One of the most important marketing aspects of releasing a film is the trailer.  Yes a few movie buffs will read previews, plot summaries and actor profiles before seeing a film, but, the only thing the majority of movie-goers know about a film is from the trailer.  Some lucky films carry the prestige of a name that will draw big numbers on its own such as best-selling trilogies or sequels.  However, most films rely on making a memorable trailer that will excite an audience and move them to action.  In an effort to understand how these complicated and important previews are received, we’ve broken down trailers into a few categories.

1. The Giveaway: These trailers are too overzealous, trying to show you a complete picture of the movie.  A trailer isn’t meant to be a three minute synopsis of the movie, if you could get it all that fast why would you sit for two hours to watch it drawn out?  Rather, it is supposed to give you an idea of what the film is about but leave plenty to the imagination so you’ll actually go see how it turns out.  A recent example is the trailer for Charlie St. Cloud.  After watching that trailer you can already tell the main character’s brother dies in a car crash but the two can still hang out and play baseball somehow.  Then he meets a girl who distracts his attention from his brother, angering the boy’s ghost, and eventually he gets a chance to save the girl he loves, which will serve as redemption for driving the car that killed his brother.  Basically we know the whole movie and the only reason to watch it is for the hour or so of filler plot.
2. Highlight Reel: As far as marketing goes this can be very successful because you wrap all the best or funniest lines or scenes into a few minutes, which will lead the viewer to think this is going to be an impressive film.  While this may draw initially large crowds, ultimately the movie will be poorly received when audiences realize all the good parts were in the trailer and the rest is forgettable mediocrity.  When word gets around that the movie wasn’t what it was cracked up to be, total viewers and grossing will be subpar.  The recent comedy, Get Him to the Greek, took on this form of trailer, with a slew of funny lines filling the trailer that turned out to be the majority of the movie’s funniest parts.
3. The Drama Queen:  This is one of the more successful trailers, if it is appropriately matched with a drama or thriller.  However this type of trailer fails when the movie is a sappy romance or teen drama that tries to create something significant out of what is a more trivial plot.  In essence, don’t be something you are not.  Though it has yet to be released, the trailer for the upcoming film The Adjustment Bureau has the potential to be a successful drama queen trailer.  With powerful music and blacked out screens with memorable phrases, the audience is still left wondering what exactly is going on in this film but with an understanding that the topic addressed is of epic proportions.