Creating Big-Screen Audiences Through Small-Screen Appeals

Abstract

Film trailers have begun to garner scholarly interest among film and music specialists, whereas spots or trailers produced for cinematic campaigns on television remain unexamined. This chapter attempts to redress the gap by studying the history, functions, and aesthetics of film advertising on television, primarily from the perspective of their soundtracks. The study documents how film studios only gradually accepted the medium of television for promoting their products, initially experimenting with a variety of formats and distribution models into the 1960s. Analysis of recent television trailer texts and practices reveals their reliance upon music as a narrative and gestural force, which increases as the release day draws closer and the short forms become shorter: music’s concision dictates its leading role in creating the urgency of last-minute appeals. Closer examination of one television marketing campaign in particular, for The Dark Knight Rises (2012), illustrates how music functions within typical small-screen advertising promotion.