A few days ago, I wrote that the Carol trailer is a Feeling Trailer.  In other words, a collage of individual, non-sequential shots—jumping from one scene to the next.

This is the polar opposite of the growing number of trailers that focus much of their attention on a single scene, as I discussed in my write-up for the Black Mass trailer. These One-Scene Trailers provide viewers with dozens—even a hundred—sequential shots and unbroken pages of dialogue.

What’s fascinating, though, is that despite the stark contrast between these two extreme forms of trailers, they actually share the same goal. The goal of both the Feeling Trailer and the One-Scene Trailer is to give viewers a sense of the tone that they can expect from the underlying film. Note that this goal is distinct from the typical trailer’s goal of establishing the underlying film’s story.

So, I suppose the bottom line is that when a trailer’s focus is either extremely broad or extremely narrow, the major thing that the viewer is able to take away from it is the underlying film’s core tone.