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Comment by pbhjpbhj | Hacker News Reader

Movie trailers are awful now. They generally show you all the important points of the movie and all the best SFX. Sometimes the movie is worse than the trailer. First 10 minutes sounds great - you'd know if you want to see more or not from that but it wouldn't [in most cases] give the whole plot away.

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A few months ago I began finding my seat in theaters, hanging out with my friends, and leaving as the trailers began to stand in the lobby listening to music till the trailers ended before coming back in. Avoided all internet/tv trailers too.

I enjoy movies orders of magnitude more now not already having seen the set piece scenes / heard the important lines.

Agree. I assume some of the trailers of the movies are automatically generated. There are these groups in my university conducting research of generating trailers / sound effects / background music. Choosing the best scenes in the movie automatically and combined them in a good way.

What inputs are they using to chose the best scenes. Is it based only on the movie? Audience reactions at screenings? Sounds interesting.

You could presumably then tailor trailers to particular groups to emphasise desired attributes.

Downside to that is that if you sit through a few trailers you could literally have seen a-third of the movie before you go to watch it.

funny thing is - trailers are today revealing much less than in the past.

If you have seen the movie True Grit - either the old or the new one - compare the trailer to the 1969 version, which essentially gives out all the plotpoints - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tN-j4GDqjv4 - and the trailer to the 2010 version - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CUiCu-zuAgM .

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