'The Ultimate How To Guide To Making Trailers'

Creating a film trailer seems to be one of the most popular production. A trailer will be a short 2 minute film which tells the story of the film. However, when creating the trailer you have to put a lot of thought into it because you have to do a lot of research and planning.

The purpose of trailers is to make the audience know about upcoming films. When a new trailer comes out, posters and other things help market the product so that it delivers to audiences.

The target audience;

Whilst making a trailer, the distributor needs to think about who the target audience for the film will be. Whilst choosing a target audience they need to think about

- where the trailer is going to be advertised
- how will they promote the trailer

When planning a trailer, the distributor has to be aware of two things, which is the unique selling point of a film. This is to decide what makes the film different from others in its genre. It should also be aware of the audience for the film.

A film distributor has to decide how they will present a film to a potential audience. They need to decide what sets this film parts from different films. For example if the distributors is looking to film a horror film, they need to look for things that are different to other horror films. Whilst figuring this out, they will look at the different people who will star in the film. 

In a trailer, theres a mixture of moving images, graphics and voice overs to make the audience feel as if they are in the trailer. It can make the audience know what the genre is and what the story is about. In a trailer there are usually extracts from the final product. This makes it more exciting for the audience.

In a trailer, you can also include music that will sort the trailer. The trailer also needs to include the right camera shots so that it is effective for the audience and so it doesn't make the trailer boring. Ensure that there is a variety of shots used in the trailer. But don't make the trailer too long. It can also give out too much information about the film. 

The film has to think about the age, gender, lifestyles and activities of an audience. Target audience can change, depending on the type of genre of a film. It can range from young children, to teenagers to older adults. Its the distributors job to do a lot of research and planning so they know how to target the right audience. Each film has to be treated as an individual product.

Creating your trailer; The story 

The starting point should be knowing the complete story of your film. Most trailers would use the scenes and editing shots from the actual film. They would also use dialogue which would help create the narrative image. The trailer will help introduce the main characters within the film. You would also need make sure the genre is easy for the audience to recognise. However, some people may find it hard to produce a trailer without giving away the whole plot of the film. The most common errors in a trailer are;

Examples of horror trailer shots

1. Trailer is too long
2. Trailer is far to long 
3. Not a variety of shots
4. Sound quality of dialogue is poor
5. No use of music
6. No use of captions / inter titles 
7. Shots included are too long 

Example of a bad trailer

This is a bad example of a horror trailer because the trailer doesn't make sense. Even though scenes from the actual film are used in the trailer, there's not a clear story line of what is going to happen in the film. The text that is used in the trailer doesn't have an effect on anything and it doesn't relate back to the genre of horror. The sound that is used in the trailer isn't scary so the target audience wouldn't find this exciting. The one thing that is good about the trailer is that the sound builds up to create tension for the audience.