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The Anatomy of a 1 Minute Film Trailer

August 10, 2010 at 1:46 am Leave a comment

Joe's Notebook

We had a successful brainstorm/writing meeting tonight for the Plant a Wish documentary project, and we have agreed to follow a movie trailer format that we feel works well for our project.  After watching a handful of what we believe to be good trailers, we’ve created a composite outline containing the things we liked about each one.

As a side note, its worth mentioning that not all trailers are born this way, but we think it works for us considering the amount of footage we have already (83 Hours!). At any rate, we’re one step closer to editing our movie trailer.

Here is our documentary trailer outline.

1. Sound Up: Title Card teasing the overall mission/”Quest”.
2. Several B-Roll Beauty Shots from around the Country
3. Presentation of the Filmmaker’s Main Question, including 3 good, concise answers from average Americans that set the theme.
4. Sound Up, B-roll that establishes first Expert Interview
5. Soundbite from Expert #1, Soundbite with thoughtful aftertaste.
6. Sound Up, Title card that identifies the filmmakers, what they’re doing
7. Sound Up/Music Change, Fun montage of B-roll from around U.S.
8. B-roll that establishes Human Interest Story #1 (Soundbite)
9. Human Interest Story #2 (Soundbite)
10. Expert Quote #2 (Showing that a solution is possible, makes people want to find out what the solution might be by watching the film)
11. Sound Up, Title of Film (Title Card)
12. Film Website (Title Card)

Whalla! 1 minute and 10 seconds of trailer! Now for the hard part…we’ve got to fill it in with the best clips clips from the 83 hours of footage we’ve collected so far! Our new intern arrives on Wednesday, so that won’t seem as daunting once we get everything situated. Next step: logging footage!

This process makes us wonder: how do YOU prepare to edit your film’s trailer when your film is only half way done? Feel free to comment – we’re curious what other methods are out there.

Entry filed under: Filmmaking, Noni Films Press Room, Plant a Wish, Thoughts, Tips & Tricks. Tags: documentary trailer, film trailer, how to edit a trailer, movie trailer, plant a wish, trailer outline, trailer script.