“300″ had a great trailer. They had good material to work with as the movie had such strong and distinctive visuals. “Bee Movie’s” trailers were off-beat and funnier than the movie. So was the trailer for “Across the Universe,” which lent itself well to a kaleidoscopic music video format.

Most trailers do give away too much of the plot. Usually it is the trailers for comedies that give away the most. The worse the comedy, the more likely every good joke will be in the trailer. I was very pleasantly surprised to find that the trailer for “Baby Mama” left a lot of the surprises for the film while providing a good idea of the content of the movie.

One thing that frustrates me — I wrote an op-ed for USA Today about it — is when the trailer has material that is not in the film or when it specifically misrepresents the content of the film so that parents and other audience members with content concerns are misled about the level of sexual or violent material. The trailer for the Jennifer Lopez film “Angel Eyes” was especially deceptive about the plot and genre of the movie and the trailer for “Saving Silverman” put CGI underpants on Steve Zahn for what in the movie was a nude scene with some raunchy humor.

You have to ignore the soundtrack because often it is not actually from the film. I think the appeal of the trailer is when it gives you enough information to make the movie’s concept intriguing. So what I like is a clear but seductive presentation of the movie’s premise or set-up, with a sense of the characters.

A good trailer can be a great little film. It’s always important to keep in mind that the better a trailer is, the less sure you are that it fairly represents the movie.

They are their own art form, as has been hilariously parodied by Black20 and others.

Just as with the features themselves, the low-budget folks have to be more inventive and creative, especially because they usually don’t have the ability to sell a film the easy way — with name-brand stars or splashy special effects. So they really have to emphasize the story.

I am happy to have lots of trailers on DVDs. In fact, I admit that when videos were first commercially available our local store would let you take a free all-trailers video home when you rented something else and I did and enjoyed them! But most people want to watch DVDs more than once so you should be able to skip them individually or as a group and it is very frustrating and annoying when you can’t.