In a world of mass entertainment with new movies opening every Friday night - one advertising
medium would arise, growing into a virtual artform - this the history of the Movie Trailer.
Looking back on the evolution of the movie trailer we must consider the evolution of
how we watch movies. Unlike the multiplexes we're accustomed to today, the first movie
theaters in the 1910s had only one screen. You would pay the admission, say five cents,
and you could sit in the theater for as long as you wanted. Show times weren't precise
- a feature length movie along with a short films and a cartoon would play in a continuous
loop and you could watch it as many times as you wanted.
1913 would be what many historians consider year zero for the movie trailer. In New York
City, Nils Granlund, advertising manager of Marcus Loew theaters, made a short little
promotional film for the Broadway play "Pleasure Seekers" showcasing actual rehearsal footage.
The idea of showing ads between films was a hit - at least to the movie theater owners
The practice of creating and splicing in promotional pieces into the screening rotation
was quickly implemented by the Loew theater chain and copied all round.
Around the same time in Chicago, Col. William Selig, one of film's earliest pioneers,
would engineer another way to get audiences to the movies. Selig noticed the popularity
of print serials in newspapers so he approached the Chicago Tribune, a newspaper embattled
in a circulation war for who could be the most sensationalist, to adapt a film version
of a print serial. The result was a 13 episode serial entitled "The Adventures of Kathlyn".
This wasn't the first film serial, it was actually the second, but it introduced a new
device to film marketing. You see, each week a new installment would debut along with an
article in the Chicago Tribune that continuing the story. What made "The Adventures of
Kathlyn" different was at the end of each installment something would happen to put
the characters in some sort of peril - a cliffhanger often with a title card inviting patrons to
come back the following week to see what happens.
So Thus the idea of the trailer was born - and so too the term - as these promotions for
upcoming attractions would play at the end of the film - hence trailer.
Most of these promotions were produced by the theaters themselves but by 1916, the movie
studios themselves began officially releasing for upcoming movies. These first film trailers
were pretty basic - they generally consist of snippets of film with some text overlay
such as the cast of stars. There was very little money in the trailer making and renting
business - at least to the studios - It took a group of clever business men to figure out
a way of making money on the nickel and dime work of trailer distribution but in doing
so, they created a company that would hold a virtual monopoly on movie trailers and promotional
items for nearly four decades.
When we think of the power of Hollywood - we often think of large sound stages and studio
sets. But anyone, anywhere in the world with the right amount of capital can build movie
studio. Hollywood's power lies in it's ability to get the movies it makes to a paying
audience - distribution. In an era before internet or even reliable phone service coast
to coast, distributing movies and promoting with trailers and posters was a logistical
nightmare - one that the major studios were happy to outsource to a company called the
National Screen Service.
Started in 1919 by Herman Robbins, the NSS opened an office in New York City that took
movie stills, spliced in titles and turned around and sold these trailers to movie theaters
directly. They didn't even ask permission from the studios. Well that didn't seem
to bother the filmmakers. Quite the opposite, many studios happily signed deals to submit
their films to the NSS to be made into trailers. By the 1940s, the NSS had branched out into
poster and paper advertising and contracts with all the major Hollywood studios.
The way NSS made money was by signing Movie theaters owners to a contract where the NSS
would rent out their poster and trailer needs on a week by week basis and NSS would kick
back a small royalty to the studios. Now occasionally a studio, like Warner Bros. or Columbia would
experiment with their own trailer cutting department but for the most part the NSS dominated
the trailer making business from the 1920s through to the 60s - creating a template style
trailer with some very specific stylistic patterns like screen wipes and fly-in titles
as seen in this classic trailer from Casablanca:
Casablanca: City of Hope and Despair. Located in French Morocco, North Africa
The meeting place of adventurers, fugitives, criminals...
refuges lured into this danger swept Oasis
by the hope of escape to the Americas.
But they're all trapped for there is no escape.
Against this fascinating background is woven this story of an imperishable love.
And the enthralling saga of six desperate people each in Casablanca
to keep an appointment with destiny.
I was willing to shoot Captain Renault and I'm willing to shoot you.
Alright major you asked for it.
