Media Studies A2 Level: The Fast5 Movie Trailers

It is a guideline set by the MPAA that no trailers are allowed to be longer than 2 minutes 30 seconds.

For a company to purchase 2 minutes 30 seconds of prime time advertising space, it would cost a tremendous amount of money. So, as a general rule, the longer trailers are shown in the cinema, before another film and on the internet, where they can be viewed endlessly and for free. There isn’t a cost to upload a video to YouTube. In fact, when a trailer gets so many million views, it will probably start making money from advertisement opportunities on the page.

For a long time there have been different versions of a movie trailer. For each film released, there may be around 5 different versions of the trailer, just from the distribution company. There are then the fan videos that can be taken into account. Fan trailers are made from movie fans that take clips of different trailers and put them together to produce their own take. I have seen examples of these that have received several million views.

To show an example of the different types of movie trailers, I have looked at one of the most popular films of 2011, Fast5 (Fast and Furious 5). Below are 4 different videos, each are not my own work but I am using them as an example.

This is the OFFICIAL trailer for Fast5. It is just under 2:30 minutes long (meets the criteria set by MPAA) and would have been shown in the Cinema, just before other films, and on the internet, where it is free for thousands or even millions of people to view the trailer.

Here is a trailer that is 30 seconds long. It is still official and produced by the production company but as it is now shorter, it can be shown on TV, which is a more expensive form of advertising, especially at prime time. They tend to come in batches of a few different versions of the trailers, here is the first.