Research on trailers JB

David Coultas on making movie trailers.

Trailers are a central part of the film. They establish the genre, mood and expectations of a film.
"Give them the pitch, not the precis" - Most trailers are around two minutes long and films around two hours so you can never tell the whole story. Most people think of trailers as just the best bits of the film but it's more like pitching the film to the audience. You try and cover as many aspects of the film as you can to express the full experience but imposing a new structure on it.
"Don't give them an opportunity to say no" - Most trailers are made up of three acts. Act 1: 25 seconds, sets the characters up and the world they live in. Act 2: Shows where they're going, Act 3: Give a glimpse of how things will continue without ruining the story. Introduce elements to capture people beyond the film's obvious audience. Internet trailers are specific in whom they are aimed at but if the trailer is going to be at the cinema it's appeal needs to be much broader. Some ways you could do this is use editing to make the film seem more fast paced than it is or add in higher class music to make the film seem a higher budget than it was, for instance a very rich orchestral piece for a low budget film. You accentuate the positive, if a film is upsetting or disturbing you translate it to "moving" by putting in emotional music or put the word moving in reviews. You try and make it as appealing as possible and never give the whole story, keep them guessing.
"There's no such thing as overselling" - Even if it's a bad film you still make a good trailer. It's pulling together a vision of the film that you're hoping may be the experience for some people.
"You've got ten seconds before they go back to their popcorn" - Right at the start the trailer needs something to draw the audience in like a line or a look or a sound that will get as many people in as possible. You have to use shots that get across really well what the film is about. Sometimes you can use shots from an early cut of the film in a trailer that works really well but in the final film they're not even used.
"Buy some music" - If you have the budget, music is incredibly effective. Fifty percent of the time the music wont even be used in the film. With the right music it can produce a gut reaction of yes, I want to see this. Some well known tracks cost up to £100,000 to the artist to be used in the trailer.
"Your job is to be invisible" - In movie trailers a voice over will be a gravelly american. This is because if you let the audience notice the voice over it immediately becomes a trailer. You want to give the audience a window to the film but it's carefully constructed to give a particular view, and you don't want the audience to know that. For instance if you used a british voice over everyone would notice and it'd become another character, which is not what you want. You just want to tell the story and have people think, that looks like a good movie, instead of, that looks like a good trailer. If an american voice over isn't appropriate captions are used instead.