From ad18d045e6319f25338f0151d79f97a961a6fd73 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: gator Date: Sun, 20 Sep 2026 04:26:16 +0000 Subject: [PATCH] A guide to what makes a trailer worth watching, linked from the book and trailer pages --- trailer-guide.html | 74 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 1 file changed, 74 insertions(+) create mode 100644 trailer-guide.html diff --git a/trailer-guide.html b/trailer-guide.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6c29997 --- /dev/null +++ b/trailer-guide.html @@ -0,0 +1,74 @@ + + + + + +How to make a trailer people want to watch — PayToLaugh + + + + + +
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← Book trailer

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How to make a trailer people want to watch

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A guide for the author, the writers (human or model) and anyone judging a cut. Written 2026-09-20 from published advice by working trailer editors (sources at the end) and from what we learned making two Memory Road trailers. The writers' brief (TRAILER_BRIEF.md section 11a) is the enforceable short form of this; this file is the reasoning.

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1. What a trailer is for

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A trailer is an advertisement for a story, not a summary of it. Its single job is to make a stranger want the rest. Filmmaker Magazine's trailer editor puts it as selling "promise and possibility", and gives the rule that follows from it:

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"Never resolve anything! Whenever possible, leave questions unanswered."
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A film trailer is cut from the film: real scenes, real lines, reordered and compressed. A book has no footage, so we film the scenes first - but the discipline is the same. The trailer shows moments that exist in the book, in the words the author wrote, arranged to raise a question the viewer can only answer by reading it.

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The measure of success is not "did every shot work". Our second trailer passed that test and was dull. The measure is: could someone who has never heard of this book say, after one viewing, who it is about, what is wrong, what he wants, who is against him - and do they want to know what happens?

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2. The viewer knows nothing

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Everything below comes from this. The viewer has not read the book, does not know a name, and will watch once. After our second trailer the owner - who knows the book - still asked: who are the two people on the sofa? who is "they"? why would they sell his car? does he have a memory problem? why is a policeman on the ground? how did a passing car become a man in a trunk?

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Each of those is a fact the writer knew and the screen never said.

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3. The shape: four parts

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Editors describe three acts; Derek Lieu's four-part version is the more useful because it separates the hook from the setup.

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partshare of the running timewhat it must do
1. Cold openfirst 10-15 s"Hit the ground running with some very exciting, humorous or dramatic scene that requires very little context." One or two shots. The book's best small moment - funny, tender or alarming. Not chapter one.
2. Introductionto about 35-40 sThe premise. By the end of it the viewer can answer who is this, what is wrong, what does he want. Slowest cutting of the trailer; shots breathe.
3. Escalationthe middle"Where the antagonist or central problem is introduced, and we get an idea of what the main characters are going to do about it." The opposition gets a face and a reason. Cutting gets quicker.
4. Climaxlast 20-30 s"The music swells, the most interesting shots get cut in rapid succession." Short wordless shots, each shorter than the last (2.5 s, 2 s, 1.5 s...). Then a stop, a last line or image - the button - and the title.
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Energy should rise and fall, not sit at one level: an early quiet moment makes the later noise louder. The strongest single device in trailer sound is the stop: everything cuts to silence for half a second before the final hit or the title.

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Length. A full trailer is 1:30-2:30; a teaser is about a minute. For a book, shorter is safer: 75-100 seconds. Ours ran 2:02 with nineteen shots of nearly equal length, which is a slideshow's rhythm, not a trailer's.

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4. Words: where they come from and what they do

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On-camera lines are the book's words

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Measured on our second trailer: of 14 spoken lines, 3 were in the manuscript, 3 paraphrased it, 8 were invented by the script model. The three that landed were the author's - "Does that mean you're not trying to pick me up?" is funnier and truer than anything written for the occasion.

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So: a line spoken on camera is found in the manuscript and used as written - whole or trimmed, never reworded into something the character did not say. The site checks every on-camera line against the manuscript and marks each line on the page: your words, from the book / close to the book / written for the trailer.

