The Ledger · Entry 088 · Creation
Cutting the trailer for a film
ContestedSince 2016Criterion practiceLast reviewed 2026-08-17
Event
IBM Watson selects ten scenes from the film Morgan in August 2016 for what 20th Century Fox presented as the first trailer cut by a machine, and an IBM filmmaker assembles them.
The claim was smaller than the headline. The system had been shown around a hundred horror trailers, then the whole of Morgan, and it returned six minutes of candidate footage in ten pieces, which a person ordered, trimmed, graded and scored. Selection is the part that moved, and it moved further since, since trailer houses now log and search rushes automatically and streaming services test cut versions and thumbnails against audiences. A trailer is a promise about what watching the film will be like, made to sell tickets, and the promise is a commercial decision a distributor signs. Nothing in the machine's ranking of scenes knows what should be withheld.