Why Movie Previews Are Called Trailers
The simple, historical reason the clips shown before a movie still bear the name for something that was originally shown after it.
Sometimes the best part about going to the movie theater is watching the previews of upcoming movies, which are commonly referred to as “trailers.” Knowing the meaning of the word “trailer,” it becomes evident that these previews don’t align with the times they are supposed to be shown. The answer to why is relatively simple and relates to how movie previews got their start.
A trailer of a movie is likely the first glimpse of a new film you’ll see, and it largely determines if you will be interested in watching the movie. It is often filled with gripping scenes and dramatic voice-overs to entice us to want to buy a ticket to see the film. The same concept was in place the first time a trailer for a movie was shown, but in this case, it came after the movie was finished, hence the term “trailer.”
In the first movie theaters in the 1900s, there wasn’t much choice in what movie a patron was going to see. A movie would show on one screen, and a set of cartoons would play before it showed again. Things changed in 1912 when an advertising manager named Nils Granlund made one of the first trailers for theaters owned by Marcus Loew (the namesake of the current theater chain). The film piece was one minute long for a Broadway show called The Pleasure Seekers, and the clip was shown after the movie. But Granlund wasn’t the only one with this idea.
In the same year in Chicago, William Selig was making print serial films, which were films of different episodes that told a story. As a teaser, Selig showed a snippet of the next installment after the other short movie was over. The first reference to these clips was in a 1966 Los Angeles Times article by a Paramount executive named Lou Harris, during an interview when he discussed a clip from one of Selig’s serials. After the movie had been shown at a New York amusement park, the executive noted there was a “trailed” bit of film that told about the following week’s exciting episode. This is what became known as a trailer.
This method of showing an upcoming release after the main feature in a theater became popular, and movie studios started making their own trailers around 1916. The first official mention of these pieces of film as “trailers” came from an article in the New York Times in 1917. The article discussed how the National Association of the Motion Picture Industry was sending trailers to movie theaters to be attached to the end of the feature films currently being shown.
Many of these early official trailers by the studios had the same format used today, featuring important eye-catching scenes from the movie with dramatic voice-overs and text. Trailers seemed to get their name from where the extra piece of film was placed, which “trailed” the main feature. In the case of serials, it only made sense to put extra film after the main episode since this was what enticed people to come back to the theater to see the next episode the following week.
The trailer was also a tool to clear audiences out of the theater since the movies that ran were shown in a loop, allowing patrons to stay for as long as they liked. For some people arriving at the theater, it seemed like they were watching a clip about an upcoming movie before the main feature. This was because of the continuous loop of movies shown, even though the trailer was placed after the main feature.
At some point, someone realized that more people were likely to see a clip about an upcoming attraction if it was shown before the main feature began. This became the preview set in the spot we know today, but the industry term for this type of movie clip continues to be referred to as a trailer.
Sources: Straight Dope, Priceonomics, Word Origins