Why?

Why do we make film trailers?

“Once people find out what you do, they ask, ‘why do you show all the best scenes in the trailer?'” says Brubaker. “And it’s because our job is to get people interested in the movie, to go to the theater. Whatever the best combination of story, humor, graphics, music, or whatever that gets you to the theater, that’s what we’re going to do.” - Matt Brubaker (President of the Theatrical and Theatrical Home Entertainment divisions of Trailer Park)

When a new film is made, it has to be advertised like any other new product,

to let people know it exists and to encourage them to go to the cinema to see it.

The advertising of a film is known as film promotion or film marketing and the people who are responsible for this are the distribution company, so–called because they distribute (give out) the films to the cinemas and distribute the promotional material around the country.

The way in which a film is promoted can have a huge effect on whether or not

it is successful. Films are expensive to make and if the public do not buy tickets at the box office to see the film, a lot of money will be lost.

The trailer for a film must encourage us to want to see the film. A poster has a

hard task – it must catch our attention and give us information about a film in one still image. It is much easier for a trailer to give us a real taste of what the film is like because it uses moving image, such as the film itself. Moving images, whatever they are, have a far better chance of catching our attention than something that is still. The trailer holds our attention because the images change really quickly and we must concentrate all the time or we may miss something. Added to this, a trailer uses sound to get its message across.

Music, sound effects, speech from the film and the voice-over all join together to create an exciting mixture for our ears. The combination of sound and moving images is a very effective way of attracting us to see a film.

We usually see a trailer just before we are about to see a film, although sometimes a short version of them appears in the advert breaks on television. Whether in the cinema, or on television, the distributors think carefully about who will be watching at a certain time of day/night and try to show a trailer which will be interesting to this type of audience.

How?

How is a film trailer made?

Often studios collaborate with filmmakers to make distinctive campaigns.

 Most notably, Warner Bros’ innovative campaigns with visionary director Christopher Nolan. For the The Dark Knight Rises trailer. Trailer Park was given the task to make a trailer that “was anything but traditional.” “Sound is a key component to the way we hang a trailer, the way we structure it and  the way we sell it. For the Dark Knight Rises it was almost more of an opposite. Its very quiet and  has a lot of emotion to it, but it has an understated simplicity to it that allows the movie to stand on its own.

“Sometimes, the process can last a year or more. Sometimes it lasts a week,”.

Trailer Park’s road to the perfect trailer requires editing, re-editing, studio notes, complete overhauls, tiny tinkering, and painstaking work to find the right tone to hook audiences. But every time, the journey to the perfect trailer begins with an unlikely source: a script. “I know you don’t think of writing scripts for trailers, but it’s more about the feel and idea. Even if we don’t have narration or copy, it’s more about what the idea of the trailer is. The direction.” - Matt Brubaker

Who?

Who is responsible for creating and producing film trailers?

Depending on the studio and the project, the marketing work is often split between the studio's in-house marketing department and one or more outside agencies. These agencies are known colloquially as "trailer houses."

   80-90% of trailer houses are located in L.A., and the rest are in New York (these are usually subsidiary divisions of larger ad agencies). Some trailer houses do exclusively movie marketing (incl. home video commercials, posters, billboards, etc.) and others do all sorts of film and design work (product commercials, main title sequences, network branding, etc.).

Some people think that the same team who work on the film create and produce the trailer, however this is not the case as trailers are huge important projects that require a whole new team, the production of the trailer goes on while the film is being produced.

Trailers are so important now they even have their own awards...

The 16th Annual Golden Trailer Award Nominees & Winners

Nominees are listed in Alphabetical Order by Entry Title.
Legend: Film Title, Studio, Trailer House
Jump to: Show | Non-Show | Foreign | TV Spots | Posters | Innovative | Film Festival

Show Categories

Best Action

Winner:

Furious 7 "Family", Universal Pictures, AV Squad

Nominees:

• Agent 47 "New Assassin", 20th Century Fox, TRANSIT
• The Equalizer "Domestic Trailer", Columbia Pictures, Vibe Creative Inc
• John Wick "Domestic Trailer", Lionsgate, AV Squad
• Kingsman: The Secret Service "Trailer E", 20th Century Fox, Wild Card

Best Animation / Family

Winner:

Big Hero 6 "Find Your Way", Disney, Trailer Park

Nominees:

• Annie "Dreams", Columbia Pictures, Seismic Productions
• Cinderella "Be Kind", Disney, Seismic Productions
• Inside Out "Journey - RUS", Disney, Trailer Park
• Minions "Trailer 1", Universal Pictures, Motive

Best Comedy

Winner:

Ted 2 "Civil Rights: Trailer 2", Universal Pictures, AV Squad

Nominees:

• Get Hard "Trailer 1", Warner Bros., Create Advertising Group
• Spy "Secret Agent (Redband)", 20th Century Fox, Buddha Jones
• St. Vincent "Domestic Trailer 1", The Weinstein Company, Workshop Creative
• Unfinished Business "Like A Boss", 20th Century Fox, Acme Trailer Company

Where?

