Trailers are short clips that tell the story of a movie in a highly condensed fashion to maximize the impact of the film. This form of marketing has become a lucrative industry in the decades since it was first introduced.
There are many different types of trailers, ranging from green band trailers for television spots to full-length commercials that feature a film’s main characters or plot elements. The following tips can help you create a great trailer for your project:
1. The best trailers introduce the main character and set up a central conflict, allowing the viewer to empathize with them. They also often end on a cliffhanger that leaves the central conflict unresolved, making the rest of the film even more intriguing to viewers.
2. The best trailers use music and visual tone poems to build suspense, set the mood, and amplify emotional response to the characters on screen.
3. The best trailers are synecdoches, a representation of the whole.
A trailer should be synecdoche: it should last a certain amount of time, organized around a single monologue or minimal patches of dialogue, set to a song or rhythmic sound that is played over and over again, and all editing should be synchronized to the music and monologue cues.
4. The best trailers have the ability to captivate viewers with epic action, while also offering explanations of what is happening in the film.
The trailer for Terminator Salvation is certainly no T2 or T3, but it still promises to be a showstopper of an action flick. The foghorn effect in the trailer is suitably epic, and it even offers a spooky musical backdrop to accompany the action.
5. The best trailers have a mix of tones, enabling them to seamlessly integrate comedy with drama and action.
This is one of the most important things to think about when putting together a trailer for your film, and it is crucial to have a mix of tones. This can be achieved by using montage edits or other techniques that integrate comedic moments with dramatic action and other tones.
6. The best trailers have a combination of humour and tension.
This may seem like an obvious thing to consider, but a lot of trailers fall short when it comes to combining the two. This is particularly true of trailers for action movies, where it can be easy to get confused when mixing up a mixture of tones.
7. The best trailers include a good balance of humour and tension.
This can be achieved by using a mixture of musical styles, including rock and rap. A good trailer will also include some slapstick or witty humor, and it should always end on a punch line to make the audience laugh.
8. The best trailers show the story of the film in a clear and concise way.
This is especially important for a trailer that will be shown online, where there is less time to explain everything in the trailer than if it were to be presented at a movie theater. However, the internet can also be a powerful tool for building buzz about your film. A great way to start generating interest in your trailer is by releasing teasers over time, or by creating short cuts that can be used to promote your trailer on social media.