SNAPSHOT
Movie marketing has always been an art form in and of itself, and movie trailers have now enticed audiences for more than a hundred years. With the passage of time, trailers have evolved from straightforward descriptions of films, to ominously voiced-over montages, to frenetic and spoiler-phobic teasers. Watch how trailers have changed since their invention and which films’ trailers have had the biggest impact on the medium. (synopsis via Laughing Squid)
It’s a fact of life that things change, particularly in our hyper-fast digital age, and this is just as true of film trailers as anything else.
Ever since the first film trailer debuted in 1913 and quickly became the darling of the nascent movie industry, trailers have grown and evolved, from the portentous narrative-heavy devices of the 1950s, the more pyshedelic efforts of the 1960s and 1970s and the voiceover-thunderous efforts of the 1980s.
Now of course, we are in a soiler-averse age in which quick cuts and pounding music rule and where trailers are likely prone to change again entirely as more and more people watch trailers on mobile devices before getting anywhere near the cinema.
Granger Willson‘s recounting of these and many other trends and changes for Vulture is absolutely fascinating and worth a watch … inbetween all those trailers you’re consuming, of course.