The Gripping, Mind-Blowing, Thrilling Evolution of the Movie Trailer
- 06.18.13
- 6:30 AM
In a world where fans follow the latest trailers with rabid devotion, the movie preview has become a genre unto itself—and a viral sensation. Here’s what makes these shorts so epic.
The Art of the Trailer
We’re obsessed with movie trailers. This year fans watched more than a billion on YouTube and searched for trailers three times more than in 2008. And these numbers continue to grow as studios focus film-advertising dollars online. As soon as the latest movie teaser goes live, the web freaks out. Entertainment sites like IGN and Vulture post shot-by-shot deconstructions—some outlets like Slate even have dedicated trailer critics. Fans pull scenes apart and piece them back together as YouTube parodies. And the trailer editors, along with their studio overlords, monitor comment boards for instant reactions.
In short, these previews have become a thriving industry, almost as popular as that of the movies they’re teasing. But it wasn’t always this way. To understand shifts in trailers, we watched scores of them and analyzed their defining elements: title cards, voice-overs, music, number of cuts. Condensing what we learned into usable intel was like cutting a trailer ourselves—extracting essential elements, picking the choicest bits, and ultimately getting us excited for what’s to come—an age in which ever-savvier fans demand more (and better) trailers. Because really, 2013 is just a preview of coming attractions.
A Short History of Coming Attractions
Trailers have changed dramatically over the years, from their one-note origins in old Hollywood to the high-stakes mini-movies they are today. It’s a history defined by the business and artistic transformations in the film industry itself. In the following pages, we explore four eras of the movie trailer, each illustrated with an emblematic example of the period.
1940s–1950s: SPECTACULAR, SPECTACULAR!
case study: The African Queen (1951)
“The most exciting adventure ever screened,” declares the trailer for The African Queen, a picture that teams two of Hollywood’s brightest stars for a trip down the river—and into the annals of film history.
1 hyperbolic title cards
Cards do everything in Hollywood’s early trailers: show titles, name stars, celebrate technology. But most of all, they sell the movie with outrageous superlatives—like “classic” and “sensation.” Hyperbole defines the era—nearly 80 percent of the trailers we watched use it in some way.
2 Production monopoly
By the 1940s, movie advertising is essentially controlled by one company: the National Screen Service. Its trailer formula—title cards, voice-over, a few key scenes, and a lengthy cast run-through—dominates the era.
3 StarS shine
The Hollywood star system is bright and bankable—Bogart and costar Katharine Hepburn can sell a movie just by showing up. Story is downplayed; famous faces fill almost two-thirds of the trailer’s run time.
4 disembodied voice
A male narrator declaims the film’s unique achievements—that The African Queen was “filmed in the treacherous wilds of Africa,” for instance.
5 Technology!
Widescreen views and fuller color—thanks to Cinerama, CineScope, Technicolor, Eastman Color—sell more tickets, but they come at a price: The added costs eat into profits, so studios must continuously trumpet new tech.
1960s–1970s: NEW VOICES
case study: Dr. Strangelove (1964)
With this Cold War satire, director Stanley Kubrick doesn’t just create an iconic, boundary-busting film; he helps redefine the trailer as a work of art.
1 Director as star
Trailers reflect the new director-auteurs’ idiosyncratic styles. Not only is this trailer distinctly Kubrickian—it was cut by his title-sequence designer, Pablo Ferro—it literally captures the director: Flashes of Kubrick’s mug are embedded subliminally. Other landmark directors of the time, like Alfred Hitchcock and Woody Allen, appear in their trailers as well.
2 Fast Cuts
Ferro jumps light-years ahead of his colleagues with 220 shots in just 97 seconds—about six times faster than other edits of the era. Nondigital linear editing is constraining: Trailers have to be assembled by taping together select bits of 35-mm film or copying from one videotape to another. Cutting this manic, xylophone-punctuated masterpiece was insanely labor-intensive.
3 close-ups
By 1963, more than 90 percent of US households have a TV. It’s an obvious place to advertise movies—and the new TV ads influence theatrical trailers. Widescreen vistas don’t look as good on smaller screens, so tighter, more condensed shots begin to appear.
4 Stars dim
The star system crumbles as actors demand independence from studios. Here, their names don’t appear until after the midway point—and only in easy-to-miss staccato bursts. Hepburn would not have been pleased.
5 no more monopoly
Competition weakens the National Screen Service’s grip. Studios and individuals are now responsible for making and distributing their own trailers. Ferro emerges as one of the trailer auteurs of the day.
1980s–1990s: BLOCKBUSTERS RULE
case study: Independence Day (1996)
With the rise of the blockbuster, trailers return to their paint-by-numbers roots. It works: Independence Day wins the summer of ’96 and grosses more than $300 million in the US.
1 Voice of don
God finds a new voice in Don LaFontaine, who narrates most of the big trailers of this period. (He will record more than 5,000 by the end of his 30-plus-year career.) Known for popularizing clichés like “In a world …” and “At a time … ,” LaFontaine’s stentorian, exaggerated narrations include long discourses on plot.
2 F/X Boom
Beginning with ’80s sci-fi—Tron, Dune, Star Trek II—CGI attacks. By the mid-’90s, studios want to entice audiences with the biggest and baddest effects. Director Roland Emmerich pitches Independence Day to Fox with a ready-made marketing campaign: The people want to see shots of iconic American structures being blown to bits.
3 bossy studios
Hollywood is churning out features with formulaic structures. The more of the story you give away, the better the trailer tests. Some of the bigger trailer companies install fiber lines between their offices and the studios’. Now execs can observe editing in real time—and steer editors toward their favorite formula: exposition, conflict, and a wham-bam cliff-hanger.
4 More fast cuts
Independence Day‘s trailer has 84 cuts in its two-and-a-half-minute running time. That’s fairly modest for the period, thanks to a switch from linear editing to digital systems (like Avid or Final Cut).
5 On the button
Blockbusters cost a fortune, so studios amp up focus-group testing to meet audience expectations. That leads to the crowd-pleasing “button,” the shot right after the final title card. It’s often a throwaway joke or gag that signals the general tone of the movie.
2000s–2010s: RETURN OF THE AUTEUR
case study: The Social Network (2010)
This moody preview—for David Fincher’s Oscar-nominated movie about Facebook—wins the top prize in 2011 at the Oscars of trailer-making, the Key Art Awards.
1 Editors abound
The accessibility of editing software expands the base of trailer editors. Boutique outlets with genre specialties emerge. One is Mark Woollen & Associates, which prefers director-driven Oscar contenders (like The Social Network) over standard summer fare.
Photos courtesy of Sony Pictures
2 what footage?
Studios want trailers way before a movie is completely shot. Woollen was given only 20 minutes of film, so he had to look elsewhere for additional material—specifically, his own office. The 50-second opening montage of Facebook screenshots was produced by Woollen’s team entirely in-house.
3 Working titles
Where title cards once called out stars and spectacle, now they telegraph a movie’s story: “You don’t get to 500 million friends,” we’re told, in bold text, “without making a few enemies.” As always, audiences want to know what to expect. This trend delivers themes and messages writ large—literally.
4 killer song
Woollen popularizes an artsy move: A single piece of music (in this case, not from the film) perfectly captures the tone of the movie. Woollen chose a Belgian girls’ choir cover of Radiohead’s “Creep.” The song, about being profoundly misunderstood, climaxes as the betrayed Eduardo Saverin bursts through the door.
5 Fans and trolls
“Can anyone tell me the point in this movie?” a YouTube commenter asks. Even Woollen admits to reading through message boards. Studios want to know how trailers are received so they can better address audience expectations in future campaigns.
