History of film trailers

Movie trailers have changed over the past 50 years. They have developed there own styles and have changed pace and shortened over the decades. There are many things which define a film trailer for example their personalities or characteristics, what I mean by this is is that you would expect to see blood, gore, etc in a horror film trailer.

During the 1950's film preview trailers were very long and would tell the audience most of the plot/story. This ruins the whole movie for the audience however could tell the audience that they would enjoy the film. They also flashed words on the screen such as terrifying to scare the audience.

During the decade of the 1960's film trailers still flashed bold words to scare the audience. They would also often show the ending of the film which would reveal the exciting effect thus ruin the film. They tried to build actors names more in this decade trying to make them big names. Finally the used narration to summarize the story for the audience making it easier to take in.

Over the period of the 1970's film trailers were still very long, however got tightened a bit thus not showing the audeince the whole film. This shows us that they revealed less of the plot to the audience, however they still showed many key spoiler scenes. They also went against common conventions as many film trailers have a little bit of an order for example having establishing shots first, although in the 1970's they didn't do this so they could confuse the audience.

During the 1980's the film trailers were even tighter again which would tell very little of the story to the audience. The trailers would often include scenes which were cut from the actual film. Finally they would also not include spoilers thus not revealing anything so it would be a total mystery about the film.

From the 1990's onwards film trailers tend to use rock music in the background and zoom editing styles are used. The whole plot of the film are mainly kept quiet and we only get to see some fast images put together. Some people even say that the film trailers are better than the actual film itself.