Alum Adam Finkelstein (COM’09) Makes Movie Trailers for the Masses

It starts with a sound: footsteps on a metal staircase, or the choke of an engine. A siren’s wail follows, or an eerie xylophone. Then a voice comes in with an ominous message. No more than 15 seconds has passed, but looking away is no longer an option.

That’s the goal for Adam Finkelstein (COM’09), an editor and a producer at the Los Angeles movie-trailer production studio Trailer Park: no looking away once his preview hits the big screen. And with a maximum of 2 minutes and 30 seconds to introduce characters, highlight key plot points, and hint at the drama and action to come, there isn’t a moment to spare in his effort to create the most compelling movie trailers in the business.

“You have 5 to 10 seconds to get people very, very interested, or you’re gonna lose them,” Finkelstein says.

After eight years at Trailer Park, where he started as an intern in his final semester at the College of Communication, Finkelstein has become an expert in wringing the most from those seconds. He’s cut trailers for a range of films, from the Disney animated feature Braveto the much-anticipated Wonder Woman, racking up accolades along the way for his chilling, madness-tinged cuts for Mad Max: Fury Road and Stranger Things, the Netflix science-fiction series. With a strong affinity for music and sound design and a well-honed instinct for visual drama, Finkelstein works according to one long-held belief: there’s no better entertainment than a great trailer.

“I’ll never forget when I was watching a movie in the theater, and got up to go to the bathroom, and then the trailer for The Matrix Revolutions came on,” he says. “It stopped me in my tracks. I said, ‘I have to see what this is.’ For me, the best part of going to the movies was always the trailers.”

In the film industry, trailers play an unprecedented role in marketing, awards campaigns, and even editing and development. Studios premiere trailers at fan conventions or release them online, intent on racking up record-breaking views in the first 24 hours (top performers include 2017’s Beauty and the Beast, with 127.6 million views, and Fifty Shades Darker, with 114 million). YouTube makes Academy Award predictions based on how often users view trailers. Small wonder that trailer editing has become a fast-growing and highly competitive industry in Hollywood. At Trailer Park, editors even vie for projects internally, with each one cutting his or her own version of a trailer and waiting to get the marketing agency’s nod.