Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Why do new trailers seem to debut in theaters LAST?

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Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 10-25-2019, 06:13 PM:

So the social buzz right now is all about the new Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker trailer. So I eagerly tore into our Trail-Mix this weeks (because those buttholes at DCDC won't put us on satellite) and the damn SW trailer is not on it.

MAYBE it will be on next week's drive.

Meanwhile people are asking about it, and we are stuck showing the "older" trailer.

I know that "online" is "where it's at" these days, but if they would put the trailers into the theaters first, or at least concurrently with the online release, it might even drive more people to, oh I don't know, go see a movie in a theater. In a perfect world there would be trailers featuring content that would ONLY be seen in theaters...but no, we have to take the back seat.

If there was a plausible reason for this I would be fine with it, but it just seems like total stupidity to me.

Posted by Marcel Birgelen (Member # 6801) on 10-25-2019, 06:25 PM:

I still don't get why the studios don't simply publish the DCP version of their trailers on-line, some indie distributors do so, but I don't know any major studio doing so... Even crazier are encrypted trailers...

Posted by Sascha F. Roll (Member # 9043) on 10-25-2019, 06:34 PM:

At least in Germany Distributors make their trailers available through different online platforms like eclairplay.com and shark.de or dc.arri.de. Those 3 probably have 90% of all DCP trailers that exist.

Gofilex also delivers Trailers with their E-Delivery system.

No Trailer HDDs IN Germany...

Posted by Marcel Birgelen (Member # 6801) on 10-25-2019, 06:40 PM:

In Europe, it's also more common to get feature DCPs via broadband.

Still, the absence of a good, international on-line content distribution network for assets like trailers and maybe even entire DCPs eludes me...

Posted by Ed Gordon (Member # 10866) on 10-25-2019, 07:10 PM:

If you care to make your own DCP, You can download Star Wars Episode IX – The Rise of Skywalker (2019) Trailer 2 1080p DTS-HD MA 5.1 The Digital Theater

Posted by Justin Hamaker (Member # 2165) on 10-25-2019, 08:35 PM:

This is something that has bothered me for a while. Studios could help push people to theatres by advertising that a certain trailer will debut on a certain movie. It may not help with most movies, but it certainly could help with Star Wars.

Posted by Jesse Skeen (Member # 586) on 10-28-2019, 02:10 PM:

The Episode I trailer was promoted as showing with Wing Commander, but Lucas got mad about that and had the trailer pulled- they were obviously using it as a reason to see that crappy movie.

Posted by Daniel Schulz (Member # 1881) on 10-28-2019, 06:44 PM:

This is a great point. I'd love to see a push where they release a shorter trailer online, with a card at the end that says "To see the full trailer, visit your neighborhood movie theatre."

Posted by Jarod Reddig (Member # 6363) on 10-28-2019, 07:26 PM:

Ive wondered this too. By the time we see some of these previews in theaters they have been circling everyones social media timeline for a month or so.

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 10-29-2019, 09:54 AM:

Yeah, debuting a movie trailer online is really not the best move for movie studios. They really should appear in movie theaters first, that way customers can get their first impression of that trailer in a proper movie theater. It's not the same getting that first impression on a TV screen, computer screen or (God forbid) on a damned smart phone.

I would go even go a step farther with the trailers for highly anticipated movies, making those trailers an exclusive for the first few days in premium theaters (Dolby Cinema, IMAX, etc). The debut of a big tent pole movie trailer really needs to be seen for the first time on a huge screen with giant sound. Use those trailers as an additional "carrot" to convince people to see a certain movie debuting in theaters.

Personally I can remember the experience of seeing trailers for certain event movies for the first time in commercial theaters. I can still remember the experience of seeing the 70mm Total Recall teaser 30 years later because it was a simple yet very effective trailer. I wish there was a home video version of that trailer with an actual 5.1 track. The first teaser for Independence Day was great. I liked the first teaser trailer for Twister more than the movie itself.

I've watched lots of movie trailers on computer screens, some on my iPad and even on my smart phone. Even if I liked what I saw the details of the experience were instantly forgettable. Worse, the experience of watching on a small screen did little to sell me on watching the movie on a big commercial theater screen. I could just as easily watch the whole movie on the same kind of small screen.

Posted by Mitchell Dvoskin (Member # 751) on 10-29-2019, 02:06 PM:

> Why do new trailers seem to debut in theaters LAST?

Obviously, because the studios feel that theatres, even with their captive audience of known movie goers, is the least productive place to promote their films. Whether that is actually true or not is certainly debatable, but the people who control promotion for the studios certainly must believe it to be so.

