Movie Trailer History Part 2

Stanley Kubrick

Stanley Kubrick was an American film director and was pronounced as being "among the most important contributions to world cinema in the twentieth century." He was very controlling when it came to his films and he did everything which also meant that he created the trailers for his films. Two of the most notable to the film trailer history are that of his films, Dr Strangelove: Or How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb and The Shining. Over his long career he has won 40 awards and was nominated for 51 more awards. 

1964- 

Dr Strangelove: Or How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love The Bomb was one of the first movie trailers to completely break all previous conventions of the film trailer. The sporadically pieced together footage and the random questions that are not intended to be answer in the film all went along with the weird humor that is featured in this film. The use of the text with the footage creates a funny and interesting trailer that was at the time and now really, the only one of it's time.

1980 -

The Shining is said to be of the most effective horror trailers ever with the slow creepy music and one stationary shot of the elevator doors with the writing scrolling slowly over the screen building tension. The blood then coming out of the doors and flooding the lobby makes people wonder what the film is about and what relevance this scene has to the film as it gives away none of the story line.

Don LaFontaine 

Don LaFontaine was an American voice actor who had nicknames of "Thunder Throat" and "The Voice of God" was most well known for creating the cliche "In a World..." which seems to start most film trailers.

In 1963 LaFontaine went into business with Floyd Peterson after they worked together on a radio show for a year. Their business produced advertising exclusively for the film industry. Whilst working on a project in 1964, LaFontaine had to fill in for a voice over artist that was sick, as they needed to have something to show to MGM. MGM then brought the trailer, starting LaFontaine's voice over career. After this he spent a long while as the head of Kaleidoscope Films Ltd. one of the first trailer production houses.

After full-filling his job there Don went on to making his own production company Don LaFontaine Associates. His first project as an independent producer was The Godfather Part II.

In 1978 LaFontaine joined  Paramount Pictures and was in chatge of their trailer department, this resulted in him becoming "The Voice of Paramount" voicing most of their film trailers. In 1980 Don was named Vice- President of Paramount but missed the production. This made him leave Paramount in 1981 and again going solo.

He made the move from New York to Los Angeles all of this resulted in him getting a call from an agent called Steve Tisherman who wanted LaFontaine to pursue voice overs with more enthusiasm this resulting in LaFontaine signing with Tisherman and now having his voice used in over 5000 trailers and being the most well know voice in Hollywood.

Lafontaine has also donr adverts for the likes of GEICO and Coca Cola and has even been the voice over for the Academy Awards and was the voice of NBC, CBS and many other TV channels.

LaFontaine's voice changed the way that films were first introdued to audiences as his voice made the story more dramatic, more tense and more appealing for the audiences to go and see, which is probably why he could be recording up to 35 voice overs a day and could have been counted as the busiest actors in Hollywood. Don passed away in 2008 due to pneumothorax (a collapsed lung) but has left behind a legacy that will not be forgotten.


Sources:
http://www.donlafontaine.com/Index.html?p=Bio.html&pt=
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_LaFontaine