How to Create Film and Documentary Trailers

Creating a trailer for your documentary or film is a great way to expose your story to the world. Essentially a trailer is a short montage of the text, audio and visual components of your film that act as an advertisement for the longer format version. This usually means that the most exciting footage is used in condensed format in the hopes of stimulating audience interest in your film.

Everybody’s style, of course, is different and part of the joy of filmmaking is putting your stamp on your projects. That being said, there are certain conventions that many documentary and narrative film trailers abide by. This blog post will help you organize your thoughts so you can storyboard for your documentary or film trailer knowing what rules you want to keep and what rules you want to break.

Your film trailer will often start out with the audience approval notification from the Motion Picture Association of America. If you haven’t put your film through the approval process, there is no need to worry. Most independent films and documentaries don’t get their film reviewed by this organization and it is by no means necessary, nor is it testament to a good film or documentary.

There is a trend amongst independent filmmakers to use similarly colored title cards, fonts and wording while leaving out the “Motion Picture Association of America” reference. You’ll sometimes see title cards that read “This preview has been approved for all audiences”. However, it doesn’t say by whom. Avoid this tactic as it serves only to try to instill a false sense of professionalism.

Next, include the name of the production company and / or distribution company. Feel free to experiment with this segment of the trailer. Some filmmakers like to use logos and creative fonts over black title cards. Others like to include the text information over the footage of the documentary or film. Some like to animate their text, others prefer static text. Your design approach to your opening sequence is only limited by your own imagination.

Next, you may want to include the title of your film. However, it should be noted that it’s not uncommon for filmmakers to choose not to include the title of the film or documentary at the beginning of the trailer, but instead include the title only at the end of the trailer.

After this point you’ll want to start introducing your footage. You should limit the length of your film trailer to less than two and a half minutes in length. This is the time cut off length in theaters and the standard length that audiences are accustomed to. You’ll notice most trailers fall within this time range.

Within this short period of time your trailer needs to accomplish a lot. It needs to immediately grab your audience’s attention, get them acquainted with the production value of your film and introduce your story.

Film trailers have structural arcs just as full length feature films and documentaries do. When you’re creating your trailer you should try to incorporate the following elements:

1: Establish what your documentary is about. Introduce your theme.
2: Introduce the conflict.
- You should give a general overview and provide at least 1 specific example
3: Introduce your protagonist.
4: Introduce your antagonist.
5: You need to provide your audience with a sense of your documentary’s tonal qualities. Audiences will look at your cinematography (movement, lighting, composition) and listen to your music to see if the artistry of the film is something they would be interested in seeing.
6: You should change your trailers music 3-5 times.

At the end of your trailer   you will want to include your film or documentary’s title (Even if you’ve already used it at the beginning) and then you’ll want to include an ending title card with the above the fold cast and crew as well as any website / contact information you want to include.

We’ve all seen the ending title cards at the end of films with the barely recognizable names of the director, producer, production designer, Director of Photography and so on. There are numerous fonts you can use to achieve this look but one of the most common is called “Steel Tong”.

Once you’ve completed your trailer you can upload it to online video sharing sites such as Youtube, DailyMotion, Vimeo. These sites assist independent filmmakers who may not be able to get their trailers shown in theaters on or on Apple’s movie trailer website.

Lights Film School Wishes you the best of luck creating your film and documentary trailers!

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