In this age of constantly breaking news and fast scrolling feeds the entertainment industry, more than any other, has had to go above and beyond to get and keep the attention of their audiences. As a result, we can access just about any information about our favourite film that hasn’t been made yet.
You want to know what you favourite actor or director’s next project is? Search them on IMDb and look under their upcoming project section. You want to see what was recently green lit? Go to Deadline or Variety. You want to see what cool scripts are floating around Hollywood right now and generating interest? Go to The Black List. We know about films the second they get greenlit, when know when where and how they’re being filmed, occasionally we even demand certain films be made, remade or modified (Zack Snyder’s Justice League, the animation of Sonic).
Part and parcel with the circus of modern cinema comes the modern trailer. Today trailers have to keep the attention of the audience for longer in a time where it where it’s so much harder. With the news cycle of a film starting so early in the filmmaking process, the trailer is not just a film announcement anymore. It is a major milestone in the lifecycle of the film, so much so that trailers have become as much of a talking point as the actual films. Having more to talk about is awesome, I used to love a good trailer easter egg video essay as much as the next nerd but as I’ve started going into more films cold that’s changed. I think trailers today are forced to do too much, and this has a negative impact on the first watch viewing experience.
Trailer types
These days we get trailer announcements, teaser trailers, tv spots, trailer 2, thematic focus trailer and trailer 3/final trailer, first x minutes trailers, episode trailers. So many different types of trailers. They all have slightly different editing styles and they all serve slightly different functions, all with the eventual goal of getting audiences to a screen and money in the corporate bank account. I should also make it clear that this generally applies for the typical action packed, dopamine driven blockbuster film. Different genres tend to have different types of trailers. RomCom trailers give away at least 85% of the plot 100% of the time. With straight Dramas flip a coin, my advice is stop the trailer halfway. Straight-up Comedies, watch until you know whether or no it’s your kind of humour. Musicals, listen to the trailer, no need to watch it.
Trailer announcement. I don’t want to blame Feige and the MCU for everything, but I only really started noticing blockbusters doing this as the MCU really started pumping out films. This is usually a super quick 15 to 45 second montage and jumble of footage to tell us when the trailer is going to drop. A dopamine hit of hype to the veins.
Teaser Trailer. This generally has cool cuts, minimal plot, some cool one liners, a sneak peak of the villain, one some the big action sequences. More serious films will do slower cuts between ominous settings showing minimal action. If it’s really well done conveys the tone, gives some of the general concept but doesn’t give away the direction of the story. When it’s really great it leaves the audience with just enough questions to make them think they have to see this.
Stranger Things Season 4
Trailer 2 /“OFFICIAL TRAILER”. Often pretty similar with just slight adjustments in the order. This version has more dialogue often proportionally more exposition in order to get more of the story across. It takes away a little bit of the ambiguity that may have been created from the first trailer. If the first trailer didn’t show a lot about plot this one will. If done well there will still be plenty left to absorb when watching the actual film.
The Gentlemen
Thematic Focus Trailer/Featurette. Usually focusses on a theme of the film or a character and cuts through different parts of the film that show that theme. Made as a teaser’s version of a deep dive into one of the films main ideas/driving forces. When it’s just a trailer it only has footage from the film but when it’s a featurette it has different people involved in the production speaking on that particular topic.
Blade Runner 2049
TV Spots. Depending on where in the marketing process this drops this can have the elements of teaser trailer, trailer 2 or thematic focus, but it’s cut like the dopamine shot to the veins of trailer announcement.
TV Spot Black Widow
Trailer 3/final trailer. Sometimes titled Official Trailer 2. Don’t watch this unless you want everything about the film, the film’s concept and its characters and how they resolve everything spelled out to you and foreshadowed in the trailer.
Civil War
First x minutes trailers. You can watch this. This is just a scene or sequence cut out from the film, with no additional cuts made, I actually quite like these. Sometimes instead of this they give a snippet from either the end of act one or the beginning of act two - less of a fan of that.
Spontaneous
Episode Trailer/Promo. when it comes to watching series companies also release trailers for shows too. I’ve mainly included this just to say, you don’t need to watch the episode trailer of a show you’re already committed to watching.
The Boys
Why so many Trailers, apparently we want them
The pace of information creation on the internet is insane, and it means that advertising has to be that much more aggressive. I mean shows literally release multiple trailers for every episode. Marketing departments are more important than ever.
