I always arrive at movie screenings exactly 20 minutes late. At this point, my local cinema will still let me in, but I’ll have missed the endless adverts and trailers – apparently, I’m quite lucky, as these can run for 45 minutes in other venues.
But on a recent trip to see the new adaptation Sense And Sensibility, I began wondering how we got such different terms for the two (ads and trailers, I mean).
Is it to do with the trailers actors sometimes live in while filming? The “trail” of previewed information and scenes that’s meant to lead you to a ticket booth?
Nope.
As it turns out, it has to do with when trailers used to be played in cinemas – and modern theatres could take a couple of notes.
Many consider thefirst trailer to have been shown in 1913, which was a filmed promo for the stage musical The Pleasure Seekers. It was considered so radical that the newspaper The Nebraska Star called this “an entirely new and unique stunt”.
A year later, Nils Granlund, the brains behind this “stunt”, aired what was arguably the first movie trailer, which was made up of slides from Charlie Chaplin’s next flick.
But not everyone agrees this technique was as “new” as contemporary records suggest. In 1898, French filmmaker Georges Méliès projected slide shows from his work outside Paris’ Theatre Robert-Houdin.
Apicges Méliès, who arguably created some of the first “trailers”
Whatever their exact origin, by 1919, the National Screen Service was formed. This group “held a virtual monopoly on the trailer game until the 1960”, per the University of Michigan’s Michigan Quarterly Review.
This is where the history of the word “trailer” really comes into play. Until about the late ’30s, most of these previews were shown afterthe movie, and not before it.
In other words, they “trailed” the main event. I am, needless to say, very annoyed we discontinued this practice.
Originally, theatre owners thought that audiences would stick around long enough to watch these grabby shots – not least because a lot of films were serialisedin the early days of cinema, and ended in cliffhangers.
This seems to have worked for a bit. But decades on, and with a decline in serialised movies, viewers did what we do now: walk out. So, companies placed trailers before the films instead.
Of course, Marvel fans will probably have winced at the suggestion that modern audiences exit second the credits roll. Lovers of the franchise will know that teasers are usually placed long after watchers of other films would have left their seats.
These, however, are not called “trailers”. They sometimes go by “stings” or “after-credits scenes” (and they come alongside the usual, ahead-of-movie type of trailers, too).
Guardians Of The Galaxy director James Gunn told Radio Times: “I would probably never consider not having a post-credits scene… I think it shows the audience that you love them, giving them something extra that you don’t need to give them”.
Accidentally or otherwise, it harkens back to the original movie “trailers” too.
