History of film trailers

To better understand my chosen media text (Film trailer) I will research into the history of film and film trailers, this will help provide an understanding of how the conventions used in film and film trailers have developed and why things changed as the medium progressed.

In1878 a experiment by Eadweard Muybridge in the United States using 24 cameras produced a series of stereoscopic images of a galloping horse, which could arguably be the first "motion picture," though it was not called by this name. Eadweard Muybridge also created The Zoopraxiscope, which was an early device for displaying motion pictures. It may be considered the first movie projector. The Zoopraxiscope projected images from rotating glass disks in rapid succession to give the impression of motion. The stop-motion images were initially painted onto the glass, as silhouettes. A second series of discs, made in 1892-94, used outline drawings printed onto the discs photographically, then colored by hand. The device appears to have been one of the primary inspirations for Thomas Edison and William Kennedy Dickson's Kinetoscope, the first commercial film exhibition system.

In 1895, Louis Lumiere created the first motion picture camera. This creation was made up of a portable motion-picture camera, film processing unit and a projector called the “Cinematographe” . The invention of the “Cinematographe” was the start of the motion picture era. Lumiere and his brother were the first to present projected, moving, photographic, pictures for profit to audiences. The development of the motion picture camera allowed the individual component images to be captured and stored on a single reel, this quickly lead to the development of a motion picture projector to shine light through the processed and printed film and magnify these "moving picture shows" onto a screen for an entire audience. These reels, so exhibited, came to be known as "motion pictures". Early motion pictures were static shots that showed an event or action with no editing or other cinematic techniques.


Commercial motion pictures were purely visual art through the late 19th century, but these innovative silent films had gained a hold on the public imagination. Around the turn of the twentieth century, films began developing a narrative structure by stringing scenes together to tell narratives. In the 1920s, new technology allowed filmmakers to attach to each film a soundtrack of speech, music and sound effects synchronized with the action on the screen. These sound films were initially distinguished by calling them "talking pictures", or talkies. The next major step in the development of cinema was the introduction of so-called "natural" color. By the end of the 1960s, color had become the norm for film makers.

Rise of film school educated independent filmmakers were all part of the changes the medium experienced in the latter half of the 20th century. Digital technology has been the driving force in change throughout the 1990s and into the 21st century.

As motion pictures improved people grew used to the new medium of media, they became more selective about what types of films they wanted to see. Film exhibitors responded to the increased popularity and demand of movies by constructing buildings designed to accommodate large audiences to view films at the same time. 1952 saw the start of modern cinema, films were shown using three projectors and a wide curved screen. Film exhibitors needed to find a way to interest audiences to come back. Film exhibitors and distributors were keen to promote upcoming films. Their solution was to separate scheduled films by displaying information about future releases.

The first trailer shown in a U.S. movie theater was in November 1913, when Nils Granlund, the advertising manager for the Marcus Loew theater chain, produced a short promotional film for the musical The Pleasure Seekers, opening at the Winter Garden Theatre on Broadway.

Granlund was also first to introduce trailer material for an upcoming motion picture, using a slide technique to promote an upcoming film featuring Charlie Chaplin at Loew's Seventh Avenue Theatre in Harlem in 1914.

Up until the 1950s, trailers were mostly created by National Screen Service and consisted of various key scenes from the film being advertised, often augmented with large, descriptive text describing the story. The majority trailers had some form of narration and those that did featured stentorian voices.

In the early 1960s, the face of motion picture trailers changed. Textless, montage trailers and quick-editing became popular, largely due to the arrival of the "new Hollywood" and techniques that were becoming increasingly popular in television. Among the trend setters were Stanley Kubrick with his montage trailers for Lolita, Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, and 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Kubrick's main inspiration for the Dr. Strangelove trailer was the short film "Very Nice, Very Nice" by Canadian film visionary Arthur Lipsett. In 1964, Andrew J. Kuehn distributed his independently-produced trailer for Night of the Iguana, using stark, high-contrast photography, fast-paced editing and a provocative narration by a young James Earl Jones. His format was so successful, he began producing this new form of trailer with partner Dan Davis.

Kuehn opened the west coast office of Kaleidoscope Films in 1968 and Kuehn and his company became a major player in the trailer industry for the next three decades. As Hollywood began to produce bigger blockbuster films and invest more money in marketing them, directors like Steven Spielberg, Oliver Stone and Barbra Streisand began to depend on Kuehn and Kaleidoscope for their ability to create the best trailers theater-goers could see.

In earlier decades of cinema, trailers were only one part of the entertainment which included cartoon shorts and serial adventure episodes. These earlier trailers were much shorter and often consisted of little more than title cards and stock footage. Today, longer, more elaborate trailers and commercial advertisements have replaced other forms of pre-feature entertainment and in major multiplex chains, about the first twenty minutes after the posted Showtime is devoted to trailers.

I have used Wikipedia for reference of the history of film and film trailers, this was vital for a good basis for this blog post as it gave me the facts that I required.