Research - What is a Film Trailer?

What is a trailer?
Film trailers are an essential part of advertising campaigns to promote upcoming films. The Motion Picture Association of America currently restricts trailers to last no longer than 2 minutes 30 seconds in length.
As part of the marketing stage of a film, the primary purpose of a trailer is to generate hype and excitement towards the release of a feature film. Film trailers are a large part of the deciding factor as to whether or not an audience will choose to watch the film on its release. Unlike teaser trailers, main theatrical trailers will typically last for around two and a half minutes, providing a greater insight into the film's plot and will contain some character development. A film trailer is essential for potential consumers to decide whether or not they want to watch the film when it is released.

The history of trailers
Trailers were first introduced to American cinemas in November 1913. Appearing after feature film screenings in cinemas, the term 'trailer' originates from the fact that these advertisements were shown 'trailing' after the main feature. However, distributors soon found this marketing practice to be ineffective; trailers tended to be ignored by potential consumers due to audiences leaving immediately after the production had ended. Nevertheless, these advertisements are still referred to as 'trailers' today, despite being shown before cinematically before the film begins.

Over time, film makers have become more aware of what excites audiences and what attracts them to particular films. Therefore the quality of film trailers have improved dramatically over the years. Up until the late 1950's film trailers were produced by the National Screen Service and consisted mostly of a variety of key scenes with a voiceover commentary or text which amplified the narrative with an underscore typically taken from music studio libraries, rather than the complex visual montage of footage we see today.

Structural content of a film trailer
Although every film trailer varies in terms of content (and therefore its structure), a film trailer will typically have a narrative structure which follows Todorov's theory. Most trailers are broken down into four parts:

1. Equilibrium - the first part of the trailer will display a happy atmosphere; the majority of the characters will be presented as content and everything is as it should be.
2. Disequilibrium - a disruption of the contentedness due to an incident or problem which has occurred.
3. Realisation - recognition that the disorder has occurred; this typically causes chaos within the narrative. 
4. Restoration - the final part of the trailer will present the main characters attempting to restore the equilibrium and may hint at how they achieve this through the narrative. 

More simply, the structure of a film trailer includes the opening, build up, problems and events within the films narrative. However, any plot twists or major parts of the films story will not be revealed to the audience within the trailer, causing them to be more intrigued to find out what happens in the film.

Conventions of a film trailer
There are many codes and conventions typical of film trailers, including the use of billing blocks and character introductions. I have created a separate post detailing the common conventions found in film trailers linked here. Sound conventions found in film trailers are also detailed in a separate blog post which can be found here.