A trailer is a strong marketing tool, used to engage the audience to watch the final product, i.e., a movie or a web series. In a span of 2 to 3-minute trailer, the audience decides to watch the movie or web series. You have to convey the audience that the upcoming movie is a spectacular in terms of style and storytelling.
Reveal to unrevealed
The trailer must hint certain aspect of the story, but too much revealing could spoil the experience of watching the movie. It must keep you spell bound in those short spans and should leave the viewers curious. It is imperative to portray in the trailer, what’s the movie is trying to communicate! Like for instance, tell the audience there are many cars on the road but do not tell the colors and at what speed the car is moving.
Curiosity
As mentioned above, good movie trailer should arouse viewers’ curiosity so that they leave discussing the movie from different angles. Curiosity should be such that viewers eagerly await the movie, resulting in a noticeable increase in advance ticket bookings.
Length of the trailer
The maximum length of a trailer should be 2 minutes. Some trailers run for above 3 minutes. Care should be taken while compiling the aspect of the movies in these respective time frames. It takes a creative genius to frame a trailer for lesser duration, say 1 minutes 50 seconds.
Tips For Crafting the Perfect Movie Trailer for a New Production House
Unlike renowned filmmakers, new production houses must use the taglines “ABC Pvt Ltd proudly presents,” “or make use of the known actors in the tagline, in the beginning like, “XYZ in a never before role” or “XYZ originals”.
Also, the new team when producing the trailer can highlight the important aspect from the script like, “a fresh love story”, “A costly affair”, “How far you can do XYZ things?”.
Universal understanding
It is a big responsibility of the trailer making team to compile the trailer in such a format that it should be understandable to the physically challenged people. For instance, the blind should understand it by hearing the voices of the trailer and the deaf should understand by looking at the visuals or reading the subtitles, if any.
Impressive Short Pieces
A trailer is a short piece of a long story. Now the maker knows in the trial shows that how their film would fare. Sometimes a bad film can earn a decent revenue these days if the trailers catch the attention in the eyes of the audience. It’s a big challenge to the team to compile an engaging trailer specially when the story of the movie does not have any spark.
Unusual Preview Pulse
Essentially the music plays the important role in any trailer. If you create some good background music which holds the mood of the movie. Bingo! Half of your work is done. Unusual preview pulse to create that deep sound and emanates low and engrossed your senses sinking into that moment and leave you stunned is an effective technique used in action, suspense and thrilling movies.
Sound Design
A good sound design does wonders to define the plot of the movie. It’s just not the sound, but it can act as an information. Sometimes the sound can tell you the real offering of the movie. The sound of a heartbeat, along with specific pieces like the Terminator theme music, creates a rich experience for the audience.
Specific Narration
The 2 minutes is not sufficient to convey the audience about the whole story. Therefore, the team uses narrative techniques to the trailer, which is kind of giving synopsis about the movie. This helps the audience to know what the plot is about, the genre and the theme of the movie. The narration grabs the audience attention more precisely. Perhaps trailer without narration also can create an impact in the mind of the viewers.
Use of Graphics and Scenery
Trailers which use VFX and scenic beauty creates impact and add value. A couple of action sequences backed with good location in the trailer leaves your audience guessing about the visuals and the nature of the movie
Usage of eye-catching text wherever possible
Using appropriate and interesting slogans / one liner always helps to gain more attention.
For example
- Based on actual events
- Based on a true story
- Time has come… to become one
Such text above entices the audience and make up their mind to think and anticipate more about the movie.
- From Tim Miller
Director of Deadpool
The above text will help the audience reminiscing the earlier movie from the director while watching his current movie trailer. The name of the movie Deadpool here is to create goodwill in the minds of viewers. The audience, hence becomes assured that the ongoing trailer is a sure shot value for money.
With changing technologies, the job of the content creators has become more challenging. From the theatres and on to the phones and computers it is quite a task to make a trailer engaging. This is because the attention span of the audience is getting low over a period of time. We can’t say from 2 to 3 minutes the trailers we see in future might come down to 30 seconds to one minute.
Some of the most viewed trailers
Avengers Endgame
Dunkirk & Avengers Infinity War
Spider Men – No Way Home
The Lion King
It
Mulan
F9
Bahubali 2
