Researching Teaser Trailers

What are teaser trailers?

A teaser trailer is a short trailer used to advertise an upcoming film, television program, video game and so on, usually released long in advance of the product in order to “tease” the audience. Movie teasers, unlike typical trailers (also known as theatrical trailers) are usually very short in length (between 30-60 seconds) and usually contain little, if any, actual footage from the film. Teaser trailers are usually only made for big budget and popular themed movies. Teaser trailers today are increasing focused on internet downloading and online views.

Why are they produced?

The purpose of a teaser trailer is not to tell the audience about a movie’s content, but to simply let the audience know that the movie is coming up in the near future and to add to the hype of the upcoming release. They are made to advertise a film without giving away the plot or storyline by showing short clips from the film displayed in a random order but still identifying the genre of the film and what you should expect from the film.

How do they work?

Teaser Trailers work by showing as little as possible to the audience about the upcoming movie in order to intrigue them more and create a bigger hype for when the movie is finally released. Previous teaser trailers haven’t even shown the title of the film that there advertising, just the directors name and it’s release date such as Cloverfield and Star Trek’s teaser trailer.

Where do you see them?

Teaser trailers can be seen through a wide variety of devices and websites. The most obvious way of seeing teaser trailers is at the cinema during the adverts and on a DVD on its extras, or again during the adverts before the DVD plays the film. However with the use of the internet people are now able to access trailers through websites such as streaming and networking websites. These websites include:

http://www.youtube.com/

One of the most popular website for finding film trailers would be YouTube as it is well known and hosts videos from around the world for the whole world to see.

http://www.facebook.com/

Facebook allows users to post and share videos as well as links to videos which can include teaser trailers.

http://www.twitter.com/

Through twitter users can add a link to a video and share it with all their followers.

People can also email and text videos to one another via their hotmail account, google account, yahoo account ect as well as through texting sms messages.

When are they released?

Teaser trailers are often made while the film is still in production and/or being edited and as a result they may feature scenes or alternate versions of scenes that are not in the finished film. Other ones (notably Pixar films) have scenes made for use in the trailer only. Sometimes teaser trailers are released months before their release date, some even take over a year (or longer) in order to tease the audience about the movie therefore creating as much hype as possible when the movie is finally released. The longest gap in history between a teaser trailer and its release date was for Where the Wild Things Are which had a massive 9 year gap until it was finally released in 2009.

Genre

The genre of a film plays a vital role in every stage of its existence, from writing the plot and storyline to the film ending up on the shelves. This is the same for trailers, a trailer must have a genre as its genre affects its content, techniques used in the making of both the film and trailer, when and where the trailers are shown, who they are targeted at and when they are released.
Taking all of this into consideration i have chosen to create a teaser trailer for a horror film as i feel this would be an interesting genre to create a trailer for. I also feel that by making a horror trailer I will be able to broaden my knowledge and skills in the filming and editing processes as horror films use different film techniques than those of other genres.
To accompany my horror teaser trailer I have decided to create a website and a poster for the film as my two ancillary tasks.