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Choose lines by the job they do

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Trailer editors sort sound bites into three kinds (Lieu):

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  • Exposition - a line that states the situation. "He would not be allowed to bring his automobile."
  • Questions - which the trailer then leaves hanging. "What if Masterson is picked up and interrogated, but it's not by us?"
  • Statements - short, a character saying what they want or will do; they set up action.
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A good trailer line works with no context. If it needs the previous page to make sense, it is the wrong line.

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The narrator

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"Narration handles complex exposition efficiently, allowing audiences to absorb context while watching related visuals."
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Narration and title cards interrupt the picture, so editors use them sparingly - but a book trailer has more to explain than a film trailer and no famous faces to lean on. Use one narrator, one voice, three to five lines, each laid over pictures that show what it says:

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  • who he was ("For thirty years Stewart Masterson kept the country's secrets.")
  • what is wrong ("Now he cannot remember where he left his car.")
  • who cares, and why ("The people he worked for have not forgotten what he knows.")
  • the question ("How far can a man get on a road he only half remembers?")
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The narrator is not the hero thinking aloud, and must say only what the book establishes. It is the voice telling a stranger why this story matters.

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Title cards

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Three or four words, on screen about a second, at most three of them before the viewer loses the thread. Good for time, place and the one fact a picture cannot carry: FORT LAUDERDALE, 2016. HE KNOWS TOO MUCH. And the last card is the title, after the stop.

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5. People

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  • Name people the first time they appear. A daughter says "Daddy". An agent says "Bureau". Or the narrator says it. Two strangers on a sofa are nobody.
  • The frame belongs to the speaker. Facing the lens, nearest, best lit; listeners give us their backs or profiles. This is also what keeps the lip-sync on the right mouth.
  • Seat people where people sit. A man briefing two officials faces them across the end of a table; he is not alone in the middle of its long side.
  • One emotional truth per shot. A widower at his wife's niche telling her he misses her and will be back tomorrow does more than a relative's reproach laid over the same picture.
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6. Cause before effect

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A trailer may skip time. It may not skip the reason. If one shot ends with a deputy shining a torch in a man's face and the next begins with the deputy on the ground, the viewer needs the cause - shown, said, or bridged by the narrator ("He had not meant to hurt anyone."). The same for a car pulling up and a man found in a trunk: show the hands, the door, the dark - or say it.

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Editors also pair sound to picture noun by noun: "Trailer editors will usually latch onto any noun in a line of dialogue, and try to find an image that will go with it." If the narrator says road, we are looking at the road.

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7. Sound

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Music "literally sets the tone and the rhythm"; most trailers use up to three cues, one per act. We do not yet lay music - it is the largest remaining gap - but the cut should be planned for it: a quiet bed under the introduction, a pulse through the escalation, rises into hits in the climax, then the stop. One well-placed hit is powerful; "four is a parody".

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8. What this means for our pipeline

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craft rulehow we do it
On-camera lines from the bookchecker objects to an on-camera line not in the manuscript; page badges every line
Narratora cast member with a voice and no appearance; all lines lip_sync: false
Shots run their written length, line placed withinstretched Action/Cut slate, say_at start / middle / end
Accelerating climaxwordless shots may be as short as 1.5 s in the edit (each still costs a 5 s generation)
One action too big for one takesplit into two shots (the abduction became 17 and 17a)
Objects and cars stay the sametracked props with reference pictures
The camera can actually see itline-of-sight rule (no urn "seen" from the back seat)
Nothing bought twicerequest-hash guard on pictures, clips and audio
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9. A checklist for judging a script before anything is drawn

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  1. After the first 15 seconds, am I curious?
  2. By 35-40 seconds can a stranger say who, what is wrong, what he wants?
  3. Is every person identified the first time they are seen?
  4. Does the opposition have a face and a reason by the middle?
  5. Is every on-camera line the author's? Does each work with no context?
  6. Does every effect have its cause on screen or in the narration?
  7. Do the shots get shorter towards the end?
  8. Does it end on a question, not an answer?
  9. Would I want to read the book?
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Sources

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