Movie Trailer History: Part 2

Movie trailers began to reach their full potential during the second half of the twentieth century.  By the late 1950s, the National Screen Service had begun to decline, and most studios were creating their own movie trailers. This brought about a revolution in the movie trailer industry, breaking the monotony of the trailers produced by the NSS and creating a plethora of creative new promotional styles.

               

           Trailers in the 1960s most often used some narration to get the point of the story across, but attempted to promote the actors starring in the films. Most movie trailers came away from the “name-dropping” tactic by the 1970s and began to focus on the story of the movie, trying to fascinate the audience, rather than impress them.  The trailer for the film Night of the Iguana pioneered the use of an original musical score, combined with a voice over done by someone with a deep and dramatic voice; none other than James Earl Jones was used for this trailer.

                 

           It was no until the 1980s that using television to advertise movies became popular. Studios began to recognize the potential in using shorter previews that gave away less of the story and left viewers curious. Television was the perfect place to do that, and also reached a massive market. Trailer production studios soon realized that “fast-cutting,” or editing many different scenes and pieces of a film together, was effective in covering the flaws of a film and making it appear that every minute would be action-packed or fascinating.

                 

           Today’s trailers have evolved only slightly from those of the end of the twentieth century. For the most part, they try to overload viewers’ senses, with dramatic voiceovers, loud music (most commonly rock), and fast-moving, exciting compilations of different parts of the film, leaving the ending, and sometimes the entire plot, a mystery. How long this method will last, no one can say. There is no doubt that movie trailers will continue to evolve, but one thing will remain the same: Hollywood will continue to convince viewers that there is another more exciting, even more captivating movie, coming to a theater near you.

 Images courtesy of imdb.com and whynotcoconut.com