[In an earlier post entitled “Desperate Seeking Trailers,” we looked at the reasons survey respondents gave for why they viewed a given trailer.  This post, considers the responses of the 12% who said they hadn’t.]

 
It may be that the respondents who answered, “no, I have never searched for a particular trailer” and told us why, are among the most interesting audiences to understand for makers of trailers as well as for those who study them. As in so many fields and contexts, we learn more from criticism than from praise. 

Among ourselves, we playfully refer to this group as “haters,” although they aren’t hostile to trailers qua trailers but more precisely resentful of certain tendencies and practices of contemporary trailers.  While it’s tempting to dismiss the concerns as complaints from those who don’t understand the genre and its functional goals (a failing shared by many who love the form as well), it wouldn't be prudent. 

The concerns, dislikes and disappointments of filmgoing audiences about the films designed to grab their attention and impress them into an audience are not only interesting in themselves; in their particulars and their prevalence they demand responses from film marketers.  Rather than writing off such audiences, it seems both practical and profitable to engage them, educate them and find new ways to appeal to them.  

 The history of audio-visual movie marketing suggests that trailers evolve alongside film aesthetics and film technology and in relation to audience “literacy” and expectation.   While we see ample evidence that the aesthetics and technology of trailers are commonly discussed and thoughtfully investigated, our current research derives—at least in part-- from a belief that audience literacy and expectation are under-examined, under-theorized and under-estimated.   
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Typical and Anecdotal Responses:

Those who don’t search specifically for trailers frequently mention the “spoiler” effect of contemporary movie previews as their chief complaint against them.  It’s conventional wisdom in the industry that despite what audiences say to researchers about their antipathy for “tell-all” (or spoiler) trailers, those same audiences have been shown to be more likely to consume a given feature film--whether in-theater or via a paid internet platform-- when they know more about what they’re getting from it.

That said, we think there’s a compelling study to be made of the research pertaining to tell-all trailers, audience reactions and their ticket buying decisions.  In light of the responses we obtained, we ask whether and how it might be possible to provide the generic and narrative clues audiences are said to demand without also spoiling the surprise, anticipating the mystery or pre-telling the story of the film.  No doubt trailermakers work hard to finesse this exact issue project by project.  

Among the No’s were a significant numbers who might best be regarded as passive or indifferent. Among this disparate group are those who told us that “I never thought to do so,” or “I don’t see films at theaters,” “I let my partner do the searching,” “I have better things to do with my time” or “I don’t remember them.”  While these are verbatim quotes, the sentiments they express are not unique.

We should also mention the concerns of the trailer haters, who make up a subset of those who aren’t motivated to seek out specific trailers.   These audiences may never be redeemed by movie marketers, but knowing what their objections are provides the most likely means of redress.  
 
To begin with the mildest critics, many respondents express the legitimate desire to “preserve the surprise of the film itself.” When trailermakers deny this modest hope, a material percentage of audience members bitterly resent it.

Most difficult to engage or turn, perhaps, are those audiences who have no interest in the genre itself, preferring features to trailers.  If there are any audiences who are “lost” or can be written off with equanimity, these are those.

Balancing those who feel as if a trailer spoils the experience of the feature by presenting a truthful but too specific précis of the film, there are those respondents who expect to be deceived by trailers and consequently avoid the misrepresentation they’re certain to encounter.  Such audiences have trust issues that won’t easily be resolved.  

Now, while it’s theoretically possible for a deceptive and mis-leading trailer nonetheless to accurately and truthfully spoil the film story, its surprise(s) and uniqueness, none of our respondents described such a perverse experience.   It’s a wonderful hypothetical, however, that would make a great interview question for any candidate aspiring to a career as a trailer editor, copywriter or creative director.    

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

'Watching The Trailer' will take a break for the holidays and will be back online and posting in January, until then feel free to comment, or suggest seasonal trailers of your own.

What was the last trailer you viewed?

Designing this research project around our respondents’ experiences can be seen in Question 1 ‘What was the last trailer you viewed?’, which didn’t point them towards a trailer we had picked (that we thought was new, interesting or for another reason), but asked them to list the most recent trailer they’d viewed. Their answers led to others already discussed in these blog posts – including where they viewed, why, what they liked about it, etc.

But in this post, I want to think about the responses we got to Q1, and what they can tell us about people’s memory for trailers. In particular, I want to think through popular film titles, and two different subsets around trailer media and trailers as research/memory aids.

