The History of Film Trailers
A film trailer in basic terms is the advertisement of a future film that sometime in the near future is going to be shown in cinemas or released on DVD. Movie trailers are also becoming more popular on DVD’s and Blue Ray Discs as well as on the internet in order to promote new films and the actors that will star in them. Out of ten billion videos watched on the internet annually, film trailers are ranked third in the popularity of videos consumed by audiences all over the world.
The first trailer was shown in 1916 when the advertising manager of a theatre company in the USA created a small promotional video for a musical ‘The Pleasure seekers’ which was opening at a theatre on Broadway. The same person ‘Nils Granlund’ was also the first to produce a small film trailer using a slide technique to promote the actor Charlie Chaplin. Up until around the 1950’s trailers were generally created by companies such as the National Screen Service and consisted of key scenes from the narrative being advertised in order to attract the intended audience for the film being promoted. Film trailers in this era where usually accompanied by large, bold text which gave a description of the story as well as a soundtrack of some description taken from studio music libraries. Another convention of film trailers around that time was that they tended to be narrated using a stentorian voice (primarily loud and deep in order to create drama for the trailer).
After a decade of creating trailers with these features, during the early 1960’s they began to change due to the heavy influence of ‘new Hollywood’. Instead of including conventions such as text, trailers became montage trailers using fast editing techniques which had proved increasingly popular within television. Two examples of the first trailers to use this new and popular technique were ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ and ‘Dr Strangelove’. In 1964, more independently produced trailers created by Andrew J. Kuehn started to be distributed using high contrast photography as well as provocative narration. This went on to prove extremely successful resulting in the partnership with Dan Davis and the creation of Kaleidoscope Films in 1968 resulting in both Kuehn and Davis becoming major players in the trailer industry for a further three decades. As Hollywood gained fame and popularity and produce bigger blockbuster films directed by directors such as Steven Spielberg, Oliver Stone and Barbra Streisand, Kaleidoscope became responsible for creating the best film trailers in order to attract theatre goers from everywhere.
Top film trailer companies have all been run by former Kaleidoscope creative’s like The Cimarron Group, Ant Farm, Aspect Ratio, Trailer Park and Motor Entertainment which is run by Greg McClatchy who previously headed up the film marketing division at 20th Century Fox. Other members of the Kaleidoscope Company also went on to work with companies such as Paramount Pictures, MGM and also at Fox Filmed Entertainment. In earlier decades of cinema, trailers were only one part of the entertainment which included cartoon shorts and serial adventure episodes. These earlier trailers were much shorter and often consisted of little more than title cards and stock footage, this contrast greatly to the trailers we see today which tend to be longer and more elaborate.
Today we can also see that a great deal of home movies also contain trailers advertising other films which have been produced by the same company and are scheduled to be released within a short period of the film that has just been released which allows the company to save money as they do not have to advertise on television. The VHS tapes would play them at the beginning of the tape and the few VHS tapes which contained previews at the end of the movie would remind the viewer to "Stay tuned after the feature for more previews." With DVDs and Blu-Rays, trailers can operate as a bonus feature instead of having to watch through the trailers before the movie.
The 1950s film trailers:
· had longer trailers
· told the whole story, or almost revealed the whole plot
· Flashed words on the screen, such as: terrifying! Close your eyes! Never before seen!
The 1960s movie trailers:
· still used bold flashing words
· tried to build on famous actors' names
· used narration to summarize the story
· often showed the ending of the movie, in order to reveal an exciting effect
The 1970s film trailers:
· were still too long, but tightened a bit
· revealed less of the story, but still showed many key or spoiler scenes
· enjoyed teasing us with mis-edited scenes, often out of order
The 1980s film trailers:
· more abruptly edited
· told very little about the movie
· often included scenes that were cut from the final edit of the film
· no spoilers, and instead total mystery about the endings
· began to revel in catchy tag-lines
Current film trailers (1990’s – current day):
· current rock or pop music, often from a new or popular artist
· shows less and less of the real story
· quicker editing and zoom effects
· Often these trailers are more exciting than the actual movies.
Overall the conclusion I have drawn from the information I have researched about film trailer industry is that as time has gone on and films have developed as well as the audiences of the films have become more demanding (for specific actors/genres etc) trailers have also had to keep up with times and perceive audience expectations on what would attract them to watching a film. Techniques such as taking small snippets of films have proven effective as well as the use of soundtracks by popular artists are heavy contributors towards sound tracks in the current time which differs to that of the first trailers which consisted of bold texts and voice over’s. Film trailers are key to advertising films and attracting audiences towards them and have been since they first came about in 1916 creating a sense of suspicion and attraction to themselves by playing on the thoughts of people everywhere.
