History of trailers

The first ever movie trailer was shown in the US in November 1913, it was created by a man named Nils Granlund who was the advertising manager for the Marcus Loew theatre chain. The trailer he made was a short promotional film for the musical The Pleasure Seekers, which was opening at the winter garden theatre on Broadway. In the trailer featured short clips of the rehearsels for the show. Granlund was also first to introduce trailer material for motion pictures, he using a slide technique to promote a film featuring Charlie Chaplin in 1914. Up until the late 1950s, trailers consisted of key scenes from the film being advertised often with large descriptive text describing the story. Most trailers had some form of narration those hat did had a very dominant males voice played over the top of the trailer. a very good example of this is the 1950's trailer for Walt Disneys Cinderella.

In the 1960 motion picture trailers changed. They became textless and montage trailers and quick-editing became popular, this is because of the arrival of the new Hollywood era and techniques that were becoming increasingly popular in television. One of the better known for their trailers at the time was Stanley Kubrick who favoured the montage technique. A great example of his work is the trailer for Dr. Strangelove.

The modern day trailer consists of a soundtrack that can quickly build suspense and just as quickly slow the tempo down, fast cutting often action scenes that do not give away too much of the film. Often one film will have many different trailers including a teaser trailer which is just a shorter version of the main trailer.