Why are movie previews called trailers? After all, the intention of a movie trailer is to preview an upcoming movie. The answer lies in early film history. When movies first came into prominence in the early 1900s, trailers played at the end of the movie, not at the beginning. The first trailer shown in a cinema wasn’t for a movie but a Broadway play. Nils Granlund came up with a profitable idea using the extra time between reel changes to sell advertisements; Every reel included a blank film strip called a trailer. Over the years, the idea of a trailer changed with technology and how we watch movies.
For trailers today, it is the best of times and the worst of times. Movie trailers are at their peak; for every movie made, there are countless trailers, teasers, and TV commercials. At the same time, there is a growing group of moviegoers who dislike movie trailers and will even go to see a movie without seeing a preview of it. The three main problems with trailers are they show too much plot, show the best parts of the film, and use chiched audio. Trailers also suffer from being stuck on the internet instead of only available before a movie. Movie trailers have been and will continue to be the backbone of movie advertising; so how can movie trailers be enjoyable in the age of the internet?
Don’t Give Too Much Away
The number one mistake trailers make today is that they show too much. They might show the best parts (e.g. the best jokes in a comedy movie), twists–even the entire plot. A good trailer will show as little information as possible without being too vague. We’ve all had an experience in a theatre where the trailer was too vague. After a confusing trailer, everyone sits in their seats in ambiguous discomfort while waiting for the next trailer to play. A trailer needs to sell you the movie, but in a way that makes you want to go see it. If a trailer gives too much of the plot away, there’s no reason for a person to see the movie.
Trailer creators don’t have much say in what is included because many of the high-level decisions are up to the studio, according to Ron Beck, owner and creative director of TinyHero. Beck creates trailers for notable clients including Marvel, Amazon, Netflix, Disney, Lucasfilms, and Lionsgate. “I like to tease, not tell,” Beck says. “In certain movies, though, you have to give it up, or the trailer won’t even be good. Revealing a twist is ultimately the studio’s decision, though.”
Nevertheless. a trailer should be like the inside flap of a novel. A synopsis of a book is a perfect example of finding the “goldilocks” of story previews. It gives enough intriguing information for a person to read the book from start to finish and does so even when the ending is just a flip away.
An excellent example of the “perfect tease” is the trailer for the original Alien (1979) created by Ridley Scott. The trailer opens on space terrain with an egg, then switches to quick frames of astronauts running away from and reacting to an unseen monster. The monster is not shown, which is key to building suspense. The music is an increased heartbeat and jumbled radio transmissions that cut to silence. Finally, the tagline: “in space no one can hear you scream.” Alien builds suspense while pitching the basic story premise: a group of astronauts find an alien egg and everything goes wrong after that. The trailer is so good that when Scott made Prometheus in 2012 the trailer was a rip-off of Alien.
A more recent example of not giving too much away is The Mandalorian (2019-present) Season 2 trailer. The original Disney+ digital series is one of the most anticipated series on the platform and in 2020. However, the trailer gave little away. Season 2 is less than fifteen days away and Disney+ released only one trailer. The trailer shows establishing shots of the protagonist Mando traveling across the galaxy to reunite The Child (Baby Yoda) with its people. The trailer also hints that the second season will explore how the Mandalore history intertwines with Jedi history.
A bad example of giving too much plot away is the first trailer for Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017) which gives 90% of the movie away. Marvel released the trailer four months before its premiere, but audiences could watch one trailer one time and know the entire plot. Another thing you should not do is give away a big twist. The trailer for How to Train Your Dragon 2 (2014) gave away that the main character’s mother was alive in the trailer. DreamWorks’ animators were reportedly unhappy with the inclusion of the reveal. However, the trailer makers justified the risk of revealing the mother alive because there was a second plot twist later in the film. The risk failed to pay off. While How to Train Your Dragon 2 was a critical and international box office success, it failed to meet domestic box office expectations. Experts predicted the film would open with a $65 million debut but only opened at $50 million. The disappointment from investors caused DreamWorks’ Animation stock to drop 12%.
Show Don’t Tell
A movie is a visual art medium. Therefore, trailers should use visuals that speak for themselves. Generic text spliced between clips distracts from the movie. If the trailer doesn’t pick the right words, it also distracts from the visuals. People go to movies because they enjoy watching stories. If someone wanted to read a story, they’d pick up a book. Sometimes the trailers don’t look at all like the final product. This leads many people to critique film trailers for being deliberately misleading. Some studios like Marvel have confirmed they shoot scenes and lines specifically for the trailer. However, most of the misleading information is unintentional. When interviewed by Independent, CEO David Stern of Create (an agency responsible for some of the biggest trailers) explained the differences: “I don’t think a lot of people realize this – we’re working with filmmakers from the beginning and they don’t even know what’s going to go in the final feature themselves because the cut is this living, breathing, changing thing. We are given the material and we have to just work with it. Sometimes we might write dialogue and have that recorded by the actual stars of the movie because we need to say something more succinctly than it is currently being expressed in the movie.”
