As the cost of making movies climbs from impossibly high to surrealistic, trailers are more important than ever. The two-minute come-ons whet the appetites of moviegoers and create “buzz,” Hollywood parlance for word of mouth. The handful of top advertising houses that specialize in making trailers charge as much as $300,000 to make one, but studios get a big bang for the buck: analysts say the trailer’s fraction of the average $11.6 million marketing costs can account for as much as 50 percent of sales.
A trailer can make or break a film-or even remake it. For this summer’s “Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves,” the trailer features a dramatic image: an arrow streaking through a forest toward a tree, filmed from the arrow itself. (The filmmakers mounted a camera on an arrow for the shot.) Though the shot was set up specifically for the trailer, it was so effective in capturing the spirit of the film that Warner Bros. decided to include it in the movie. Good trailers can even make mediocre movies look appealing: the 1990 “Problem Child” had a slapstick-heavy teaser focusing on its cute child star, Michael Oliver–and helped generate $65 million in gross sales and an upcoming sequel. Trailers can also avert potential marketing problems: in bringing “Batman” to the screen, Warner Bros. faced disaster as hardcore Batfans recoiled at the casting of comic actor Michael Keaton in the title role. The studio released an aggressive trailer, with a menacing Keaton darkly whispering, “I’m Batman.” The macho issue was resolved.
Thanks to dazzling techniques borrowed from both MTV and feature-length movies, trailers have become entertainment in themselves. Turner Broadcasting System’s TNT network devotes a weekly half hour to a compilation of trailers. Various cable stations regularly feature newly released previews. Big consumer-electronics stores like Circuit City have begun running hot teasers to show off their video hardware. “Everybody loves them,” says Adam Fields, president of Preview Tech, a new firm that supplies stores with the teasers. “If you can’t make your movie look good in two minutes, you’ve got a problem.”
As trailers like “Robin Hood” play to an audience increasingly raised on sound bites and three-minute music videos, problems could arise for the studios. The tight quality of some trailers could upstage the movies they hawk–especially if they cannibalize the feature’s best lines. “Sometimes,” says Fields, “the more you find out about a picture the less interesting it becomes.” For good movies, customers will still plunk down seven bucks for the taste of the popcorn and the joy of the big screen. But that’s a lot of money–and ticket prices aren’t headed south any time soon. If a movie’s buzz isn’t great, it may be tempting to say “No–but I saw the trailer.”
