The ultimate how to guide to make trailers

The purpose of trailers

The most important purpose of a trailer is making people want to see the film. A theorist called John Ellis suggests that trailers presents a narrative image of a film. A trailer should tell the audience what the film is like, giving the audience an idea of the film. Other media products such as posters and other marketing materials help deliver to the audience of what the pleasures of the film is. To attract the audience the film needs to offer something new.

The unique selling points

To have a good start to planning a marketing campaign, the film distributor must decide how they will present the film to a potential audience. We would need to ask ourselves, what sets this film apart from all the other film that are released. To decide what the USP is the film distributor will have to look at the storyline to see how different it is from other films and what the key points and elements are of the narrative. The USP of a film helps potential audiences understand what they might expect when they see the film. The visual campaigns such as trailers, and posters will stress the USP and give the audience a ‘narrative image’ an idea of the film.

The target audience

Another important aspect for constructing a movie trailer is deciding who the target audience is for your film. Target audience is a specific large group of people who might go and see a film. The target audience is important as it will affect the ‘where’ and ‘how’ of the marketing campaign. For example, we may ask ourselves ‘where to advertise and promote the film?’ and ‘how to reach that specific target audience?’. The film has to take into consideration of the USP against an understanding of age, gender and lifestyle. The target audience can vary from one film to another. It is important to do some research and compare previous films with their audiences. Although a specific target audience is important, we should aim to attract a wide range of different people. This is referred as ‘crossover’ or ‘break out’ films – films which appeal to more than just the target audience.

The trailer

Out of all the marketing materials to advertise a film, producing a film trailer is the most cost-effective. However, it is a good advertising method to captivate the audience on websites and TV-spots through moving images. A trailer is important as it reflects what people expect to see at the cinema. A trailer consists scenes and extracts from the film, this creates awareness and make the audience want to see the film. It creates a ‘WOW’ factor. A trailer consists of different elements to engage the audience, this includes moving images, graphics and voice overs to give the audience a sense of the narrative image. It can also give the audience a sense of genre and what the storyline of the film is about.

When creating a trailer, you have to ask ourselves multiple different questions and do some research of existing successful trailers. Looking at existing trailers that are successful in the market already will give you a general idea of the conventions of a trailer and what the audience expects. Most trailer are 2 min long, this is enough to give the audience a sense of narrative of the film. You would also have to analyse how many shots are used within a trailer and approximately how long each shot is. This would help you when it’s at the editing stage of producing a trailer. Looking at existing trailers also gives us an idea of what elements of the storyline is told and not told. By looking at existing trailers we can take inspiration from them and have a general idea of what your trailer is going to look like.

The very first stage of producing a trailer is having a complete narrative of our film. In the real production industry, the editors will watch the entire film and select scenes and dialogue to help create a narrative image. When creating the narrative, we have to think about what we’re trying to bring across to the audience, what is the idea of the film and what is the narrative image. Introducing the characters and ensuring the audience can recognise the genre of the film is important to contributing a sense of narrative.

Creative choices

After writing the completed narrative and having a sense of what the narrative image will look like, you have think about what you’re actually shooting and if there is going to be voice overs, intertitles and background music to give the idea of the genre.

Filming

To ensure the process of editing is easy for us, we have to use multiple different shots which we could then choose from. To be able to do this you have to shoot a variety of different angles and shots for one scene. This will make it easy for editing as well as exciting to watch for the audience. The different types of shots may include, medium, long and close up shots or shots filmed through a window, door and behind objects. This makes the shots more interesting and intrigues the audience.

Music

The genre of the film is reflected by the type of soundtrack you use for the trailer. The music used should reflect the mood and feel of the film, this will give the audience a real feel of the film, which in some cases can cause the audience to cry, smile and laugh.

The edit

When editing it is important to choose your soundtrack first, with this you can then edit the scenes and images by following the beat of the music, this will help construct the trailer. When editing you have to also consider if there is going to be dialogue used, and if yes, which part of the trailer. This applies to any voice overs and intertitles. When using dialogues and voice overs, you have to ensure the background music is dipped down so that the dialogue and voice overs can be heard clearly. Another aspect to be wary about is the length of the shots, lots of short shots edited together is much more impactful than very long shots.

Completed trailer

When you have finished editing your trailer, we have to look back at the whole trailer and see if there are shots that are too long or short and if you can change it to make it more interesting.

To ensure the audience has a sense of genre of the film, we can close our eyes and listen to the trailer. From this we should be able to make a sense of the genre and what the trailer is about through the voice overs used, dialogues and music.

You have to also ensure the trailer is not too long or short, the maximum time length is 2 minutes, if the trailer is longer than this time length then you would have to go back and edit some parts out.

The last thing we should consider after producing a completed trailer is if your trailer matches your short synopsis. The trailer should meet the key point of our narrative and consider if the shots used gives a narrative image to the audience.

Reference:  'Media Magazine, Ian Wall. April 2014'