Braaam is the industry nickname for the huge, low, brassy blast that became a fixture of blockbuster trailers after the campaign for Christopher Nolan’s Inception in 2010. Nolan’s screenplay already asked for massive low-end musical tones resembling distant horns, and the result sounds like a foghorn: low brass, often synthesised or layered, hammered on a single pitch.
Its authorship is disputed. Hans Zimmer, the film’s composer, has called himself its godfather and described brass players performing into the resonance of a piano in a church, with electronic processing; Mike Zarin, hired for the first teaser, traces it to his recordings of a rumbling subway train; Zack Hemsey wove braams into his trailer piece Mind Heist without claiming to have invented them. Similar blasts had already appeared in trailers for Transformers (2007) and District 9 (2009). Parodied by South Park and endlessly varied, it became a sustained low tone compressed into a single crushing gesture.