The Development of Trailers

By Sim16
  • The start of the trailer

    The start of the trailer
    An advertising manager, Nils Granlund of Marcus Loew theatres in New York made a short promotional video of the Broadway play 'Pleasure Seekers' which used real footage from it. This then became popular with other movie theatre owners.
  • Film Serials

    Film Serials
    In Chicago Col. William Selig noticed how print serials were popular in newspapers and approached the Chicago Tribune newspaper to create a film version of it. 'The Adventures of Kathlyn' was created from this where a cliffhanger with a title card was used to attract audiences back the next week.
  • Film Studios

    Trailers began being made by film studios rather than the movie theatres. They were simple and showed snippets with text.
  • Period: to

    The National Screen Service

    Film studios happily paid The National Service who were a company who were given films to create trailers from and sold it to cinemas to play.
  • The Jazz Singer

    This was the first film trailer where sound was properly used.