Your trailer-style teaser, step by step

A five-minute read, complete and genuine. What separates a home-made teaser from a trailer-style one, and the five steps to make yours with artificial intelligence and what you already have on your computer. No sign-up, nothing asked of you.

• Written workshop · 5-minute read
• English
• Free, no sign-up

Four things every trailer-style teaser has

• 1 · Pace A release trailer never sits still: it changes shot or intensity often, and its hook is an image or a line, not frantic editing. If your teaser feels slow when you watch it through, it is slow, even if it lasts fifteen seconds.
• 2 · Structure The fifteen, thirty and forty-five-second cuts are not the same video trimmed. Each has its own structure, and the vertical one is composed as vertical, not cropped from the landscape one.
• 3 · The first frame It is the thumbnail. It has to be understood in silence and at ten per cent of its size, because that is how people see it on their phone before deciding whether to tap.
• 4 · The brand, without shouting A small star and a one-second sound say “this is ours” better than a full-screen logo.

The five steps

1. A folder with what you already have. The product photos, even catalogue ones; three sentences saying what it does and for whom; the logo, if there is one, which will be used sparingly. If photos are missing, an AI image tool produces three views from one. What it cannot do is invent your product: give it the real photo.
2. The structure, on paper, before editing. It is the step almost everyone skips. The fifteen seconds are split like this, with the credits budgeted from the script, because if they are not reserved they will not fit at the end:
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3. The shots you do not have are generated from the photo. Three are enough: a slow turn of the product, a close-up of the detail that matters and an ambient shot where it is used. Ask for a movement that exists in the photo, and look at the three shots together before going on: a different light shows up in the edit, even if each shot looks fine on its own.
4. Edit and watch. Place the shots according to the structure and watch it through in one go: if any shot feels long, shorten it until nothing is left over. Burned-in subtitles always, because many people watch without sound. Nothing important on the edges or in the bottom third of the vertical cut: that is where the app buttons go.
5. The brand. A small symbol on the last shot and a one-second sound. Nothing else. People remember the sound before the logo.

The final test: shrink the first frame to ten per cent and mute it. If you can tell what it is and who it is for, you have a thumbnail. If not, go back to step two: the structure was wrong.

The checklist

Seven boxes. If all seven are ticked, your teaser has the essentials of a release trailer. If one is not, you know which one to fix.

• Pace: watched through, no shot feels long
• Structure: the split on paper, and each length with its own
• First frame: understood at 10% and in silence
• Brand: small symbol and a one-second sound
• Burned-in subtitles
• Clean edges: nothing important in the bottom third
• Legible credits, with their two seconds

The template and the checklist, to take with you

Two pages: the template with the three structures (15, 30 and 45 seconds) and the seven-box checklist. They download right here, no sign-up, no email. We do not ask for your email because today we have no mailbox to send it from, and we do not promise what does not arrive.

Download the template and checklist (PDF, English) Descargar la plantilla y la lista (PDF, español)

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