Examination of the Hollywood Movie Trailers Editing Pattern Evolution over Time by Using the Quantitative Approach of Statistical Stylistic Analysis

Abstract

In this study, I took the quantitative research approach of film statistical stylistic analysis to examine the editing pattern evolution of 130 Hollywood movie trailers over the past 60 years from 1951 to 2015; the prior studies on the overall evolution of the Hollywood movies’ editing pattern are compared and discussed. The results suggest that although the movie trailers are much shorter than the whole movies, the average shot lengths of the trailers still display a declining trend over the past 60 years, and the variations in the shot lengths are also decreasing. Second, the motions within each framedo not change significantly over the years, while the correlation coefficients between the shot lengths and the motions within the shots are moving toward a more negative correlation relationship over time, suggesting that the trailers are subject to an editing evolution trend that the shorter the shot is, the more motions there are within it, and this also aligns with the overall movies’ editing pattern evolution trend. Last, the luminance of the trailers remains almost the same over time, which does not align with the overall movies’ editing pattern evolution of becoming darker and darker over decades. Together these findings suggest that the movie trailers’ editing rhythm evolution in general aligns with that of overall movies over time while the visual editing pattern evolution of color luminance does not. The study results will improve our understanding on how the Hollywood movie trailers’ editing pattern and style have evolved over time and pave the way for future advertising studies and cognitive psychology studies on the audience’s attention, immersion and emotional response to various editing patterns of movie trailers.