Marketing Techniques for our Film – Creating a Trailer

With the basic viral marketing strategy figured out, the group will now turn our attention to the making of the potential promotional trailer for our film. With all the footage finally filmed, and editing currently coming to an end, we are able to look through the clips we have gathered and decide what ones should be shown in the trailer to draw in the public. Before we rush into production however, we must first research other popular and successful film trailers to see how they operate and what makes them interesting to the public.

One excellent example of a trailer is for the film ‘The Shining’ (Dir. Stanley Kubrick, 1980). Though there are a number of trailers for this film, there is one that really stands out. Just one shot is used in the promotion, which is of a set of elevator doors. As the crew credits and the name of the film pass by on screen, blood suddenly gushes out of the elevator and covers most of the room. This trailer appealed to us as we loved the ambiguity of it, the idea that no one knows the plot of the film or even the specific genre, but the image on screen immediately gives shock and creates enigmas that the audience can only answer by going to see the film. Our group agreed that this approach would be better suited for our film – a teaser trailer rather than a full one would keep the plot of our film hidden and hopefully make people question what our film is about.



Another good example of a trailer is for the film ‘Stir Of Echoes’ (Dir. David Koepp, 1999). This trailer is very different to the one mentioned above, as it is longer and contains vast scenes from the film itself. This is not necessarily a bad thing though, as many clips from the film can still be shown without the narrative of plot twists being give away to the audience. All of the group preferred the trailer for ‘The Shining’, but agreed that if our film went into production, several trailers would have to be created anyway. So, after viewing, our group searched through all of our footage and picked out what clips we thought would suit this type of trailer. The clips that we thought would draw the audience were all major plot points in our short film, and we agreed that the footage would have to be heavily edited to keep the plot intact and a mystery.



Another stereotypical piece in trailers is the voice over. Most trailers nowadays tent to veer away from the voiceover and have captions come up on screen instead. But in the past, almost every trailer had a voice over and the voice usually changed upon genre of the film. This led our group to another discussion – whether to include a voiceover or captions. The group agreed that the voiceover was too generic and cheesy, but the captions idea divided the group. Aster much careful thought, we agreed that if a teaser trailer much like the one for ‘The Shining’ was developed, there would be no need for captions as the images shown on screen should wet the audiences appetites until the release date for the film would draw closer.

Upon finally deciding on the type of trailer and how we would go about it, the group started writing down and drawing up plans for trailers and where and when they would be shown. If our film was ever released to a wide audience, we are confident we would know exactly how to market it and draw in our target audience.