The History of Film Trailers

The history of Film Trailers

Film trailers are created for films that are going to be released in cinema. They are created to publicise a film to a specific audience in order to make them come and watch. Some regard trailers as movie spoilers, as they include most of the bet scenes from the movie, but mostly they give the audience an overview of the films genre, setting and storyline. This films are showcased before film viewings at the cinema, but are also shown in ad breaks on TV and also before a DVD. They are usually the same genre as the film you are about to watch or have some relevance, as they are trying to target a specific audience. Film trailers have also become increasingly popular with sites like YouTube and IMBD.

Most film historians would grant 1913 as the year of the first music video. Nils Grandlund created a short promotional trailer in New York City of the Broadway play ‘Pleasure Seekers’, which showed the audience rehearsal footage from the play. This is seen as the first promotional video for a film. Early film trailers were short clips that consisted of narration, a soundtrack, text on screen and a cast run. An example of an early trailer is ‘Casablanca’.

Film trailers began to change with film in the 1960’s. More cultural ideas where brought onto the scene and required advertising to the audience in a different way. Andrew J. Kuehn was a well-known trailer producer who in 1964 influenced the change f how film trailers were made and executed. He created ‘Kaleidoscope films’ which worked for three decades to create some of the biggest movie trailers such as Spielberg films, and created the trailer for ‘Et’. Kuehn was presented with the Cannes lifetime achievement awards and is credited with over 1000 film trailers.

Trailers tend to follow the same format of film, they have an introduction, a problem and a solution. However, some argue that film trailers ruin films as they often show the best bits of a film. Some even avoid watching trailers before they see a film because they fear they will then be disappointed. Some trailers include clips that do not feature in the film, most famously seen in Hitchcocks ‘Psycho’ where the whole trailer is a short post-production and features a different actress to the one in the film. However, some trailers feature cuts from the original film.

The future of movie trailers is set to include more and more digital technology as the advances in media technology are so rapid, and have been for the last decade. The difference in quality from trailers now compared to a few years ago is astonishing, and that is set to continue in years to come. Trailers will now see more motion capture, like in ‘Planet of the Apes’, but the cost of trailers will then increase due to the cost of technology.