According to Dan Asma, co-owner of trailer company Buddha Jones, trailer houses prefer to cut with more mystery. This isn’t always possible though because studios rigorously test marketing materials with focus groups before dropping the trailer for public dissection. 9 out of 10 times these focus groups show that more plot details in the trailer result in higher intention to watch. It’s purely a business decision to put more of the film in the trailers.
Filmmaking is expensive and they have to what they must to ensure that they get their return on investment. As much as people hate spoilers, that 9 out of 10 does make sense. Audiences are also looking to get their return on investment. If you are going to be paying for a cinema ticket, the snacks, and the petrol/uber it takes to get there it makes sense that you would want to be as sure as you can that the film is decent.
That being said, we stream a lot of our entertainment now, so the cost of access is way less, meaning there’s less to lose financially from not watching the most revealing trailers. However, flipping back the other way, the decreased barriers to access mean that we have a lot more options, making trailers our most entertaining decision making mechanism.
When you’re trying to decide between seven different ice cream flavours sometimes you need a second taste of that third to make sure it’s the one you want to commit to. My only issue is that we’re being offered the whole tub for the purposes of tasting.
My Opinion on Trailers, Civil War
When you watch trailers, especially the more revealing ones, you take away that experience of discovery while watching the film. I hate to reference Scorsese again, and on exactly the same quote, but cinema should not be without, “revelation, mystery or genuine emotional danger.”
That’s not so easy when you can remember that one shot from the trailer that has the protagonist in a setting that you haven’t seen in the film yet because that tells you that they will make it through this scene that could’ve otherwise been tense.
The best films, especially if we’re talking about your typical blockbuster, have a constant system of Plant, Play and Payoff. The 3 act structure plays this out in a macro scale over the 2 hours as: setup, rising action and resolution. These 3Ps play out between scenes, within scenes and with comedy sometimes within sentences.
This works best when we’re uncertain about how a character might respond (“play”) or if we’re thrown off by an unexpected payoff.
In cases where we already know that, oh I don’t know. . . all the Avenges are split into two teams and end up face to face fighting at an airport; then we go into the film knowing the pinnacle of the rising action before the setup even happens.
As cool as some of the sequences in Civil War are, everything leading up to that fight scene is a set up for action we’re already expecting. This severely cuts down the impact of all those other story beats because we already know where the sum of all those parts takes us. In the end the only ‘new’ part of the story is after the end of act two, in the last 30% of the film and it’s not like I get to pay for only 30% of my ticket.
There are also other issues with trailers, that we don’t really have much control over. Like the fact that action films tend to put all their best jokes, often uncomplicated 1 liners, in the trailer often leaving the audience with no fresh laughs for the actual watch. Sometimes these films go so far as to create the impression that a film is an action comedy when that’s not the tone at all.
Trailers are presented with the issue of having to show off the very best of the film, without ruining the very best of the film. Not every film can do that unless they have several visually amazing set pieces.
Films of greater depth don’t require newness to captivate an audience and create a meaningful viewing experience. Unfortunately, this trailer issue persists among films that hold essentially all their value in their ability to shock, wow and entertain. A greater pity is that this means that they’ll do what they have to in order to get you to watch the film, even if it means you going in there with a warped set of expectations.
My advice, watch few and cut them off
My advice to you, given this treacherous trailer landscape: don’t watch every trailer. All you should really need is a teaser trailer and the occasional “official trailer”. Watch the teaser trailer, if you like the tone & feel and think it looks cool, save the date, set a reminder and don’t think about it again until it’s time to watch. If you’re still not convinced then check out thew next trailer, but don’t feel obligated to finish it. They will 100% throw in a funny joke and really cool visuals in the last 30% of that trailer so savour that.
With something like an episode trailer, the show is already so short and you simply shorten the experience of watching the episode when you go in knowing so much. It’s like that paradox of a new road feeling shorter when you drive it the second time simply because you know it. It feels like you’re shortening your wait in between episodes but you’re actually reducing the payoff for your wait.
If you want to be a real cool kid, as soon as you see the title of a film go to IMDb and look at the information about the project, not the synopsis. If you see a Director, Producer, Writers or Actors that have been involved with other stuff you’ve enjoyed then you already know it might be worth the watch, no need to watch the trailer.
Of course, not everyone is going to want to go through all that effort and it’s a film so you want to be visually enticed. With this much going on all the time and something new coming out every second I don’t blame you. Prioritising is important but just do me one favour - don’t ever watch trailer 3.
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