Crafting the perfect trailer

johnny_ultimate

Film trailer and ads rightly come under a lot of criticism in these parts. So many these days give away the entire plot of the film they're trying to persuade you to watch - and it ain't much fun going to see a film you know nothing about. But they're also important, as they're one of the main methods of advertising film. There's been many a time my attention has been grabbed by a trailer for a film I hadn't heard of before. And there's nothing like a vague but tantalising glimpse at a film you've been looking forward to.

But what defines the good from the bad, and what trailers work well? Oh, and only one youtube link per post please, don't want the thread clogged with reams of trailers

For me, a few elements that make a good trailer:

Little to no dialogue: this is vital IMO. What I want from a trailer is brief glimpses of the visuals of the film, hints at what might be contained in the full feature. I don't want characters describing major plot points with carefully picked dialogue. In comedies, the best jokes are often ruined by the advertising material, especially when the regular cinema goer may have seen the trailer multiple times already. So keep dialogue to a minimum, and when it must be used, keep it brief and not spoilerific.

Music: leading on from that, music instead of dialogue tends to dominate the best trailers. Coen Brother's particularly are masters of this. A catchy tune to edit the clips to helps give a trailer energy and momentum, and makes the best enjoyable and well crafted mini-films in themselves. Using the Requiem for a Dream theme is cheating.

Editing: fast paced and brisk is the way to cut a trailer, not long clips from scenes. Brief glimpses of a variety of sequences without giving anything away. Include some of the most striking images from the film - but not them all - to get us interested.

Stuff that isn't in the film: a rarity, but a clever method and rewards the audience. Include a scene - can be an entire one, some great trailers have focused on one sequence alone - that isn't in the film itself. Can begin to tell the story without making a viewer sit through the same thing when they actually watch the film in question.

Oh, and you know who's in it, who's directing etc etc...!

My perfect example, although it doesn't fulfill the final criteria, is Where the Wild Things Are. Brilliant music choice, very little dialogue, quick but ambiguous hints about the way the narrative unfolds, striking imagery and clever editing. It also successfully captures some of the way the final film ultimately flows. Couldn't wait to see the film after seeing it, and still throw it on from time to time as it's an enjoyable short film in its own right.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=01-PqqifyjA

Duggy747

So many things make a trailer stand out to me.

Stirking images, it's layout (I don't want to see the biggest shots at the start of the trailer, you build towards it), and especially the soundtrack. We can take fine examples of a trailer being more memorable than a movie in the case of Terminator Salvation with the Nine Inch Nails remix. That was a great trailer for what turned out to be a very average action movie.

A great memorable trailer to me is The Dark Knight's 1st theatrical trailer. I didn't really like Batman Begins, I liked how they went about rebooting his story but the overall film just didn't sit well with me so I wasn't arsed about it's sequel. The only thing that had me interested was to see what The Joker looked like and see how "pretty-boy" Heath Ledger would try and live up to Jack Nicholsan's version..............heh.............well, we all know how that panned out. He absolutely knocked it out of the park.

Anywho, at 0:31 seconds I could tell straight away this film was going to be different from BB right from that huge shot of The Joker standing in the middle of this vast concrete jungle, wonderful shot that wasn't used in the film. This film was going for an epic cinematic & realistic city setting rather than BB's fantastical city with it's overcrowded slums and that stupid tram system. It eventually leads up to a one-on-one confrontation with The Joker & Batman ("Come on......HIT MEH!!!) while also giving us the money shot that was the truck flipping over (had that truck been done in CGI I wouldn't have given a shìt about that scene but if a major stunt is done practically it will always grab my attention)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8jqq4j52Fb4

I'm fascinated with trailers. Their style and make-up to sell you a film / game within a certain short time period always intrigues me, especially when a trailer works and gets me to think about it long after I've viewed it.

Anywho, it's late and I'm half-cut so I'll post more stuff another time. :pac:

Handsome Bob

A fast spaced trailer with good editing does wonders, one of the more recent trailers that I've seen that is in direct opposition to this is the Green Lantern trailer. I think whoever put that together did a real clumsy job and it just looked underwhelming because of this.

Music has to suit what is being seen on the screen of course, one of the reasons why I thought the Clash of the Titans trailer was horrific was because the music just didn't mesh with the imagery at all. Again, it put me right off the film (a film that I was most intruiged by up until the trailer). Compare it to the trailer for The Fighter, which was unfortunately quite spoilerific, but I thought that it still did a fantastic job of getting the blood pumping. Why? Music perfectly suited what was being seen on screen.

Dialogue is another one, The Expendables trailer anyone? Horrific dialogue in those trailers, absolutely embarassing stuff. The Frost/Nixon trailer was fantastic for it's use of dialogue.

mike65

The worst trailer I recall seeing and its weird how this has stuck in my memory so long
was for a film called Caravans which I drummed my fingers through while waiting for the main feature in 1979 (forgotton what it was). It was as dull as the subject matter and cast. Must have been 5 mins long.

My fav trailers are the sort they just don't make anymore with that voice promising all sorts of mayhem and madness.

Alligator

Joe Dante and Alan Arkush used to be past masters of the trash trailer and www.trailersfromhell.com is a must bookmark site.

Sad Professor

I think the most important thing in a trailer is that it gives an accurate impression of the film. There's nothing I hate more than trailers that try and make a film out to be more action packed than it actually is or misrepresents the overall tone of the film.

A recent example of this was Miami Vice, whose trailer made the film out to be Bad Boys 3. The result? People went in expecting a Michael Bay-type film and were disappointed. The film should have been marketed as a moody crime drama for adults, not something that would appeal to 15 year olds.

I really don't know what gets into to studios to do what essentially amounts to an act of sabotage on one of their films. There are obviously times when a director comes back with a different film to what they were expecting, but deliberately misleading audiences as to the content of a film really doesn't do them or the film any favours.

krudler

What I hate is when trailers telegraph big sequences so you know whats going to happen long before it does. Say it shows a helicopter crashing or something, and then during the movie we see people get on the same helicopter, well it doesnt take a genius to figure out what will happen. Obviously studios want to show the money shots they've paid so much for, but christ, show them in context in the movie. 2012 had zero suprise effects in it as everything was show in the trailers. I've kinda stopped watching anything longer than Superbowl or tv spots these days as full lenght trailers just ruin everything. Look at The Hangover, all the funniest jokes are in the trailer and its show in almost exact chronological order, so theres nothing surprising about it. you knew there'd be a tiger in the bathroom, a guy was missing a tooth, Mike Tyson would turn up etc etc.