5 Useful Tips on Making A Film Trailer

Pierre Tran

4 years ago

An attention-getting movie trailer is an essential marketing tool for any film director, beginner or professional. It’s the trailer that gets viewers hooked on a movie they haven’t even seen yet. Good trailers are short and effective – they stick in your memory and make you want to see the film.

In this article:

Select the most memorable sequences
Maintain the 3-act structure
Choose appropriate music
Use your sense of rhythm
Apply tried-and-tested tricks

Select the most memorable sequences

You have a very limited amount of time (1-2 minutes) to convince the viewer that you movie is worth watching. That’s why you need to choose really spectacular segments for your trailer. But it’s a balancing act – you don’t want to reveal too much and spoil the fun. Hook the viewer, but leave key questions unanswered and vital secrets unrevealed.

Maintain the 3-act structure

A trailer is a story. The classic way to tell a story is in three acts:

Exposition: introduce the main characters and the environment in which they exist
Development (growing action and intensity): introduce conflict and complications
Climax: intensify the storyline and bring it to a resolution.

Choose appropriate music

Often, well-chosen music can be half, or even more than half, the victory. Music binds all the building blocks of your story together; it defines the mood of your trailer, creates the appropriate atmosphere, and can have a big impact on the audience.

Use your sense of rhythm

An effective trailer always involves rhythmic editing. If the story in your trailer is developing rhythmically, it creates a sense of flow, eliciting more emotions from viewers and making them feel connected to the characters. Cut your trailer into fragments so that the changing frames synchronizes with the rhythm of the music and it will look and feel very natural.