It is believed that the first film trailer to be shown was in November 1913 in America, but other sources show that the first ever trailer was released in 1912 at Rye Beach, New York. This ‘trailer’ showed the protagonist being thrown into the lion’s den and the words “Does she escape the lion's pit? See next week's thrilling chapter!" were shown after. The film being promoted in 1913 was The Pleasure Seekers and was created as a ‘short promotional film’ by Nils Granlund, who was working for a theatre chain at the time. The first trailer in 1912 appears to advertise a serial, which would mean that it is not in fact a film trailer, but just a trailer and the first ever film trailer was indeed shown in America in 1913.
Theatre companies and film production companies saw the value of trailers and in 1916 Paramount became the first studio to release them. In 1919, Paramount set up a company devoted to producing trailers for their upcoming films. Other film studios didn’t follow suit immediately, and this resulted in other companies not controlled by film production companies to set up their own businesses. They could not obtain early footage of the film but made attractive slides to advertise the film instead.
As studios began to buy theatre chains and released more blockbuster films, three men from New York created the National Screen Service which would create trailers for the major studios. This worked for both sides; The studios didn’t have the time or staff to create trailers. The studios then granted early access to their films so the trailers could contain real film footage.
For decades the National Screen Service was the major company in distributing film trailers. A typical 1950’s trailer would have the best key scenes, a booming loud voice over the top and large non-diegetic text to accompany it. Unlike with trailers around in the 1920’s, these trailers would have some form of narrative.
In 1962, Andrew Kuehn a former member of NSS left and began working for MGM. He say’s that in the 1950’s and 1960’s people were just ‘bragging’ about the big stars and using ‘phoney--baloney adjectives’ to get the audiences attention. Kuehn also began to experiment and this quote perfectly describes his distaste and thoughts on how trailers needed to be changed: "One of the things I definitely stopped doing was using the first names of stars. Under National Screen Service in Hollywood, they would say, 'Well, Rock and Doris are back together again, and guess who's along for the ride? Tony!' My theory was, if you were dealing with a really big star, you didn't have to bill them until the very end. What I did was try to get the audience used to the star as the character, started telling the story of the film and didn't mention the star's name until the cast runout at the very end."
Kuehn was not the only one who wanted change. Other studios detached from the NSS to look for independent trailer makers in order to obtain something more sophisticated and less generic.
In the sixties, the New Hollywood wave brought in trailers that contained montage or quick-editing. Stanley Kubrick was apparently a trend setter when he released trailers for 2001: A Space Odyessy and Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.
The trailer displaying quick editing, montage and non-diegetic large text. (The trailer can be seen here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1gXY3kuDvSU)
Alfred Hitchcock started a different approach; creating material that wasn’t in the film specifically for the trailer. An example of this could be Rope were the couple are seen together before the film is set, enjoying time together. This sometimes still happens today, a more recent example being Terminator: Judgement Day.
The National Screen Service fizzled out with ‘their retired not being replaced’ and being ‘reduced to just a distributor’. In 1969 Kuehn set up his own business called Kaleidoscope films with a man named Don Davis. Unlike with the production of trailers in the past, Kaleidoscope would hire everyone needed to create the trailer, rather than the studio hiring them.
In the 70’s studios backed the idea of television trailers after the success with Billy Jack and Jaws. Jaws took in almost 70 million dollars and from that point on, studios were more willing to part with a lot of money for television advertising when they realised the impact that television trailers had on the blockbuster films.
Music then became an important factor in film trailers. With the first ever music video (Video Killed the Radio Star) being released and the creation of MTV, music and television began to have a bigger impact on audiences.
The traditional, old trailer was abandoned to make way for trailers that left an impact. Those that left an impact would make a viewer wish to see the film much more. Amusingly, everyone’s idea of a trailer with high impact was to have blaring loud music. The music became so loud that the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) put a limit on the volume.
As better software developed it no longer mattered much about the style of trailer just the trailer that would reach the most people and bring the most people in. The internet has opened new doors and now there are multiple trailers for one film like television trailers and teaser trailers. However some things haven’t changed: Trailers still rely on the big star or big stars to attract audiences and music still plays a huge impact in setting the mood or adding to the excitement in an action film trailer.
No comments:
Post a Comment