History Of Film Trailers

The term "trailer" originally comes from them being shown at the end of a film. However this method did not last very long as the audience tended to leave the theater as soon as the film had ended not getting to see the trailer, Although the name has stuck the way in which film trailers are viewed has changed they are now shown before the film begins.

In 1912 'Edison' developed what is considered the first scene trailer, also known at the time as haralds. This meant that at the end f his 'What Happend To Mary' episodes he would tag a preview of the next incident thus creating trailers.

Also in 1912 at Rye Beach in New York one of the concessions hung up a white sheet that showed the serial 'The Adventures Of Kathlyn' and at the end of the reel Kathlyn was thrown into the lion's den. after this "trailed" piece of film asking "Does she escape the Lion pit? see next week's thrilling chapter!"

Trailers were mostly created by 'National Screen Service' and consisted of key scenes from the film being advertised, large text describing the story and an underscore pulled from the studio music libraries. Those trailers which had narration featured stentorian (very loud and powerful) voices.

In the early 1960's, trailers changed and text less, montage, quick-editing trailers became more popular this was largely due to the arrival of the "New Hollywood" and the techniques which were becoming more popular in television.

As Hollywood began to produce bigger blockbuster films and invest more money into marketing them, directors such as Steven Spielberg, Oliver Stone and Barbra Streisand began to depend on Kaleidoscope films (which was started by Kuehm and his company in 1968) to create the best trailers to their ability so that theater-goers could see.

Film trailers have now become extremely popular on the Internet, some 10-billion videos are watched online annually, currently movie trailers rank #3. This is a great way to distribution and marketing. Other methods of advertising films are posters, magazines and billboards.





http://www.movietrailertrash.com/views/history.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Film_trailer

http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=history+of+film+trailers&hl=en&tbo=p&ei=p0sBS9ytMdG24QbX0KSCDA&sa=X&oi=timeline_other_dates&ct=timeline-other-dates&ved=0CB8QpQI&tbs=tl:1,tlul:1905,tluh:1919