trailers

In the movie The Holiday, one of the main characters' jobs is to design trailers for movies. She starts to see the world as if it is a movie trailer, and this leads to some playful digs at the basic structure of a movie trailer today. While the typical movie trailer does follow a formula, it really can be an effective means of getting people to watch a movie.

Since I have been watching quite a few movies recently, I frequently check the extras on the DVD for a trailer of the movie. This is because I am very interested in how specific movies were marketed, and how effective I think the marketing is. The trailer has to be one of the more important pieces to marketing a movie, so it would stand to reason that the success and failure of a movie should be partially due to the quality of the trailer.

I think that a trailer gets my attention the best when it follows one of the most basic literary rules: "Show, don't tell." I know that I am not applying the rule as it is supposed to be used, but it still works for me. When I watch a trailer, I do not want to hear someone give a laundry list of what is in the movie, I want to get a more of a taste of what is going to be in the movie.

Something that I find interesting is how bad older trailers are by this standard. I am not completely sure if it really is a taste thing, but I like newer trailers a lot more than old ones as a general rule. I have included a few in this post to make my point, but do not feel obligated to watch them, as that would take some time.

Going back over sixty-five years to Citizen Cane (1941), which is generally considered to be one of the best movies ever made, the trailer nearly puts me to sleep. It is all conversation and shows me little of the story.



Created about twenty years after Citizen Cane, the trailer for Psycho (1960) was no more exciting. It is amazing to me that anyone bothered to see that movie except for the fact that a lot of people liked other Hitchcock movies. The movie itself is one of my all-time favorites, but I am quickly bored by the trailer.



When I saw the trailer for Star Wars (1977) from thirty years back I noticed more of the typical action elements from modern movies, but the voiceover just simply sounds uninteresting to me. From what I can tell, this is relatively typical of the trailers made in the late seventies and early eighties.



At some point in the early to middle nineties the current trailer formula became common. A good example of this is for Twister (1996). The movie was okay, but not as good as any of the previously mentioned movies. The trailer, however, is much more interesting than the other trailers because not a lot of time is devoted to just talking.



Of course, it could be that I just like to hear Don LaFontaine's voice.