Where are film trailers shown?

Film trailers are exhibited everywhere as they are a key part of a films marketing campaign.

Films cost an exorbitant amount of money to produce and therefore the trailer id produced with the aim to be distributed widely in order to bring in the largest revenue so maximum profit is made.

The easiest and cheapest way to distribute a film is online, especially through the use of social media websites such as Facebook.

Youtube is the most common website use to vastly distribute film trailers, however other websites such as vimeo are also used.

                                                

Film websites such as imbd, aswell as containing information about the film also always have a link to view the trailer.

The first way I remember viewing movie trailers was as advertisements on dvd before watching the particular film I had bought. This method was effective as the film producers etc. can advertise trailers related to the film the audience has chosen.

Cinemas also exhibit film trailers, they like dvd's also do this based on the film the audience is viewing as they are always trying to target there target audience to bring in the largest revenue. Cinemas have 20 minutes of trailers before the actual featured film.

When?

When are film trailers realised?

Film trailers are produced at the same time as the film but by a different team specialised in the production of trailers. They use the same footage that has been shot for the film to depict a brief narrative.

Timing the release of a trailer is important as it has to be enough time before to distribute the trailer, and generate excitement and hype, however it can't be too long before the films release as it may be forgotten. They can be released up to over a year before the film is released. 

Many films have several teaser trailers or promotional videos before there main trailer or trailers.

Here is an example of a teaser trailer released before the official trailer. Teaser trailers build excitement for the release of the official trailer.

What?

What does a good film trailer include?

In this post I want to look at, and think about what makes a good film trailer. As this will help me produce my own effective trailer. I am going to be looking at the film Jurassic World the fourth instalment of the jurassic park film series. It has recently been released in to the cinema so audiences have been bombarded with the trailer.
It's the first time a film has made more than £320 million in its first two days screening.
Jurassic World was also the most popular screening in all 66 countries where it was released.
The film made around £131.4m in America, £64m in China and £19m in the UK and Ireland as part of the record.

It has been advertised on both occasions I have visited the cinema in the last month or two. As its a huge hollywood block buster movie its trailer is played before audiences watch other big hollywood films such as Avengers: Age of Ultron which has also recently been released. This is because they are targeting a similar (mainstream) audience.

Its interesting to see that often more than one trailer is produced, in the case of this film two have been produced.... An official trailer and a global trailer. They are both similar in style and design and contain the same fonts, production logos etc. However as you watch the two trailers below you can notice differences in selection of footage which may appeal to a slightly different target audience. One trailer is likely to be more general, to target a large mainstream audience where as the other is probably trying to target a more specific type of audience member.

From watching the trailer above I have decided that its probably more family orientated and focuses on targeting families, this becomes apparent at the beginning of the trailer when you are taken on the journey with the young boy, Actors have a huge impact of target audience as more often than not the age of the actor used is often a similar age to the audience member your trying to attract. The beginning of this trailer shows the progress of the park, its happy and i assume is a huge contrast of the events to come.. This makes me think that the trailer is aimed for younger children because it eases them into the film and isn't too distressing.

Also i know this trailer is for younger viewers because even though the trailer makes it evident the film contains violence and gore, the trailer doesn't show any, instead it just builds suspense.

I think the second trailer is aimed at a older audience, it contains much more violence and gore and has much more focus on who I assume to be the main character (Chris Pratt), this attracts a different audience, we can see from the trailer the type of personality the young man has, we can tell he's going to be the hero and also that he may add a element of humour to the film. He's handsome.. this may attract women even though stereotypically the film may be described with a predominantly male audience because of the subject matter however the snippet of the man and woman in the beginning of the trailer suggests their could be some kind of love story.

This second trailer also exhibits a more vast amount of special effects and machinery to draw in blockbuster audiences. 

Below are some screen grabs of important information included in the trailer.

Using a similar logo from previous versions also is a part of continuity and helps the audiences association with the franchise.

Film Trailers! What, why, how, where and when?

What are they? 
Snippets from a film used to advertise or promote a film.

Why are they made?
To promote a film to attract the target audience and bring in revenue, sometimes multiple trailers are produced to appeal to different types of audience member.

How do they work?
By using cross cutting to display a series of scenes through out the film to depict a brief narrative.

Where do we see them?
Online, In cinema, Social media websites such as facebook and twitter, On tv, In adverts on DVDs, In web reviews and many more...

When are they released?
Up to a year or more before the film is released.