Movie Trailer History
When the motion picture first debuted, it captivated America’s attention. People would come out in droves to see every film made just to take part in this exciting new fad and relish the wonder of new technology. However, as more movie theaters began popping up and different distinctive genres of films emerged, this widespread audience began to taper off, leaving film owners scratching their heads at how to win these patrons over. In the early 1900s, they came up with the idea that they could attract people back to their theaters by advertising upcoming movies with a trailer, which would intrigue them enough to return.
Alfred Hitchcock was a known innovator in the history of the movie trailer. Often, this iconic filmmaker would appear in his own previews, just as he did on “Hitchcock Presents.” In the preview for Psycho, he took audiences on a tour of the Bates Motel and Bates mansion. In trailers clips for The Birds, he talks about the relationship between man and bird. The suspense and sheer creepiness of Hitchcock’s films were wonderfully demonstrated in just a few short seconds of his previews. “It was always Hitch, and the trailers worked the same way,” said his assistant, Peggy Robertson.
Andrew J. Kuehn was an innovator in modern movie trailers production. In 1964, he released independently-produced trailer for Night of the Iguana that used fast-paced editing, high-contrast photography and suspenseful narration. When he realized the potential for this format, he partnered with Dan Davis to manufacture trailers for some of the biggest names and top movies — including Stanley Kubricks’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, Steven Spielberg’s Jaws, James Cameron’s Aliens and George Lucas’s Star Wars. ”He came into the world of previews when they were done very conventionally, and he reinvented them,” said Bob Harper, vice chairman of Fox Filmed Entertainment. ”He pioneered the idea of previews as a stand-alone piece of entertainment.”
You’ll note that many of the trailers for new movies have extremely fast cutting between scenes. Andrew J. Kuehn explains, “When MTV came along… it recognized that the retention, the ability of the audience to observe, had grown faster because of television: It’s not a matter of lack of attention span, it’s a matter of how much information people can grasp at the same time.” He added, “In the process you accomplished two things: One, you can get more information across. Two, you can hide your flaws more easily.” Thus, the modern trailer was born.
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