Text in trailers can outright ruin the movie; such is the case with The Minority Report (2004). The movie addresses deep philosophical questions about free will versus determinism and the moral theory of utilitarianism. It also is a solid action movie. However, instead of focusing on the deeper themes of the movie, the trailer opted for cheesy text. The text is unnecessary because it reiterates what the visuals and characters are talking about. Also, the generic typeface and style text makes The Minority Report look like another cheap, low-grade action movie. For example, the trailer displays text that reads, “Detective John Anderton believed in the system until the system came after him.” The visuals show the same thing. It’s better to explain the plot through characters, not text.
An example of showing-not-telling is the trailer for Inception (2010). There is no possible way to explain the plot of the movie, even if the trailer was 10 minutes. Even today the plot is confusing. Instead, the trailer relies on mind-boggling visuals that were a VFX feat for its day and that still hold up 10 years later. The only acceptable text is the names of recognizable creative leads, the tagline, and the release date.
Pick the Right Audio
Attaching the wrong audio to a film is the third way to ruin trailers. This can be the wrong song or the wrong sound effects. What makes many trailers entertaining is the music that’s paired with each advertisement. This is different from the film itself. As trailer creator Bill Neil points out to The Ringer, “With a lot of narrative film editing, you tend to want the editorial to be invisible. With trailers, it’s much more style-driven. You can be much more showy—you want to be showy.” Ron Beck confirms the importance of music in an interview with Mental Floss saying, “Music is at least 50 percent of any trailer.” Music is so important to movie trailer success that trailer makers get access to unreleased tracks from music labels. This ensures that multiple studios use the same song and the trailer gets the perfect song.
The wrong song can ruin a trailer. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004) is an arresting film exploring the intricacy of relationships and the pain of loss. It will resonate with you after you finish the film. However, the trailer’s use of Mr. Blue Sky by Elo makes it look like some cheesy 1990s romantic comedy.
Songs and covers of songs are effective when paired with the right movie. As first pointed out by YouTube channel The Cosmonaut Variety Hour, the trailers for The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011) and Thor: Ragnorak (2017) both use Immigrant Song by Led Zepplin. However, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo’s trailer uses an edgy cover of the song whereas Thor: Ragnorak’s trailer uses the original version. You could put another edgy song in the trailer for The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and the trailer would still make sense. While the edgy tone of Immigrant Song is fitting for The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, the song’s lyrics are apt for Thor: Ragnorak. The lyrics are about Vikings and Norse mythology. The song has rock instrumentals signaling the departure from the dramatic Shakespearian tone of the previous two Thor movies into a lighthearted action-comedy. Furthermore, the title Immigrant Song embodies the pro-immigrant and anti-colonialist themes of the film.
The other two trailer audio features that ruin the trailer are voiceovers and sound effects. While the Inception trailer has good visuals, the intense brass fog horn and other industrial sounds like the “vroom” noise transformed movie trailers. Now every big-scale epic action movie uses the fog horn and “vroom” noises. The noise has become so popular that YouTube channels have compiled all instances of the “Inception noise” in trailers into one large edit to show the noise’s ubiquitousness.
How the Internet Changed Movie Trailers
Movie trailers aren’t going anywhere anytime soon. Trailers are gaining popularity because of the internet and fan culture. Thanks to popular franchises like the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Game of Thrones, and Star Wars there are whole YouTube channels dedicated to reacting to trailers. Trailer reactions are one of the top content categories on YouTube. Studios reacted to the hype around trailers by creating full-length trailers to tease the release of the actual trailer. In other words, there are now trailers for trailers. The internet not only ensured that trailers are here to stay, but also changed how people consume them. Before the internet, trailers could have spoilers because they were only shown in theatres. Today, trailers are stuck on the internet. This allows people to use editing software themselves to slow down the trailer, lighten the frames, zoom in on details, and dissect the trailer frame by frame.
Another way the internet has changed trailers is through access to international trailers. Trailer creator Michael Trice explained that the number of trailers, teasers, and TV spots are growing exponentially each year because American studios are paying more attention to the international market: “American studios are making sure they’re delivering material that works best in different countries. So we might work on a different trailer for Japan and a different trailer for the UK depending on the kind of movie and the selling position.”
In other words, cultural differences and preferences mean the movie trailer often has different content for each market. This would be fine before the internet, but now people can piece together all the footage. Before the advent of digital it was hard to reach the kind of audience you can reach now with the trailer, it’s a great marketing tool. With the ability to get it instantly across the globe and reach millions of viewers – I think that’s why you see that uptake in the amount of different trailers and also because [the] international [market] is becoming a much bigger and more important market.” With the help of the internet, trailers now reach global audiences and markets, each with their own preferences and demands. Trice explains, “Before the advent of digital it was hard to reach the kind of audience you can reach now with trailers. Now with the ability to get it instantly across the globe and reach millions of viewers,” says Trice. “I think that’s why you see that uptake in the amount of different trailers and also because [the] international [market] is becoming a much bigger and more important market. It used to be no-one in the US would see the international trailer and vice versa.”
