Why You Need A Trailer!

By Tom Getty

Over 700 films were released in 2019, according to the Motion Picture Association of America—roughly 150 more than 2010. In less than a decade, there were 30% more movies each year. To put in perspective: by 2030, a thousand new movies each year will flood the market. That’s just for movies that obtain a rating from the Motion Pictures Association of America. The numbers do not account for the “indie” titles that overwhelm the festivals each year. For instance, the Sundance Film festival, alone, each year, receives over 3,000 feature film submissions. But that pales in comparison to the amount released on the internet. Each year, Netflix, Amazon, Hulu releases hundreds of films, TV series, documentaries, pushing the total haul into the thousands. Never mind YouTube, where millions of users upload 500 hours of video per minute—every minute. Hour after hour. That’s 30,000 hours, per hour. All of it, ostensibly, for free.

The filmmaker, the producer, the movie-executive looks at those numbers with a lump in his throat. Quickly, he tries to rationalize: most of those movies, movie-media, cannot possibly be any good. The producer would be right. Most of what is released, most of what is uploaded, is bad. Subjectivity not withstanding—and, as the reader will see, having absolutely nothing to do with anything—most of what is released each year is bad, is poorly done, is not deserving of any attention. From the backyard production to the most expensive film in Hollywood—most of it is undisciplined jettison. The filmmaker, the producer, the executive, can safely assume 99.9% of what is released will disappoint whoever consumes it.

But, that does not matter.

Movies—video-media, content, films, however one puts it—are temporal. Their consumption requires time. Their digestion requires even more. It takes experience to find out something is bad or good. And even at that, no one really knows. All those movies, irrespective of their quality, require a consumption not of themselves—but of time.

The competition is not against those movies. It’s against the tens of thousands of hours those movies themselves individually command in attention. Which, when tabulated, would require over a single year of constant viewing just to get through. Five thousand movies would equate to, roughly, 10,000 hours of film. That’s 400 days of straight viewing.

And by then, there would still be more, newer movies to sit through, to sift about, to digest.

It would literally never end.

Simply, a movie cannot compete on quality. It is a meaningless qualifier that will never be discovered or understood. It is an afterthought.

A movie must compete on time. The competition of Hollywood, of entertainment, is not a battle for attention, money, fame, or power. It is a war for time.

And time, is non-negotiable.

The box office is not a reflection of dollars earned, but of time spent. The top films dominated not just money—although, the coffers certainly suggest that—but rather, and more importantly, time. When the latest AVENGERS sequel tops the box office, it is not a reflection of just money spent, but of time invested. Which is a far greater investment when one considers how limited the hours of our lives are. Simply, box office success reflects how people wanted to spend their leisure—for better or worse.

When it comes to movie success—money is not the problem. Time is. Money is only the prize; time is the battleground.