Trailer (promotion)
A trailer is a short advertisement, originally designed for a feature film, which highlights key scenes of upcoming features intended to be exhibited in the future at a movie theater or cinema. It is a product of creative and technical work.
Movie trailers have now become popular on DVDs and Blu-ray discs, as well as on the Internet, livestreaming and mobile devices. Of some 10 billion videos watched online annually, film trailers rank third, after news and user-created video.
The trailer format has been adopted as a promotional tool for television shows, video games, books, and theatrical events/concerts.
History
The first trailer shown in an American film theater was in November 1913, when Nils Granlund, the advertising manager for the Marcus Loew theater chain, produced a short promotional film for the musical The Pleasure Seekers, opening at the Winter Garden Theatre on Broadway. As reported in a wire service story carried by the Lincoln, Nebraska Daily Star, the practice which Loew adopted was described as "an entirely new and unique stunt", and that "moving pictures of the rehearsals and other incidents connected with the production will be sent out in advance of the show, to be presented to the Loew's picture houses and will take the place of much of the bill board advertising". Granlund was also first to introduce trailer material for an upcoming motion picture, using a slide technique to promote an upcoming film featuring Charlie Chaplin at Loew's Seventh Avenue Theatre in Harlem in 1914.Due to trailers initially being shown after, or "trailing", the feature film, the term "trailer" was used to describe the promotion; despite it coming before, or "previewing", the film it was promoting. This practice was found to be somewhat ineffective, often ignored by audiences who left immediately after the film. Later, exhibitors changed their practice so that trailers were only one part of the film program, which included cartoon shorts, newsreels, and serial adventure episodes. Today, more elaborate trailers and commercial advertisements have largely replaced other forms of pre-feature entertainment, and in major multiplex chains, about the first 20 minutes after the posted showtime is devoted to trailers.
Until the late 1950s, trailers were mostly created by National Screen Service and consisted of various key scenes from the film being advertised, often augmented with large, descriptive text describing the story, and an underscore generally pulled from studio music libraries. Most trailers had some form of narration, and those that did featured stentorian voices, a practice that would wane in the 2000s.
In the early 1960s, the face of motion picture trailers changed. Textless, montage trailers and quick-editing became popular, largely due to the arrival of the New Hollywood and techniques that were becoming increasingly popular in television. Among the trend setters were Stanley Kubrick with his montage trailers for Lolita, Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, and 2001: A Space Odyssey. Kubrick's main inspiration for the Dr. Strangelove trailer was the short film Very Nice, Very Nice by Canadian film visionary Arthur Lipsett. Pablo Ferro, who pioneered the techniques Kubrick required as necessary elements for the success of his campaign, created the Dr. Strangelove trailer, as well as the award-winning trailer for A Clockwork Orange.
File:Aldrich Attack movie trailer screenshot.jpg|thumb|right|Frame from the 1956 trailer for the war film Attack!
File:The Wolverine Trailer Exclusive.webm|thumb|2013 trailer for The Wolverine by 20th Century Fox
Many home videos contain trailers for other movies produced by the same company scheduled to be available shortly after the legal release of the video, so as not to spend money advertising the videos on TV. Most VHS tapes would play them at the beginning of the tape, but some VHS tapes contained previews at the end of the film or at both ends of the tape. VHS tapes that contained trailers at the end usually reminded the viewer to "Stay tuned after the feature for more previews." With DVDs and Blu-rays, and live streaming and mobile devices, trailers can operate as a bonus feature instead of having to watch through the trailers before the film.
In summer 1993, the major movie studios started to make trailers available online with the Walt Disney Company providing promotions for Guilty as Sin, Life With Mikey and Super Mario Bros. available to Macintosh users via CompuServe and Columbia Pictures posting a trailer for In the Line of Fire available for download to AOL subscribers.
Beginning in the mid-to-late 2010s, many trailers have begun to incorporate a short 5- to 10-second preview of the trailer, sometimes called a "micro-teaser", at the very beginning of the video for the trailer itself. This has been explained as being a way to grab the viewer's attention quickly, so that they do not choose to skip the full trailer on streaming sites.
