Film Teaser

Loki

Loki

Veteran
So this goes against my principles on creating trailers for short films.. but... since my film is 21min... and I am entering it into "The Lot" I had to cut something together.

I am working on a longer edit as it is apparently required to a film and not just a trailer.. supposedly..

but I wanted to know if this does its job.. does it make you want to see the film?

let me know.

Teaser 1
Teaser 2

peas.

EDIT: Longer form trailer here: Trailer
 
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It looks good, but a little bit after the middle of the movie, the shot after the CU where the guy is smoking, the 2.35 crop gets messed up on the bottom.
 
ah yes.. I have a couple versions of this... and in the one I posted... I forget to put the mask over that clip.
 
i liked it, but i'm almost positive that the FCC doesnt allow any headshots on television.

edit- i would submit the 2nd one. both are very powerful- you have talent!
 
looks very cool! I just can't really view it that well, because, lol I think my computer is too slow ...it pauses in one place, but is playing. Do you have a smaller version of this?
 
ffonsok - Thanks for the comments.

Alex DePew, I'd like you to remove the edit you did. I never did give permission to re-edit my work, nor was I asked. Thank you.
 
Loki said:
ffonsok - Thanks for the comments.

Alex DePew, I'd like you to remove the edit you did. I never did give permission to re-edit my work, nor was I asked. Thank you.
Click to expand...

Done.
 
Loki, I want to be honest here because you're putting this up against 10,000 other short films and if you're going to have any shot, your movie will have to really stand out.

This doesn't stand out. The cinematography and the lighting are both good. But knowing Spielberg is behind this, he's going to put the focus on story. And while you might have a great story in your short, this trailer doesn't show it. Sure, you can make the argument that there's a lot of intensity, a lot of action. But for what? I have no idea. And that's the problem. There's nothing more frustrating than seeing a bunch of people all intense and into something when you don't know what that something is. The shots themselves are great. But without context, they don't work.
 
c.g._eads said:
Loki, I want to be honest here because you're putting this up against 10,000 other short films and if you're going to have any shot, your movie will have to really stand out.

This doesn't stand out. The cinematography and the lighting are both good. But knowing Spielberg is behind this, he's going to put the focus on story. And while you might have a great story in your short, this trailer doesn't show it. Sure, you can make the argument that there's a lot of intensity, a lot of action. But for what? I have no idea. And that's the problem. There's nothing more frustrating than seeing a bunch of people all intense and into something when you don't know what that something is. The shots themselves are great. But without context, they don't work.
Click to expand...


Agree with you 100%.

The film does indeed have a good story.. and is, I believe, a solid piece of story telling... the problem lies in cutting it down to 5 minutes; chopping 21min into 5min is just not possible. I am toying with the idea of creating a 3 1/2 min trailer for the film.. but any kind of real trailer for a film this short just ends up being a poorly truncated version of the story.

I want people to want to see the full finished film. I think I would have a better shot at this were longer films allowed. The film I created just cannot be done in the 5 min alloted. The pacing and structure would just be tossed out the window..

Rock and a hard place. I really think I would have a shot on this, as I have seen heaps of trash on the site... lots and lots of horrid so called films....

If I had known about this a while back.. I would have shot a film specifically for it.

Did this teaser make you intrigued at all? Did you WANT to find out the context behind those images?
 
The V3 Trailer was nice, but I'm not sure it will stand against the other entries.

Plus, ask yourself if you really want to deal with a reality TV show. Being on the show, dealing with all that, having the cahnce to be kicked off the first week...

It is alot to ask of a filmmaker.
 
I liked v3 better. Mostly because the style seems to be very gritty, and the gunshot at the end fits the style better when it's on camera instead of over black.

I ran into a similar problem with trying to make a trailer for an entry. I ended up making a new short written to be 5 minutes long. Good luck though, and this is still better than a lot of things on that site.
 
A 3 minute trailer probably won't work because there's no familiarity with a 3 minute version of a trailer. People will start asking, "is this a trailer, or is this a short?" And they'll get fed up trying to figure it out. I would advise against it.

"Did this teaser make you intrigued at all?" The short answer is "no". The longer answer provides hope. Okay, this may just be me, but I think it's pretty well-known from the independent (and professional) establshment, when a movie is being made with a bunch of friends. Now I'm not saying yours is. I don't know. But it feels like it could be (whether it is or not) and the problem with that is that you've seen so many of them before, where a bunch of friends get together to make a movie, not for the sake of telling a great story, but because they want to make a movie together. And they act in it together. Direct it together. Etc. And this kind of has a negative connotation in the industry. A bunch of young guys getting together to make a film (just because they're usually really bad - again, not saying that yours is). Now yours is a cut above cause it's clear you know what you're doing. But you can't escape that there are four guys here (I believe), all the same age, running around, acting like something is life-dependent, when we have no idea what they're talking about.

