Ever wondered why movie previews are called trailers?
From a random article I found online.
In the days before television changed movie habits, most Americans went to the movies far more often than we do now. There were a lot of theaters, but many fewer screens because there was just one screen to a theater. (Seems unbelievable now, doesn't it?) Many theaters showed double bills (two movies together). One was a main feature, the other a shorter B movie (B stood for budget movie, as in low-budget). In between the films were, typically, a cartoon, a newsreel, public service announcements (Buy War Bonds! Give to Polio Research!) coming attraction trailers and short subjects (often travelogues or documentaries). You could stay in the theater for hours before you saw a repeat.
Advertisements for coming films were attached to the end of the last reel of a film. (Movies then, as with most movies now, came to the theater on several reels - or pieces - of film.) They literally trailed that movie. Moviegoers would not necessarily know the trailers were on the end of a film, because there never saw a break in the projections. They just knew the coming atttractions came between films.
These days, of course, we see just one movie when we go to the theater, and coming attractions are shown before the movie. The studios add previews for their own movies to the start of the first reel, and the theater may add on more previews from other studios. (That's why they seem endless.) So the word preview - which used to mean an advance showing of an entire movie, as in sneak preview or advance preview - has become the more common, and more logical term for trailers.
But I'll keep calling them trailers because I'm a smarty pants snob. (Or maybe too old to learn a new name.)
From a random article I found online.
In the days before television changed movie habits, most Americans went to the movies far more often than we do now. There were a lot of theaters, but many fewer screens because there was just one screen to a theater. (Seems unbelievable now, doesn't it?) Many theaters showed double bills (two movies together). One was a main feature, the other a shorter B movie (B stood for budget movie, as in low-budget). In between the films were, typically, a cartoon, a newsreel, public service announcements (Buy War Bonds! Give to Polio Research!) coming attraction trailers and short subjects (often travelogues or documentaries). You could stay in the theater for hours before you saw a repeat.
Advertisements for coming films were attached to the end of the last reel of a film. (Movies then, as with most movies now, came to the theater on several reels - or pieces - of film.) They literally trailed that movie. Moviegoers would not necessarily know the trailers were on the end of a film, because there never saw a break in the projections. They just knew the coming atttractions came between films.
These days, of course, we see just one movie when we go to the theater, and coming attractions are shown before the movie. The studios add previews for their own movies to the start of the first reel, and the theater may add on more previews from other studios. (That's why they seem endless.) So the word preview - which used to mean an advance showing of an entire movie, as in sneak preview or advance preview - has become the more common, and more logical term for trailers.
But I'll keep calling them trailers because I'm a smarty pants snob. (Or maybe too old to learn a new name.)
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