I’m sure I’m not the only one who has ever wondered the reason that the trailers of a movie receive that name and to find out you have to go back to 1912date on which the first trailer of all was issued in theaters.
The advance belonged to ‘The Pleasure Seekers‘, a Broadway play; it consisted of various rehearsal scenes and was shown after the film in question. Practice that serial’The Adventures of Kathlyn‘ took advantage of the same year to include a brief trailer for the next at the end of each episode, thus leaving the public wanting more.
By 1916, the big Hollywood studios already began to create their own trailers, which as a rule consisted of scenes from the film with overprinted text to draw the viewer’s attention and to highlight the names of its main characters. Of course, it was not until 1917 when the term “trailer” was first used, being the prestigious New York Times the first medium to use the term to refer to some advances that were broadcast after the film shown; “trail” can be translated in Spanish as “to follow”.
the first changes
In 1919 he was born The National Screen Service, a company created by Herman Robbins who dedicated himself to creating trailers on his own from different images of the film in question and then selling them. Luckily for him, the studios saw in this the ideal solution to having to waste time making their own advances and reached an agreement with him that allowed the NSS monopolizing the world of trailers for several decades. Being the pioneer sometimes has its advantages…
Now we have to jump in the late 1930s, which is when trailers started showing before the movie, since the decline of the serials led viewers to leave the theaters quickly and you wouldn’t have to be a lynx to realize that passing them before was much more effective if you wanted to get the viewer’s attention. The truth is that it’s hard to understand why it took them so long to realize it, but hey, we’re all geniuses after the fact…
Studios take back control
Many directors gained creative control during the 1960s and were dissatisfied with the NSS’s approach to trailers, which led studios to regain control of the trailers by creating divisions specialized solely in the creation of these advances and that they even had to perform music specifically for them. The trailers were gaining their own entity and were beginning to be used independently to increase public interest in titles yet to be released.
However, the biggest change came thanks to ‘Jaws’ (‘Jaws’, 1975), as Paramount broke with the initial distribution model; that is to say, first it was released in the big cities and then it was expanding. Instead, it opted to release in 464 theaters at once. This meant that almost half of its budget was invested in the promotional campaign, broadcasting in the days prior to its premiere until 25 Slightly Different 30 Second Trailers On TV. His enormous (and deserved) success made everyone join the bandwagon and the tendency to saturate the viewer was born…
Trailers become mini-movies
It would not take long for the advances to acquire the structure of three acts that is so abundant today: the first establishes the basic premise, the second its plot development, and the third mixes narration with a succession of impressive images with music that underlines it. For this it was key Joseph Farrell, unanimously considered the inventor of the modern trailerbut also the survey system to find out the tastes of the public and apply that both to the trailer and, unfortunately, even to the film itself.
With so many changes studios have tried on several occasions to leave behind the word trailer and replace it with terms like preview, but the public has systematically rejected them, so it seems that we will continue using a term that was born to describe something very different from what we can see today. Now the question that remains is to know when it was considered a good idea to start gutting more than necessary in the trailers, an increasingly widespread trend.
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