History of Trailers

• Besides in front of theatrical releases, movie trailers have now become extremely popular on the internet. Of some 10-billion videos watched online annually, movie trailers rank #3, after news and user-created video.

• The first trailer shown in a U.S. movie theater was in November 1913, when Nils Granlund, the advertising manager for the Marcus Loew theater chain, produced a short promotional film for the musical The Pleasure Seekers, opening at the Winter Garden Theatre on Broadway.

• Up until the late 1950s, trailers were mostly created by National Screen Service and consisted of various key scenes from the film being advertised, often augmented with large, descriptive text describing the story, and an underscore generally pulled from studio music libraries. Most trailers had some form of narration and those that did featured stentorian voices

• In the early 1960s, the face of motion picture trailers changed. Textless, montage trailers and quick-editing became popular, largely due to the arrival of the "new Hollywood" and techniques that were becoming increasingly popular in television. Among the trend setters were Stanley Kubrick with his montage trailers for Lolita, Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, and 2001: A Space Odyssey.

• In 1964, Andrew J. Kuehn distributed his independently-produced trailer for Night of the Iguana, using stark, high-contrast photography, fast-paced editing and a provocative narration by a young James Earl Jones. His format was so successful, he began producing this new form of trailer with partner Dan Davis.

• Kuehn opened the west coast office of Kaleidoscope Films in 1968 and Kuehn and his company became a major player in the trailer industry for the next three decades

• Top trailer companies have all been run by former Kaleidoscope creatives, like The Cimarron Group (Chris Arnold), Ant Farm, Aspect Ratio (Mark Trugman), Trailer Park (Benedict Coulter) and Motor Entertainment, run by Greg McClatchy, who previously headed up the film marketing division at 20th Century Fox.