For me, watching the trailers at the movies is one of the best parts of a trip to the cinema. And if you’ve ever thought – that looks like fun – then the free training, interviews and tips in this post will help you along on your journey to becoming a trailer editor.
If you watch the Men In Black trailer below, which was accidentally posted to YouTube without music, you’ll get to hear just how ‘frankenbite’ like some of the lines of dialogue are, as well as understand what to look for when breaking down a film ready to promote.
If you watch the tutorials and free training from Film Editing Pro, you’ll learn a valuable system for breaking down a film, line by line and shot by shot. And if you watch the interview with David Yocum and David James Rosen, you’ll see that this level of preparation is essential to navigating a trailer through the long-haul through the studio system to the silver screen.
Other delights ahead include me breaking down a trailer US Poet Billy Collin’s course from Masterclass.com and a few thoughts on two very different trailers for Hobbs and Shaw and The Joker.
Understanding Trailer Structure
At the heart of understanding how to cut a film trailer is the knowledge of how to structure a film trailer to deliver the right the pacing, information delivery and final crescendo for maximum effect.
In this useful breakdown from trailer editor Derek Lieu you can learn how to construct a 3-act structured trailer and what each section is supposed to do.
In this breakdown, and most modern trailers, that’s:
A Cold Open
Act 1 – Introduction
Act 2 – EscalationAct
3 – The ClimaxThe Button
In this follow up trailer breakdown from Derek you can discover how to ask and answer (or not answer) the right questions in a trailer to keep your audience engaged and leave them feeling like they want to see the film and they haven’t seen the whole film.
As always, there is a huge amount to learn from knowing what not to do, as much as there is from knowing what to do.
For a bit of lateral design thinking and how to either align your film to or avoid trends in movie marketing, here is a really interesting video from Vanity Fair, featuring movie post designer James Verdesoto, from Indika Entertainment.
It’s worth checking out their site too see a collection of posters for documentary films, broadcast and even live events, as these have similar trends too.
Trailer Editing Tutorials and Free Training
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