Making a movie trailer is easy, right? Wrong. And you get a distinct sense of this by watching trailers from the 1930s and 40s. They come across as awkward introductions by amateur narrators.
That's because composing a 2-minute movie trailer has become a carefully refined and highly competitive artform. Jack Nugent explains how trailers work as a form of storytelling and how this medium has been repeatedly re-invented as movie studios strive to drive the largest audiences possible to movie theaters.
Content warning: foul language.
-via Joe Carter
As for the Art of the Trailer, that American Sniper excerpt completely had me wanting to find out what happened. I was also all-in with the John Carter trailer, but that comes from being a huge fan of the books many years ago.