History of Film Trailers

History of film trailers

Movie trailers have changed over the past 50 years, have developed their own styles and shortened over the decades. Film trailers can all be very different depending on the genre. Trailers begun with promoting products and theatre productions but then progressed onto promoting films.

 

1930s – 1940s

Universal studios had begun to make horror films, the earliest of which were Dracula and Frankenstein both in 1931. The Mummy was made in 1932 and was the first film to include Egyptology into the horror genre. In the 1930s - 1940s trailers had a different format from the format today, the trailers would showcase the actors and the special effects and would show little glimpses of the films instead of going through the narrative like they do more nowadays.

1950s - 1960s

The trailers in the 50s - 60s were really long and would ruin the film by telling the audience the whole story of the film which wasn't the best idea, but people who really like the storyline would then go and watch the film in cinema. They also flashed words on the screen such as terrifying to scare the audience. During the late 1950’s Great Britain began to shine when it came to producing horror films, Alfred Hitchcock created the first slasher film in 1960 called Psycho. In the 1960s they would also often show the ending of the film which would reveal the exciting effect thus ruin the film. Another highly influential horror film of this time was Night of The Living Dead in 1968, concerning zombies. The film was made on a low budget but made $30 million internationally. They tried to build actors names in the trailers more during this decade trying to make them big names. Finally the used narration to summarise the story for the audience making it easier to take in.

1970s - 1980s

During the 1970's film trailers were still very long and developed so they didn't show the whole storyline and ruin it to the audience. This shows us that they revealed less of the plot to the audience, however they still showed many key spoiler scenes. They also went against common conventions as many film trailers have a little bit of an order for example having establishing shots first, although in the 1970's they didn't do this so they could confuse the audience. In the early 1970s paranormal horror films began a rise in popularity. The Exorcist was released in 1973 and was followed by lots of films, evil children and reincarnation also became popular themes for horror films during this time. The Omen in 1976 was also incredibly popular. Through the 1980’s more violent and slasher horror movies were made including Friday the 13th in 1980 and A Nightmare On Elm Street in 1984. During the 1980's the film trailers were even tighter again which would tell very little of the story to the audience. The trailers would often include scenes which were cut from the actual film. Finally they would also not include spoilers thus not revealing anything so it would be a total mystery about the film. Vampires also came back into a popular and fashionable genre and teens were often main characters to attract a younger teen audience. 

1990s - 2010s

From the 1990's onwards film trailers tend to use rock music in the background and zoom editing styles are used. The whole plot of the film are mainly kept quiet and we only get to see some fast images put together. Horror took a down turn during this time due the endless amount of slasher movies that had been made in the 1980s and the fact that the ved on. To reconnect with this audience during the second half of the 1990s horror became more ironic and to some extent even parodic. Some people even say that the film trailers are better than the actual film itself.
In the 2000s Horror and thrillers became alot scarier than preceious decades and Psychological horror became popular with the likes of The Ring in 2002 and The Grudge in 2004 being released. However the most popular sub-genre of the 2000s has been zombie themed films. Film trailers tend to be quick paced with suspense filled scenes and music to attract the person watching, get their heart beating and make it very interesting.