Most popular trailer titles

First, let’s look at some of the data:

·         525 people responded to this question

·         As we’ve discussed in other posts and through the press coverage, The Hobbit:                   Desolation of Smaug was listed most often (5.5% of responses, or 29 respondents)

·         The 2nd highest response, however, was ‘Don’t remember’ (5.1% / 27                                 respondents), which might underline the fact that trailers remain an ephemeral               experience for some audience members

·         3rd: The Amazing Spiderman 2 (4.1%, 22 respondents)

·         4th: The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (3.8%, 20 respondents)

·         5th: Anchorman 2 (3.0%, 16 respondents)

·         6th (equal): Gravity / The Wolf of Wall Street (2.8%, 15 respondents)

·         8th: Godzilla (2.6%, 14 respondents)

·         9th (equal): Frozen / Saving Mr Banks / 12 Years a Slave (1.9%, 10 respondents)

Even taking those initial 10 titles, it is clear that respondents appear to be viewing the bigger trailer releases of the December 2013-March 2014 time period during which the survey ran (good news for the studios releasing said titles, then). Just outside that top 10, and peeking at the later end of the survey, were titles like The LEGO Movie or Guardians of the Galaxy that equally fit within the mainstream trailer release schedule. The presence of Wolf of Wall Street and 12 Years a Slave likely point to nominations/ successes at various awards ceremonies.

It would, however, be unfair to consider this a list of the most successful trailers. For a start, what are we regarding as ‘success’ here, beyond the fact that a larger number had viewed that trailer last before completing our survey? Simply viewing a trailer cannot be taken as a sign of enjoyment or future movie attendance. Equally, the poor showing of the X-Men: Days of Future Past trailer (3 participants), or Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2 participants) seems to speak more to the release date of those trailers, than the content of them.

Given many of our respondents discussed the trailer in light of ‘entertainment research’ for future viewing, it might be useful in a later survey to move away from ‘last trailer viewed’ to consider the retention of knowledge and specific content over a longer period. Equally, moving away from ‘last trailer viewed’ might allow other films, genres or franchises to be represented.

Television and video game trailers

One interesting result of asking about ‘last trailer viewed’ was that while we didn’t specify ‘film trailer’, most respondents assumed that was what we were talking about. Yet there was a subset of responses that clearly referred to television or video game trailers:

1.      38 separate respondents (7.2%) listed a television programme ‘trailer’

2.      The highest rated television programme trailer (Sherlock: 1.5%, 8 respondents)                  came in at joint 14th on the full chart 

3.      The 2nd highest television entry is ‘TV trailer’ (0.7%, 4 respondents), largely                        mirroring the ‘can’t remember’ category of film trailers (see above)

4.      Of the other TV titles, Doctor Who and Game of Thrones got 3 responses each, with            single responses for another 17 programmes

5.      Only 3 video games were listed (0.5%), all individual titles


Again, these trailers are arguably the major releases in the time period (Sherlock debuted on New Year’s Day 2014, the Doctor Who Christmas special aired on Christmas Day 2013, Game of Thrones was broadcast in Spring 2014), suggesting a similar clustering of activity around certain key texts or mainstream releases as the film examples.

Historical Trailers

The second subset of ‘last trailer viewed’ I want to consider here takes us back to the film trailer, but away from contemporaneous releases to the survey. By ‘historical trailer’, then, we are referring to older trailers that may have required more purposeful searching, beyond the (more minimal) effort of following a media or social media link to a ‘new’ trailer. While this level of activity is harder to quantify, the first trailers that fit this category appear to be The World’s End and Star Trek Into Darkness (2 responses, 49th equal). The former can be explained by a staggered international release campaign, while the latter may have featured due to its DVD release in autumn 2013.

Further down the chart, among the 89 film titles that only had one response, were older titles such as The Life of Emile Zola (1937), Beloved (1998), Wise Blood (1979), Robin Hood (2010), The Thing (1981), Chalet Girl (2011), Atonement (2007), Kill Bill 2 (2004), Russian Ark (2002), Rushmore (1998), Punch Drunk Love (2002), and The Room (2003).

Complicating the idea that people think trailers mislead, however, is the sense that people get pleasure from re-watching trailers. The Robin Hood trailer, for example, was viewed because that respondent ‘wanted to get in the mood’ before viewing the film, while the Wise Blood trailer was used to prompt the respondent’s memory of why the film had been added to their Lovefilm list. In both cases, the trailer was clearly used for narrative / emotional preparation, or as an aide-memoire.

Academic preparation was an oft cited reason, perhaps demonstrating the wider pedagogic value of the trailer: Life of Emile Zola and Chalet Girl viewings were for ‘research’, Atonement for a journal article on Vanessa Redgrave; Beloved trailer for a class on African-American film adaptation; The Thing as research for a student essay; and The Room after reading an article about ‘mediocre’ films.

So, while our ‘last trailer viewed’ question confirmed the expectation that popular mainstream trailers are, indeed, popular and regularly viewed, it also underlined the many and varied functions that trailers can serve, particularly around memory.

These are topics we plan to investigate further in our next survey.