It’s time for me to make a bit of an admission – I love watching movie trailers – even if the movie itself isn’t something I’d like to see, or turns out to be a total dud, the trailers can be pieces of art in their own right.

A good trailer teases us just enough by giving us pertinent pieces of information, maybe highlighting the odd plot point here and there. Teamed with the right music and some amazing shots, they can be epic, emotional, thrilling or tense. 

Other times, a trailer might give away the biggest plot twist in the movie. Looking at you, Terminator Genes… Genys… GenysisGenisys, that’s the one!

The point is, a trailer is supposed to make you excited for a movie. But what exactly makes a good trailer, and what are some of the pitfalls creators should avoid when making one? Let’s kickback and take a look at what makes a good movie trailer.

A Brief History of Trailers

The first trailer ever shown was in November 1913 – Nils Granlund produced a promotional film for the Broadway musical The Pleasure Seekers, launching an entire industry. In the early days, these promos would play after the main feature – thus, trailing it. This is where the trailer gets its name.

Over time, film trailers became a staple for new releases – until the 1950s, trailers were produced more or less exclusively by the national Screen Service. You’ll know the type – key scenes would play out with a big, mellifluous voice narrating throughout, and peppered with large bodies of text, usually with the name of the film within the first ten seconds, then repeated several times. Stirring music and shots of the actors looking moody and attractive were common. Check out my all-time favourite trailer, for the 1958 classic, The Blob!, ‘starring Steve McQueen, and a cast of exciting young people!’

At the start of the 1960s, Directors started taking control of how their movies were marketed – led by Stanley Kubrik, it became common for directors to put their trailers together, in house – this lead to an explosion of creative trailers that bore their director’s trademark styles and are more akin to those we see today.

Then, in the 1970s, we saw a bizarre hybrid of the two styles – focusing more on the visuals of a film, in the ’60’s style, these trailers were teamed with a deep, mellifluous voiceover that built the mystery of a film without going too far into detail. Check out this trailer for The Exorcist (beware of bright, flashing images).

Here, you can see a total of one shot – the most iconic in the film – with that voiceover describing, in vague detail, the plot of the movie without giving anything away. It set up our protagonist, the saviour whilst merely alluding to the villain.

By now, we start to see the emergence of the teaser trailer – a short trailer that usually is composed of a pertinent line of dialogue over a collection of disparate shots.

Then, in the 2000s, it all went wrong. Movie trailers became spoiler-filled, giving away some of the big twists or showing most of the set pieces or jokes, such that moviegoers didn’t have anything to look forward to. Batman v Superman (as if anyone was excited for that…), The Shawshank RedemptionTerminator: Gen… Genisy… the fifth one, they all gave away either endings or the biggest twists of the movie. So, over the years, we’ve had a wide variety of trailer styles – but what exactly makes a good trailer? 

Let’s take a look…

A good movie trailer should do three things. It should:

  1. Sell the movie, not give it away
  2. Set up the plot
  3. Introduce the characters

The principle job of a trailer is to sell the movie, but not give it away completely. It should be a self-contained film in itself, teasing the movie so that watching the film is still enough of an occasion. By the end of a trailer, you shouldn’t think “wow, I’ve seen the movie!”, you should think “that has me intrigued, I need to go and see that.”

It’s amazing how many trailers swing the balance the other way, throwing spoiler after spoiler at you – I’ve alluded to this before, but to take, erm, the fifth Terminator movie as an example; the initial trailers served us healthy doses of nostalgia – come with me if you want to live, shirtless Jai Courtney – Arnie’s back! – but then the second trailer was released (if you haven’t seen the movie yet, stop here if you don’t want spoilers), and we got a bit of a shock – John Connor is the villain in this one! Now, I don’t need to describe to you the issues with this approach – yes, the intrigue of how he becomes the villain is a selling point, but you get the idea that they didn’t think that intelligently. As with many modern action flicks, they put it in the trailer because they hoped the audience would think it was cool. I can just imagine the studio exec’s faces when the negative reaction came in – I’ll let Bruce Wayne take this one;

A trailer should never give away the big surprises of your movie. It should tease the audience, draw them in and leave them wanting more. Think of a trailer like a free sample – let them have a taste and then leave them wanting a full plate.

