The Hollywood Effect

The 2013 Figure Skating World Championships has a trailer and it’s epic.

The three minutes 35 seconds long video is basically an invitation to London, Ontario, Canada much more than it is an invitation to the World Championships. By showing breathtaking pictures of some of the city’s main tourist attractions, the Canadian Federation is promoting ‘fake London’, and by the looks of it, they’ve got a lot to be proud of.

The pictures are alternated with worldwide-known figure skaters giving us facts, figures and welcome messages. Although some of those messages are a bit silly, like Scott Moir telling us with a tone of voice worthy of a Canadian JR Ewing that there’s “a whole lot of land” in London, Ontario, the bursting excitement you can see on their faces (especially Kaytlin Weaver’s) makes up for the over-cooked lines.

Then with a smooth transition we get a sneak peek of what to expect from the competition itself: we see rising Italian stars Anna Cappellini and Luca Lanotte, European champions Tatiana Volosozhar and Maxim Trankov and Javier Fernandez, who just made history in the Europeans, amongst others. What does this say? That we’re in for quite a show.

Patrick Chan gives us all a delightful surprise at the end when he welcomes us to London in Chinese.

So, overall this trailer is simple and efficient, and might make even Londoners (from both sides of the ocean) wake up with a burning desire to go on a tour of the city. The only thing I would have done differently: let skaters come up with their own welcome messages.

If you haven’t seen it yet, enjoy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=qIZNGzkCnkM#!