History of Film Trailers

By LukeClaxton

  • First ever film trailer

    The first ever film trailer was for the Pleasure Seekers musical. A slide technique was used to promote the film - which was later released on Broardway.
  • Period: to

    History of film trailers

  • First ever motion picture trailer

    The first ever studio released trailer was released in 1916. The film starred well know actor Charlie Chaplin.

  • The existence of Nation Screen Sevice

    The national screen service was founded in January 1919 and provided the service for films to release a trailer. They owned the most amount of marketshare until the 1950's. Examples of trailers created by the NSS are: 'I am a Fugitive from a Chain gang' and 'Casablanca' (1942)

  • End of the NSS

    The dominant trailer studio NSS began to decline in the early 1950's due to the directors changing the way in which trailers were cut and edited.

  • Breakdown of the trailer

    Around the late 1950's to the early 60's film trailers started to breakdown. A director called: Stanley Kubrick, changed the ways trailers were indeed made. He used a montage of important clips with out text. This began the era of the 'New Hollywood'

  • Public outrage towards trailers

    In january 1965 trailers had become a unique montage of important clips from the film. This caused public outrage as the directors had a tendency to spoil the films, as a result, causing public outrage.

  • The blockbuster trailers

    In 1975 the release of the first Jaws was on the scene. The use of big bold visuals were the main reason behind the films success. It made $7m dollars in the opening weekend. All because it the trailer contained big bold visuals. The use of these big bold visuals started the blockbuster trends.

  • Innovation within trailers

    In the 1980's trailers began to put together a mix of action, score and narration - to create the perfect trailer. Music and movies would be edited together to improve the look of the trailer. Both aspects were put together to not dominate eachother but to work correspondingly. Each of the scenes were edited and chosen to make the most impact and helped sell the movie. The new trailer was born and this was the start of these type of trailer being released.

  • Targeting specific audiences within trailers.

    Trailers were created to appeal to the mass market before the 90's because directors thought the wider the audience the more views they would get. In the 90's mass market trailers started to disappear and market segmentation began to take place. This is where film trailers started to appeal to specific audiences taking into account: gender, class, etc.

  • Modern film trailers

    The modern trailer took on board the same techniques that trailers used in the past. The use of big bold titles had been effective for a large number of years and directors still use this technique to this date. the integration of CGI and new technologies (such as digital film making) trailers have become more realistic and life-like. The root of the trailer, is still there and you can see the clear pattern from the past within modern trailers.

  • The future of film trailers (2017-Unknown)

    Trailers are the heart of the films promotion. They are usually the form of marketing that will decide whether someone wants to watch the film or not. Films like the Emoji movier (2017) were cancelled purely because of the trailers dislike ration on youtuber. The trailer of films will be essential for years to come and with new filming techniques and new technologies being introduced yearly. Film trailers are only going to get more dramatic and more interesting.

  • Conclusion

    Overall, we learnt a lot about trailers from the early stages of their development to the modern day trailer. There are concepts from all of these that we could use in the trailer we are creating for our main task. These include the bold titles and the use of CGI shown in modern trailers. Therefore, researching into trailers has given an understanding of what we are creating for our main task.

  • What we learned from this?

    From researching into film trailers we gained a wide understanding of how they came around and why they were introduced. Furthermore, we gained knowledge on how trailers developed from when they first introduced. From small montages too big blockbuster titles, we managed to understand how this changed happened and why it happened.