For the new visitor, trailers are just as you see in the cinema, advertisements to preview coming attractions. The length of each trailer varies with the type of film, some trailers only last about 30 seconds these are usually for showing on television. A theatrical trailer can last 5 minutes or more, for the epic type of film e.g. "Zulu" "The Ten Commandments" The average time is about 3 minutes, you get all the best bits of the film. The style of trailers has changed over the years, most now have very fast cutting between scenes.
Another type of trailer is a behind the scenes production trailer, designed to get a film into a cinema circuit, you can now see these on television as part of the marketing of new films. Quite a few have appeared on Super 8 over the years, a few spring to mind "Hero Cop: Yesterday And Today" about making Clint Eastwood's "Magnum Force" "Riding For A Fall" about the film "Major Dundee".
This page was last updated 02 Dec 2002