A Brief History of Film Trailers

The concept of the film trailer first appeared in November of 1913. Nils Grankund, an American Broadway show producer, created a short promotional film for the musical The Pleasure Seekers. The National Screen Service was the most prominent trailer producer in the 1950s and the productions of mainly included key scenes from the film accompanied by large font overlaying the visuals as a form of narrative. A typical example of this classic trailer format is the original Cinderella trailer; shown below

It was in the 1960s when film trailers changed significantly. A new style emerged that featured quick cuts, no large text as narration and a new form of montaging the clips within the trailer. Today, companies such as The Cimarron Group lead the trailer industry by producing trailers for films such as The Lord of the Rings saga and The Fourth Kind. The industry itself has become somewhat of a cult hit and has it's own following, disconnected from the actual film fans!

Above is the teaser trailer for the soon to be released film Inception, the idea of a teaser trailer is to create enigmas about the film by using quick cuts and a very vague view into the characters and key events. There generally isn't any dialogue on a teaser, however there is always a prominent backing track to the trailer. The director, release date and main actors are shown in the teaser trailer. In therms of Genre theory the film Inception is shown to have a wide extension about it, where, from the trailer, the film could be labelled with different genres such as Thriller or Action and Adventure.

Research: Film Marketing - Inception

Each of the three posters below were used to market the film Inception; a recent film released in July of 2010. As I'm required to produce my own poster for my A2 project, this analysis will provide useful information.

There are clear similarities between the above three posters: all feature the protagonist of the story - namely Dicaprio - which makes it clear that he is the absolute main focus of the narrative. A blue photo filter has clearly been applied to each one, giving a cold and mysterious appearance, and the red "Inception" heading is used in different styles throughout. Each character is dressed smartly in suits, inferring professionalism and status, and the warped settings in each poster introduces an edge of surrealism regarding where the film is set. Finally there is a central beam of light that is present throughout the three film posters, which is evidence of intertextuality within Warner Brother film posters. Below is evidence of this:

This shows the similarity between the way that posters are made that belong to Warner Brothers' productions. The vertical beam of light is present in all of these photos and so is the central positioning of the characters. This is known as intertextuality and hints to the Auteur Theory; the director of a particular number of films that decides to market and advertise them in very similar ways. This allows popularity and recognition of an already liked production to spread over into another.