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 10-29-2019, 03:18 PM:

Erroneous post.... please delete

Posted by Scott Jentsch (Member # 1681) on 10-31-2019, 06:03 PM:

When are the "Trail Mixes" put together?

The trailer debuted Monday night (10/21), so if your package is refreshed every Monday morning, for example, they wouldn't have added it, because then it wouldn't have had its exclusive debut on Monday night like they wanted (and likely made a deal with Monday Night Football for).

For those that get their trailers by satellite, was it available via satellite on the night of 10/21 or soon thereafter?

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 10-31-2019, 10:04 PM:

I really have to question the "wisdom" of debuting a movie trailer on OTA broadcast TV during Monday Night Football. Perhaps there is a decent movie-ticket buying demographic watching that program. I'm sure there is also a contingent of viewers who watch pirated movies off Kodi boxes or modded Amazon Fire sticks. And there's always those football fans who just don't watch movies cuz movies are for nerds.

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 10-31-2019, 11:10 PM:

quote: Bobby Henderson
Perhaps there is a decent movie-ticket buying demographic watching that program.

They're just casting a wide net. Football always has a big audience.

quote: Scott Jentsch
When are the "Trail Mixes" put together?

The trailer debuted Monday night (10/21), so if your package is refreshed every Monday morning, for example, they wouldn't have added it, because then it wouldn't have had its exclusive debut on Monday night like they wanted (and likely made a deal with Monday Night Football for).

Ah, an exclusive deal with MNF. That answers a lot right there.

The Star Wars trailer finally showed up on our trail mix this week, which we got yesterday.

It should have been on the trail mix that came the week before the 21st. The theaters should have been able to debut it on the 18th.

Posted by Scott Jentsch (Member # 1681) on 11-01-2019, 01:25 PM:

I like the idea of theater-exclusive trailers. Put the teaser at the end of the online and TV distribution trailers that says "check out the exclusive trailer at a theater near you".

Maybe NATO could work on that? (ducks)

Posted by Jesse Skeen (Member # 586) on 11-02-2019, 08:41 PM:

Although trailers in theaters haven't been quite as impactful ever since it became standard practice to keep the lights up during them.

Posted by Scott Jentsch (Member # 1681) on 11-05-2019, 05:07 PM:

Theaters around here have the lights up for the promo pre-show material, but then lower them for the trailers.

We're dominated by Marcus, but the one Emagine nearby also does the same.

It's been quite a while since I've been in an AMC or Regal, so I don't know if it's chain-by-chain thing.

Unlike Brad, I believe that good showmanship includes playing the trailers at full volume, with all channels driven. While I wish that theaters still had curtains to draw, I can't even find a theater that uses masking around here (the Movie Tavern that just opened uses constant-width screens, so letterboxed movies it is--ack!), so curtains are too much to expect from a showmanship perspective...

Posted by Frank Cox (Member # 6258) on 11-05-2019, 05:27 PM:

I don't play trailers at full volume. They are too far loud. Trailers are recorded far louder than the movie and will blast the customers out of their seat if they were played at the same setting as the movie.

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 11-05-2019, 08:39 PM:

We have three volume settings:

3.3 for the ads/preshow
3.6 for the trailers (all channels)
4.6 to whatever sounds good for the specific movie

Sometimes I'll turn the trailers up a little if we have a large crowd. I like the trailers to have impactful sound, but not QUITE as impactful as the movie itself.

I might drop a note to John Fithian (NATO president) about this late-trailers-to-theaters concern. He might not even be aware of the problem. It's certainly never been written up in Boxoffice or any of the NATO newsletters.

Posted by Marcel Birgelen (Member # 6801) on 11-06-2019, 05:42 AM:

The over-compression of trailers is really a stupid trend that set in. As a result, everybody needed to follow suit, because, otherwise their trailer sounds less impactful than all the others.

As a reaction, everybody turns the volume way down, often leading to trailers not being as impactful as they should be...

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 11-06-2019, 12:19 PM:

Well, what's worse is they do that and then LEAVE the volume down, ruining the feature's sound.

I think there are a lot of operators or managers who think there must be some sort of happy medium with the volume level. There isn't.

Posted by Marcel Birgelen (Member # 6801) on 11-06-2019, 03:41 PM:

Yeah, it has certainly happened and in a world with fully-automated multiplexes, there is often nobody around to even notice it.

Sound is about half the experience of the movie, so it is important that it's good and the correct volume plays a big part in it.

But the volume level in trailers keeps being an issue. It's even a bigger issue when you pull them from on-line sources, because the studio takes forever to get you one on DCP.

Maybe I'm proposing something illegal here, but they are just trailers, often already available on YouTube and whatnot... Maybe exhibitors should start a small on-line sharing service to share those kind of assets? As long as the content isn't encrypted, this should be possible.