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A movie trailer is a marketing tool that showcases the highlights of a movie or a game to convince the audience to watch it. A great trailer must capture the viewer in a condensed time frame.
What Is a Cinematic Trailer?
A cinematic trailer is an advertisement for an upcoming feature film or game that aims to get the audience engaged and create excitement for it. The trailer provides a preview of the story of a film or a game without revealing spoilers, showcases the creative talent (the main actors along with the director, writer, or producer), and includes the release date.
Why Are Previews Called ‘Trailers’?
Trailers are so named because they were originally shown in cinemas after the movie ended. The studios eventually realized that audiences often left theaters without seeing movie trailers, so they decided to put trailers in front of movies to ensure that audiences would watch them. Today, trailers are also known as “previews” or “upcoming attractions”.
How Long Is a Cinematic Trailer?
Trailers for movies or games are typically one and a half to two and a half minutes long. The pre-trailer is released early to boost the hype of the main trailer and is usually around a minute long; they often don’t reveal much about the plot and often lack actual footage as the film or the game has yet to complete post-production. Television trailers (also known as TV spots) are even shorter, between 15 and 60 seconds long.
How to Make a Cinematic Trailer
To create your own cinematic trailer, you need footage from the movie and video editing software. Any editing software will do, but specialized cinematic trailer makers are available that include genre-specific trailer templates to make the process easier.
- Organize your trailer using a three-step structure. A great trailer tells a compelling story that keeps your audience emotionally invested — and one of the best ways to achieve this is by using a three-action story structure. The beginning of the trailer should introduce the main characters, setting, and premise of the movie or game; the middle should raise the conflict and the end should have a climax. When assembling the structure of the trailer, it helps to create a storyboard of your scenes to guide you through the editing process.
- Show the most unforgettable scenes. A good trailer showcases the most visually and emotionally engaging scenes without spoiling the main plot points. This is one of the trickier aspects of creating a trailer, but it’s important to include any footage that might convince an audience to watch the movie. For example, a trailer for a blockbuster action animation movie can highlight scenes where special effects appear; a trailer for a comedy could use some of the funniest jokes without compromising the plot.
- Use voice or text to help tell the story. Since trailers are cut too much for the entire movie, voiceover and on-screen text can be useful tools for explaining the needed persuasion. You can write and record a new voiceover dialogue for the trailer, or take the dialogue spoken in the movie and reuse it as a dub.
- Select music to set the alarm tone. The most effective trailers are enhanced through the use of carefully curated music. For example, you might choose a suspense score for a horror movie or a light pop song for a romantic comedy. For dramas, the third climax of the trailer usually contains a strong choreography in staging emotional scenes. You can purchase music for the trailer from the available music libraries instead of composing your own music for the trailer.
- Use editing techniques to control speed. Add sound effects to liven up scene transitions, use quick cuts to show action, control speed by fading scenes in and out of the scene, and synchronize audio cues music with specific moments.
Above is some information about how to create a cinematic trailer. If you have any questions about the movie trailer, feel free to comment down below.
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