Coming into the 1960s, a new generation of star directors began to redefine the trailer - among them
was the legendary Alfred Hitchcock. Instead of showing scenes from the movie, Hitchcock,
who had become quite well known to audiences from his "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" TV
series, cashed in on his celebrity... taking audiences on a tour using his gallows humor
style in this trailer for 1960's Pscyho:
Good Afternoon
Here we have a quiet little motel.
tucked away off the main highway.
And as you see, perfectly harmless looking.
When in fact it has now become known as...
The scene of the crime.
This motel also has as an adjunct
an old house...
which is, if I may say so....
A little more sinister looking, less innocent than the motel itself.
And in this house, the most dire and horrible events took place.
I think we can go inside because the place is up for sale...
although I don't know who's going to buy it now.
In that window on the second floor the single one in front...
That's where the woman was first seen.
Let's go inside.
The reemergence of Cubism in film and commercial art in the 1960s was not lost on another emerging
filmmaker - Stanley Kubrick. Having experimented with fragmented cutting styles in the trailer
to 1962's Lolita, Kubrick comes back strong in 1964's "Dr. Strangelove" with a trailer
that I consider one of the most bold and brazen pieces of movie advertising ever made:
Whoopeee.... hahaha
Attack
Russia
oh
base
ten females to each male..
Coca cola machine
fluids
The Doomsday Machine
Blast off!
Dr. Strangleove or
How I learned to stop worry and love the Bomb
A moving picture
LOVE THAT BOMB!!!
As movie censorship and the production code began to fall by the wayside, trailers began
to feature anti heros such this one from Bonnie and Clyde. More emphasis was laid on the music
- as in the Simon Garfunkel score of The Graduate
Oh Jesus God No
The tide was turning away from the cookie cutter style trailer of the NSS. And as the
film theaters turned more toward multiplexes with multiple screens in the 1970s and going
into the 80s with less space for movie poster advertising, the monopolistic grasp of the
NSS began to crumble and the movie studios and production companies reasserted control
over promotion. But as we will see, the Hollywood promotion machine was just getting started.
By the 1970s the movie business landscape had completely changed from the studio controlled
"Golden Era of Hollywood" - one of the key turning points in distribution strategy
came in 1975 with the release of Jaws.
There is a creature alive today...
who has survived millions of years of evolution
without change... without passion... and without logic
it lives to kill.
A mindless eating machine
It will attack and devour
anything
It is as God created the devil
And gave him....
JAWS!
Roy Scheider
Robert Shaw
Richard Dreyfuss
You're going to need a bigger boat.
From the best selling novel: Jaws. Rated PG may be too intense for younger children.
If you were watching TV in the summer of 1975, you most likely saw that trailer. Jaws was
the first successful film to see a wide release - prior, movies would premiere in big cities
and then roll out so smaller markets over the coming weeks and months. Jaws opened big
- in 464 theaters on June 25th, 1975, expanding to 675 a month later - the largest simultaneous
distribution of a film in motion picture history at the time. The idea of a wide release was
to get the most out bang out of the advertising buck - Universal bet an unprecedented $700,000
into Television advertising alone, saturating the airwaves with John William's creepy
score. The gamble worked - Jaws saw a huge opening box offices numbers - $7 million in
the first weekend alone with an ultimate run of $470 million world wide.
The blockbuster strategy was born and at the heart was the movie trailer. Big bold visuals
for big movies. And the voice to many of those blockbusters was the great Don LaFontaine
The "Voice of God" who has talents to over 5,000 movie trailers and hundreds of
thousands of television commercials. So identified with the opening phrase "In a World" - that
Geico saw fit to spoof it in this ad from 2006
When the storm hit, both our cars were totally underwater
In a world where both of our cars were totally underwater.
We thought it would take forever to get some help.
But a new wind was about to blow.
As the so called MTV cutting style with fast paced edits shaped a generation of audiences,
the trailer adapted and became what it is today. With the internet and immediate global
distribution, a movie trailer is almost a genre onto itself with boutique editing houses
focusing solely crafting that perfect piece of movie advertising.
In a world with increasing competition from television and video games all competing for
a limited resource - your time and money - the role of the trailer, as a moving breathing
talking representative of a film - easily consumed as a preview before a main attraction
or as easily sharable content on social media has never been as important. Go out there
and make something worthy of an awesome trailer. Make something great. I'm John Hess, and
I'll see you at FilmmakerIQ.com