BUT. I remember watching this and thinking "what's missing here?" And then I realized it. A girl! You put a pretty girl's face in the middle of all of this, that is going to make things a lot more interesting. And I BELIEVE I heard the guys say that that's who was murdered. A girl. So is there a girl? And if so, PUT HER IN!
If not, you're going to have to give more of the plot away in the trailer to get me interested (what is the plot btw?)

Now since you want to get into this competition and a trailer isn't going to work, instead of just not entering anything, you should try and cut a 5 minute version of the short (it's better than nothing at all right?) and just hope, even if it doesn't make total sense, that maybe they see something in your technical filmmaking skills.

The only other thing I could think of is, take the most exciting part of the story, cut a 5 minute short out of that, and then at the end put, "to be continued". Throw a little Back To The Future sh*t at him and say, "hey, you did this once. Why can't I?"

Good luck.
 
Loki said:
the problem lies in cutting it down to 5 minutes; chopping 21min into 5min is just not possible.
Click to expand...

yes it is, anything is possible. if someone can cut down a 2 hour movie into 30 seconds, and it makes me water at the mouth to want to see it (children of men trailer, garden state trailer, etc etc) you can cut down 21 minutes into 5 or less and make it good.

From watching the trailer: This movie is about a guy who kills someone and theres another guy who trys to stop him or figure out why he killed someone. to be honest, thats boring to me. i have no interest in finding out why anyone is being killed.

how to change that: two things, either add a VO from one of the characters, telling a little more about the situation at hand, or have faster cuts in the trailer. There seems to be too many shots of people standing, looking around. Not interesting. Beautiful colors, but not interesting.

Just my opinion.
 
It looked very well shot and very technically well done. I was interested to see the movie for how it looked, but not by the story.
 
c.g._eads said:
A 3 minute trailer probably won't work because there's no familiarity with a 3 minute version of a trailer. People will start asking, "is this a trailer, or is this a short?" And they'll get fed up trying to figure it out. I would advise against it.

"Did this teaser make you intrigued at all?" The short answer is "no". The longer answer provides hope. Okay, this may just be me, but I think it's pretty well-known from the independent (and professional) establshment, when a movie is being made with a bunch of friends. Now I'm not saying yours is. I don't know. But it feels like it could be (whether it is or not) and the problem with that is that you've seen so many of them before, where a bunch of friends get together to make a movie, not for the sake of telling a great story, but because they want to make a movie together. And they act in it together. Direct it together. Etc. And this kind of has a negative connotation in the industry. A bunch of young guys getting together to make a film (just because they're usually really bad - again, not saying that yours is). Now yours is a cut above cause it's clear you know what you're doing. But you can't escape that there are four guys here (I believe), all the same age, running around, acting like something is life-dependent, when we have no idea what they're talking about.

BUT. I remember watching this and thinking "what's missing here?" And then I realized it. A girl! You put a pretty girl's face in the middle of all of this, that is going to make things a lot more interesting. And I BELIEVE I heard the guys say that that's who was murdered. A girl. So is there a girl? And if so, PUT HER IN!
If not, you're going to have to give more of the plot away in the trailer to get me interested (what is the plot btw?)
Click to expand...

Well.. actually they won't start asking if it is a trailer or not.. since.. there is a separate category for trailers on the site. So I think I am covered pretty well from that standpoint.

The short answer was helpful. Your long answer had nothing to do with anything really. More like telling me what I already know... people and their friends make shitty movies... trust.. very much aware of that one ;).

And you're right, this film was not made by me and couple friends.. This is a semi-professional short film. I say semi-professional cause I wasn't working with a complete crew.

There is no girl in the film. She is only talked about.

The plot is basically this:

Nathan (short hair guy) calls his best friend in the middle of the night. Asks him to meet him up north a ways. The setup revovles around Nathan accidently murdering his girlfriend and panicking. The movie is about the relationship between the two o them.
 
EP2005 said:
yes it is, anything is possible. if someone can cut down a 2 hour movie into 30 seconds, and it makes me water at the mouth to want to see it (children of men trailer, garden state trailer, etc etc) you can cut down 21 minutes into 5 or less and make it good.

From watching the trailer: This movie is about a guy who kills someone and theres another guy who trys to stop him or figure out why he killed someone. to be honest, thats boring to me. i have no interest in finding out why anyone is being killed.

how to change that: two things, either add a VO from one of the characters, telling a little more about the situation at hand, or have faster cuts in the trailer. There seems to be too many shots of people standing, looking around. Not interesting. Beautiful colors, but not interesting.

Just my opinion.
Click to expand...

Thats just plain ridiculous.. so your calling a 30 second TV/Spot a film? Lets be clear here... cutting my film down into a 5 min FILM.... will not work.

There is a reason the film is 21min... it isn't cause I just like adding running time to it.

Just trust me when I say it cannot be cut down into a 5 min version of itself. Any kind of pacing just gets eliminated, and the reason people like suddenly evaporates.

As for your comments on the teaser, I will cut together another version that gives a little more away of the plot and see how it work.

peas.
 
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