What does a trailer need?

Structure:

It has to have a beginning, a middle, and an end. It needs to draw the viewer in at the very

beginning, and then leave them with something they won’t forget. Each cut needs to make a

connection between two shots – it can’t be just a collection of the best line, the best jokes, or

the best flying kicks.

A trailer does not need to tell the plot of the movie – but it does need to tell the story of the

movie. Make sure you know what that is before you start cutting. Ask yourself: why do you

like this movie?

A Theme:

Remember, once is a mistake, twice is a pattern, three times can be a masterpiece. Find

something in the movie you can keep coming back to, something that symbolizes it on a basic

level. This can be a line of dialogue, an action, an image, even a color or a sound.

A Rhythm:

A feature film may be “51% emotion and 10% rhythm” (Murch) but a trailer is much more

reliant on the pace of the cuts. Your need to establish a pace and stick to it. That doesn’t mean

you have to cut every three seconds, either. You can vary the pacing. Think of different form of

music: they might have a rhythm like slow-slow-quick, or quick-quick-slow. Don’t be afraid to

break up a line of dialogue and put another shot in the middle if it will help you maintain the

rhythm you want.

Technical Proficiency:

This is “last but not least”. One of the objectives of this course is for you to start noticing things

that you might not have noticed before. Jump cuts, cuts in the middle of a camera moves,

sloppy music cuts, black frames, and flash frames are disturbing to the audience, and they

should be disturbing to you too.