By: Cole Malone
Movie trailers give the public the first glimpse and impressions of the upcoming movie, so its important to tell what the story will be about without completely spoiling the plot. Many trailers use narration and specific lines to build this anticipation for a movie, and tell a broad narrative of the overarching plot. For instance, Marvel’s Avengers: Infinity War‘s official trailer uses a very unique technique to get the audience excited. Pay attention to the first 30-40 seconds of the trailer.
The first part of the trailer strictly uses actors voices to tell the quick and summarized idea of what the Avengers are. If you’re a huge Marvel nerd like myself, you can close your eyes, only listen, and immediately recognize the characters speaking. This then transitions into the iconic Avengers theme song, and further transitions into another piece of dialogue from the main villain Thanos. Marvel is typically known to appeal to their diehard fans rather than casuals. This trailer is a great example of that, as you can recognize the actors speaking and the Marvel theme song without even opening an eye.
All this being said, I believe the audio in this trailer is what truly gets the fans and future viewers excited. Someone like myself could only listen to the trailer and get just as excited for the movie. It provides listeners with all of the key elements of a trailer: excitement, narrative, and anticipation. This is very unique because many trailers rely on action scenes or big moments in the film to preview their movie. In my opinion, this is one of the few trailers that prioritizes its audio over its video display, and succeeds in the process.