Technology in general creates an oversaturation of movie content before a movie comes out. The rise of social media means studios need to create individualized content for each platform. High-quality mobile camera phones mean anyone can post an onset photo, prompting media outlets to rush and report on the implications of the set photo. As YouTuber Bryan Seeker says, “We are overblasted with marketing so it’s impossible to miss a movie. I know what movies are coming out three years from now.” This creates huge marketing problems because to maintain a three-year-long hype, editors create trailers even before a movie wraps production. This can result in the trailer being drastically different from the film. Rogue One is a perfect example. You can watch the first trailer frame by frame and piece together the original cut, but due to massive reshoots, Rogue One’s third act was so drastically changed, you wouldn’t think it was the same movie from the trailer. Luckily, the theatrical release of Rogue One was well-received by critics and fans alike.
How We Can Fix Trailers
One way to fix trailers is to trust your trailer makers. A studio’s marketing department is often in charge of the content of a trailer. However, the actual production and editing of the trailer are often outsourced to trailer houses. Sometimes, directors negotiate for control over trailers, especially with big name directors who have a lot of influence. Studios can hire multiple trailer houses for the same movie. For example, Universal Pictures contracted Buddha Jones and Mark Woollen & Associates to create a trailer for Us (2019). Multi-trailer house contracts are normal because of the competition in the niche market. “It’s competitive in the sense that you’re awarded the chance to cut the trailer but there are multiple agencies competing to finish the same trailer. It’s not like traditional advertising where you pitch and based on the pitch you’re awarded the job; we’re competitively cutting and creating right until the bitter end,” explains David Stern. “The studio then looks at multiple versions of the trailers from multiple companies each giving their own point of view, and then it has the advantage of picking what it likes from different trailers and testing different approaches in the marketplace as to what seems to work best for consumers.”
Trailer houses usually are in charge of other marketing content such as print advertisements, social campaigns, branded partnerships, and experimental communications. For example, Trailer Park, whose notable trailers include Wonder Woman (2017) and Stranger Things Season 1-4 (2017 to present), also created the movie posters for Star Wars: Rise of Skywalker (2019) and Rocketman (2019). Wildcard Creative who created trailers like Into the Spiderverse (2018) and 1917 (2019), created content for Handmaid’s Tale’s (2017 to present) social media campaigns.
Trailer houses are responsible for content creation. Most importantly, they’re responsible for creating a film’s first impression on potential consumers.. Therefore, studios should trust their trailer makers with the right content and guidance. Making a trailer is like making a two-minute movie; the same postproduction people who work on movies also work on trailers. Both projects have editors, pacing producers, writers, visual effects, animators, and sound engineers. A trailer has the unique challenge of encapsulating two-hour films into two minutes and 30 seconds. It’s like if you had to narrow down your graduate dissertation into a single tweet. Since films are a collaborative process, trailers should be too. This means the studio should give trailer houses content that represents the film accurately. Studios are protective of important footage, but trailer houses need the non-fluff footage to accurately sell a movie.
Still, studios are scared that trailer houses will leak content. Ron Beck describes the high level of security, explaining, “There are cameras everywhere. We have sensors that record everyone who goes in and comes out of a door. Rough cuts of movies typically get delivered on encrypted hard drives and are edited only on hardware that’s inaccessible to an open network.” Even with all the security, studios often don’t give the trailer houses the right content because they expect trailers early in production. “Sometimes we’ll start on a trailer before they’ve even started filming. With animation, it’s even more convoluted. For months, editors often won’t have anything more to cut from than storyboards, or moving sketches known as animatics, and rough audio,” says Jeff Gritton, editor for Trailer Park.
When trailer houses receive footage, the film is still in its early stages. . Therefore, the footage given to trailer houses often does not end up in the film. Trailers made from early-cut footage is another reason why you see stuff in the trailer that’s absent from the film. As previously mentioned, film creators themselves don’t know the final cut. Instead of trying to fix trailers by forcing the creators to envision the final cut early, we can fix the problem by going the opposite route. Allow trailers to be created later in production, though not at the very end. It is impossible to allow the trailer to be created after filming has finished because films are tweaked weeks–even days–before the premiere. Instead, studios and trailer houses should create trailers when they have the basic storyline established and some sense of cinematic style.
The last recommendation is to cut the time of trailers. You could make the main trailer teaser-length. A teaser is a short trailer of about 15 to 60 seconds that doesn’t give away any plot details but gives us a glimpse of the tone and characters of the movie. In contrast, a trailer is a video that gives viewers plot details and sometimes the allegory. The industry average is 2 minutes and 30 seconds, but in this peak age of trailers, they often run longer. A short trailer means a studio doesn’t have time to show all the money shots, give away the entire plot, or make many common trailer mistakes. Studios and trailer houses would need to work harder to select footage to get audiences interested.
Studios think that giving audiences more is the answer to keep us coming back to the theatre. However, overchoice is real and it’s happening in the entertainment industry. One of the biggest challenges the entertainment industry faces is to get audiences to consume their content in a world of endless entertainment options. The best stories need the best trailers. Making trailers is an art form. They are bite-sized pieces of entertainment that build excitement for an upcoming movie. Just make sure trailers remain bite-sized, and aren’t a whole meal. If not, we won’t have room to enjoy the upcoming main course.