michael_nielsen

I love the movie trailer as a medium, and find it fascinating - I'd just about be willing to go to the movies to see the trailers, and then leave (though YouTube makes that less palatable than pre-YT).

Favourite fact about trailers: they typically have 90-120 seconds, & yet people will often remember dozens of facts from them. Compare that to a typical speech or lecture, which may be an hour long, yet people often remember nothing from.

The people who make trailers are mindbogglingly good at making information sticky.

Also, curious fact: the quality of the trailer is correlated with the quality of the movie, but to some extent independent. Fr'instance I enjoyed "Man of Steel", but nowhere near as much as I enjoyed the trailer.

The last 1 second of that trailer is an absolute masterpiece. If there were Oscars for 1-second shots, it would have deservedly won.

Trailers are a great deposit of info of how studios know, view, anticipate & build on your expectations. The sauciest trailers are for movies you're *already* dying to see (and they know it)! It's priors come alive In phil., I'd look at Jauss & his reception theory re: this.

"Its priors come alive" - exactly! It's like they figure out your _best_ possible imaginings for the movie, and flesh them out. True even of movies not based on a pre-existing story; a sort of Platonic realization of part of the collective unconscious (to horribly mix ideas!)