Trailer editor Bill Neil works at Buddha Jones making movie trailers that scare, excite, and, most importantly, get people to want to see a movie. His work includes Jordan Peele’s Nope, Zack Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead, and M. Night Shyamalan’s Old.
In this video, he explains the things a trailer editor notices about trailers old and new, great and terrible, and somewhere in the middle. Starting with trailers from the ’60s, he gets all the way to the present while reviewing techniques like sound design, “rug pulls,” and how to hide fake blood. And if you feel the urge to complain that today’s trailers give too much of the plot away, Neil shows us how that’s not a brand-new trend.
For more videos on the film industry, check out Vox producer Ed Vega’s latest video on subtitles and why we all seem to need them now.
You can find this video and all of Vox’s videos on YouTube.
