History of Movie Trailers

1910

In 1910 Cinema’s were very minimal, only usually including one screen.

People would pay 5 cents and sit in the theatre as long as they wanted. The films would play in a continuous loop and you watch these as many times as you desired.

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1913

Considered year zero of the movie trailer. Nils Granlund made the first promotional film for the Broadway play “pleasure seekers”. This showed actual rehearsal footage.

Col. William Selig adapted a print serial “The Adventures of Kathleen” into a film version. This was however the second print serial to be made. Each week there was a new episode and then the story would be continued in the Chicago Tribune. This was when the term Cliff- hanger was introduced.

At this time trailers would be shown at he end of a film and were usually created by theatres themselves.

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1916

By 1916 the movie studios themselves began to officially release trailers for upcoming films.

Despite this they were still pretty basic, including snippets of film with some text overlaid such as the actors names and name of the film. This was due to very little money being in the business.

Timetable

1919

The national screen service was started in 1919 by Herman Robbins.

They opened up an office in New York that took movie stills and added in titles, then sold these trailers directly to theatres. Many studios happily signed deals to submit their films to the NSS to be made into a trailer.

The NSS dominated the business from the 1920s to the 1960s creating a template style trailer with specific stylistic patterns like screen wipes and fly in titles.

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1927

The 1927 film “The Jazz Singer” was the first ever movie trailer to use sound, causing a massive breakthrough in the business which they used to entice their audiences.

The trailer also used direct address in it. These creations successfully created a new template

for the industry and other future trailers that would be made.

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1940

It wasn’t until the 1940s when the National Screen Service tightened its dominated on studio trailer production.

Several innovations associated with classic Hollywood films were also introduced including; the use of third person narrative and tile that flipped up onto the screen from below the frame.

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1960

In 1960 Alfred Hitchcock directed the film “Psycho” and was just as famous as the people starring in the film. He didn’t want to make a trailer showing a load of clips that might give the film away and not do it justice.

Therefore he created a six and a half minute trailer that offered a personal tour of the bates motel and the sinister looking house in the hill, complete with his gallows humour style hints to the gruesome events to come in the film.

This was a successful and unusual trailer due to Alfred Hitchcock’s popularity and celebrity status.

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1962

This was the time when Stanley Kubrick experimented with fragmented cutting styles in the trailer for the film “Lolita”.

This again created a new template for future trailers.

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1964

“Gun fighters of casa Grande” was the first ever trailers to feature the tones from Don LaFontaine, who later set the standard for the trailer voiceovers and invented the phrase “in a world…” This eventually kicked off evert third trailer made after 1983.

This was the year that Kubrick also came back strong with the trailer for “Dr Strangelove” which was said to be one of he most bold and brazen pieces of film advertising over made.

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1967

“Bonnie and Clyde” was the first ever trailer to feature an anti-hero as censorship became lenient.

Also in he film “ The Gradute” more emphasis was placed on the music.

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As trailers developed, so did theatres, there was less demand for advertisement in the form of movie posters and NSS began to lose their importance. Movie studios and production companies gained control and went on to evolve even more.

Timetable Late 60s

One of the most significant moments in the movie industry distribution, this was the release of Jaws in 1975. Millions of people watched the trailer worldwide, $700,000 was spent on just TV advertisement alone. Jaws was the first film to be released widely, this was a dangerous risk however they managed to make back the money from the advertisement and their profit margin increased to over 470 billion dollars. This strategy was named the blockbuster this was all down to the excessive distribution of the movie trailer.

Timetable 1975