Set Up the Plot

A huge mistake that was caused famously in 1991 was the teaser trailer for the then-upcoming Alien 3, which used the famed egg-with-light-spilling-out trick from the original films trailer – but then the narrator started up, telling us that on Earth, everyone will hear you scream!. It had all the setup of a great trailer – it showed us nothing, but coaxes us in with the promise of a long-awaited premise – Xenomorphs on EarthThen, of course, the film came out, and it was set on a rust-coloured prison planet populated by vicious rapists. 

This was due to creative issues behind the scenes – at the time the trailer had been made, the film was indeed going to take place on the old terra firma, but endless rewrites led to the film (for better or worse) that we got. Later trailers corrected the issue, but the teaser, so made because the execs had set a release date before the script had even been written, serves as a warning about the corporate machine that makes these films. But I digress.

So, a trailer should be honest about the plot of the movie – some trailers are edited to mislead the audience, by mixing and matching scenes to set up conflicts that never appear in the film (see Star Wars The Rise of Skywalker) or fill them with red herrings that in the context of the film make sense, but isolated in a trailer could be construed as false advertising.

In sympathy with my previous point, a trailer needs to set up the plot honestly but earnestly; a good trailer would sell, not tell. That’s why trailers like that for The Exorcist works so well – it summarises the movie in a few words:

Something beyond comprehension is happening to a little girl on this street, in this house.

A man has been sent for as a last resort to try and save her.

It tells us everything we need to know about the film, accompanied by one shot. It’s a perfect trailer.

Introduce the Characters

If the movie is done right, the characters should be engaging, fascinating and satisfying. The way they’re portrayed in the trailer is equally as important. Honesty is key, and the characters should come across as they do in the film. Is he a romantic character? Make sure that comes across in the trailer. Is she a tragic character? Make that clear. The viewer should not be in any doubt about the kind of character they’re going to be spending the next couple of hours with.

Similarly, if the character goes through a story arc, don’t show the full transformation; they should be set up as we meet them, not by who they’re going to be at the end, with merely a hint of the conflict, if there is one, they’re going to go through.

Trailers are all about truth; the film needs to be marketed as the film it is. This involves ensuring the characters, as well as the plot, are advertised accurately. The success of a film is resting on the way it is advertised, and audiences, as fans of the Star Warssequel trilogy have made particularly clear, baiting your audience isn’t the way to go.

Where Are Trailers Going?

When I first started this piece, I hadn’t really considered the various styles of trailers that were out there and how they tie into their respective time periods. So where are trailers going to go in the future? I believe we’re seeing a new form of trailer emerge – two in the last year have emerged as my favourites. The Avatar Way of the Water and Mission Impossible Dead Reckoning *inhales* Part One trailers. 

These function more like sizzle reels – there is minimal dialogue that vaguely sets up the premise, shows off the direction, characters and visual styles without going into any kind of detail. You get the sense that there is a conflict, but that is left as an enigma. For me, these trailers do all three of the most important things a trailer should do.

It would not surprise me to see more films take up this style of trailer – I’m sure the theatrical trailers will be much more revealing (even though I hope they aren’t…), but to me, this is a new, exciting and damn near perfect style that needs to stick around until, or maybe if something better comes along.

So, if you work in advertising and want to put a trailer together, remember; a good trailer does three things:

  1. Sell the movie, not give it away
  2. Set up the plot
  3. Introduce the characters

Get these things right, and your trailer will go down a storm.

What do you think? What are some of your favourite movie trailers? What are some of your least favourite? Let us know in the comments, and we’ll see you next time!

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