In a world full of movie trailers, an expert boldly breaks down a bunch of common trailer tropes

Who doesn’t love a good movie trailer? We sure do! So, apparently, does Jessica Fox, a creative director at Mark Woollen & Associates who works in the world of trailers and teasers. In this video, she—actually, let’s set this up differently.

In a world full of advertising, one creative director would summon the courage to sit down in front of Vanity Fair’s cameras and break down some of the common tropes we see in trailers. Those tropes include the “scopey establishing shot,” the preview pulse (“pwoummmmmmm”), repetition of sounds, bumpers (that’s the trailer-before-the-trailer), and of course, the “in a world” voice. It’s pretty great!

This, of course, made us want to watch a million trailers at once. The Dead Don’t Die is mentioned in the narration section, but it’s also got a couple of others:

Here’s the excellent trailer for A Serious Man, featured prominently in the repetitive sound section:

Godzilla: King Of The Monsters has that preview pulse thing going:

Blade Runner 2049 has got several:

And here’s the Magic Mike XXL trailer, just because:

Look for our picks for the best trailers of 2019 in the coming weeks. For now, a good loud low “pwoummmmmmm” to you and yours, and may all your trailers have trailers.