independent cinemas are great because they’re smaller, it’s a tighter community so there’s more care for their patrons and the theatre itself — everybody’s wellbeing. We want to see you again,” Boone said.
Boone is optimistic that, when the time is right for everyone, the community as a whole will come together again: “[Normally] I’m around the theatre so much, I feel like I’m going to meet everybody … but it is a big community, thousands of people. I won’t speak too early, but we’re getting there, things are opening back up and I think there’s a good chance that [attendance] will be even better than before. It could, with a little work.”
