Movie Trailer Facts

The color of the background for movie rating cards is important. The rating for the film itself shows up in text, but is also indicated by the background color of the rating card splash screen.
There are three colors used - red, yellow, and green. The specific regulations surrounding what can be shown in the preview for each of these rating cards are set by the MPAA.
The most commonly seen one is the green rating card. Before April of 2009, a green background meant that the preview was approved for all audiences. Since April of 2009, the MPAA now states that the green card is for “appropriate audiences”. This basically means it is appropriate for audiences in theaters, taking into account what movie the audience is about to watch.
A yellow rating card indicates the preview is for age-appropriate Internet viewers and is used on internet trailers only. The red rating card indicates that content in the preview is only appropriate for mature audiences. These previews can only be shown in theaters where the movie about to be watched is R-rated, NC-17-rated, or unrated.

Theatrical trailers must be less than two minutes and 30 seconds, as mandated by the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America). The MPAA gives each movie studio one exception to this a year where they are allowed to show a trailer that is longer than 2 minutes and 30 seconds. Trailers shown online can be any length. The rating system itself is entirely voluntary on the part of studios. However, having a film rated tends to boost revenues significantly, so nearly all major studios submit all their films for rating.

What's in a Name, Movie Trailers

The first movie trailers occurred at the end of the films. They were called “trailers” because the advertisements would be spliced directly on the end of the reels, so that the movie advertisement’s film trailed the actual film.

The first known movie trailer to appear in a theater was in November of 1913. It was made by Nils Granlund, advertising manager of Marcus Loew theaters in the United States. The trailer was for the musical The Pleasure Seekers, which was shortly to open on Broadway. In this trailer, he included short clips of rehearsals of the musical. This idea caught on and trailers began appearing routinely after films. This was particularly the case with cartoon shorts and serials that would often end in climactic situations where you needed to watch the next episode in the serial or cartoon to see what would happen. Thus, these trailers, in particular those that advertised the next episode, made a lot more sense at the end of the serial than at the beginning.

Movie studios realized that full film advertisements would be more effective if they showed up before the movie, instead of after, and by the end of the 1930s the switch had been made. Despite the industry’s sincerest attempts over the last 60 or 70 years to get the name changed from “trailers” to some form of “previews”, among industry professionals and English speaking audiences “trailer” is still the generally used term. Recently the general public has begun to use 'previews'.

Of the ten billion videos watched online, movie trailers rank third, after news and user created videos.