Definition
Trailers consist of a series of selected shots from the film being advertised. Since the purpose of the trailer is to attract an audience to the film, these excerpts are usually drawn from the most exciting, funny, or otherwise noteworthy parts of the film but in abbreviated form and usually without producing spoilers. For this purpose the scenes are not necessarily in the order in which they appear in the film. A trailer has to achieve that in less than 2 minutes and 30 seconds, the maximum length allowed by the MPA. Each studio or distributor is allowed to exceed this time limit once a year, if they feel it is necessary for a particular film.In January 2014, the movie theater trade group Cinema United issued an industry guideline asking that film distributors supply trailers that run no longer than two minutes, which is 30 seconds shorter than the prior norm. The guideline is not mandatory, and also allows for limited exceptions of a select few movies having longer trailers. Film distributors reacted coolly to the announcement. There had been no visible disputes on trailer running time prior to the guideline, which surprised many.
Some trailers use "special shoot" footage, which is material that has been created specifically for advertising purposes and does not appear in the actual film. The most notable film to use this technique was Terminator 2: Judgment Day, whose trailer featured an elaborate special effect scene of a T-800 Terminator being assembled in a factory that was never intended to be in the film itself. Dimension Films also shot extra scenes for their 2006 horror remake, Black Christmas - these scenes were used in promotional footage for the film, but are similarly absent from the theatrical release. A trailer for the 2002 blockbuster Spider-Man had an entire action sequence especially constructed that involved escaping bank robbers in a helicopter getting caught in a giant web between the World Trade Center's two towers. However, after the September 11 attacks the studio pulled it from theaters.
File:Walt Disney Snow white 1937 trailer screenshot.jpg|thumb|Walt Disney in a 1937 color trailer for the animated musical fantasy film Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
One of the most famous "special shoot" trailers is that used for the 1960s thriller Psycho, which featured director Alfred Hitchcock giving viewers a guided tour of the Bates Motel, eventually arriving at the infamous shower. At this point, the soft-spoken Hitchcock suddenly throws the shower curtain back to reveal Vera Miles with a blood-curdling scream. As the trailer, in fact, was made after completion of the film when Janet Leigh was no longer available for filming, Hitchcock had Miles don a blonde wig for the fleeting sequence. Since the title, "Psycho", instantly covers most of the screen, the switch went unnoticed by audiences for years until freeze-frame analysis clearly revealed that it was Vera Miles and not Janet Leigh in the shower during the trailer.
In the United States there are dozens of companies, many of which are in Los Angeles and New York City, that specialize in the creation of film trailers. The trailer may be created at agencies while the film itself is being cut together at the studio. Since the edited film does not exist at this point, the trailer editors work from rushes or dailies. Thus, the trailer may contain footage that is not in the final movie, or the trailer editor and the film editor may use different takes of a particular shot. Another common technique is including music on the trailer which does not appear on the movie's soundtrack. This is nearly always a requirement, as trailers and teasers are created long before the composer has even been hired for the film score—sometimes as much as a year ahead of the movie's release date—while composers are usually the last creative people to work on the film.
Some trailers that incorporate material not in the film are particularly coveted by collectors, especially trailers for classic films. For example, in a trailer for Casablanca the character Rick Blaine says, "OK, you asked for it!" before shooting Major Strasser; this line of dialogue is not spoken in the final film.
Accusations of misdirection
Over the years, there have been many instances where trailers have been purported to give misleading representations of their films. They may give the impression that a celebrity who only has a minor part in the film is one of the main cast members, or advertising a film as being more action-packed than it is. These tricks are usually done to draw in a larger audience. Sometimes the trailers include footage not from the film itself. This could be an artistic choice, or because many times, trailer editors are given dailies, basically individual clips, instead of a cut of the whole film. Often, the film is still in production while the trailer is in the works. While the intention is not to be misleading, due to the nature of dailies being easily replaced, sometimes certain shots that are present in the trailer are nowhere to be seen in the final film.Furthermore, trailers could be misleading in a 'for the audience's own good' kind of way, in that a general audience would not usually see such a film due to preconceptions, and by bait and switching, they can allow the audience to have a great viewing experience that they would not ordinarily have. However, the opposite is true too, with the promise of great trailers being let down by mediocre films. An American woman sued the makers of Drive because their film "failed to live up to its promo's promise", although her lawsuit was dismissed. In August 2016, an American lawyer attempted to sue Suicide Squad for false advertising over lack of scenes including Joker.