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<p><a href="/book.html">← Book</a></p>
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<div class="card guide">
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<h1>How to make a trailer people want to watch</h1>
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<p>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 <em>Memory Road</em> trailers. The writers' brief (<code>TRAILER_BRIEF.md</code> section 11a) is the enforceable short form of this; this file is the reasoning.</p>
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<hr>
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<h2>1. What a trailer is for</h2>
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<p>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:</p>
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<blockquote>"Never resolve anything! Whenever possible, leave questions unanswered."</blockquote>
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<p>A film trailer is <strong>cut from the film</strong>: real scenes, real lines, reordered and compressed. A book has no footage, so we film the scenes first - but the discipline is the same. <strong>The trailer shows moments that exist in the book, in the words the author wrote</strong>, arranged to raise a question the viewer can only answer by reading it.</p>
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<p>The measure of success is not "did every shot work". Our second trailer passed that test and was dull. The measure is: <strong>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?</strong></p>
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<h2>2. The viewer knows nothing</h2>
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<p>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?</p>
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<p>Each of those is a fact the writer knew and the screen never said.</p>
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<h2>3. The shape: four parts</h2>
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<p>Editors describe three acts; Derek Lieu's four-part version is the more useful because it separates the hook from the setup.</p>
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<div class='tw'><table><tr><th>part</th><th>share of the running time</th><th>what it must do</th></tr><tr><td><strong>1. Cold open</strong></td><td>first 10-15 s</td><td>"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 <em>small</em> moment - funny, tender or alarming. Not chapter one.</td></tr><tr><td><strong>2. Introduction</strong></td><td>to about 35-40 s</td><td>The premise. By the end of it the viewer can answer <strong>who is this, what is wrong, what does he want.</strong> Slowest cutting of the trailer; shots breathe.</td></tr><tr><td><strong>3. Escalation</strong></td><td>the middle</td><td>"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.</td></tr><tr><td><strong>4. Climax</strong></td><td>last 20-30 s</td><td>"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 <strong>button</strong> - and the title.</td></tr></table></div>
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<p>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.</p>
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<p><strong>Length.</strong> 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.</p>
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<h2>4. Words: where they come from and what they do</h2>
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<h3>On-camera lines are the book's words</h3>
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<p>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.</p>
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<p>So: <strong>a line spoken on camera is found in the manuscript and used as written</strong> - 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: <em>your words, from the book</em> / <em>close to the book</em> / <em>written for the trailer</em>.</p>
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<h3>Choose lines by the job they do</h3>
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<p>Trailer editors sort sound bites into three kinds (Lieu):</p>
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<ul><li><strong>Exposition</strong> - a line that states the situation. <em>"He would not be allowed to bring his automobile."</em></li><li><strong>Questions</strong> - which the trailer then leaves hanging. <em>"What if Masterson is picked up and interrogated, but it's not by us?"</em></li><li><strong>Statements</strong> - short, a character saying what they want or will do; they set up action.</li></ul>
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<p>A good trailer line works with no context. If it needs the previous page to make sense, it is the wrong line.</p>
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<h3>The narrator</h3>
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<blockquote>"Narration handles complex exposition efficiently, allowing audiences to absorb context while watching related visuals."</blockquote>
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<p>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 <strong>one narrator, one voice, three to five lines</strong>, each laid over pictures that show what it says:</p>
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<ul><li>who he was ("For thirty years Stewart Masterson kept the country's secrets.")</li><li>what is wrong ("Now he cannot remember where he left his car.")</li><li>who cares, and why ("The people he worked for have not forgotten what he knows.")</li><li>the question ("How far can a man get on a road he only half remembers?")</li></ul>
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<p>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.</p>
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<h3>Title cards</h3>
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<p>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: <em>FORT LAUDERDALE, 2016.</em> <em>HE KNOWS TOO MUCH.</em> And the last card is the title, after the stop.</p>
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<h2>5. People</h2>
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<ul><li><strong>Name people the first time they appear.</strong> A daughter says "Daddy". An agent says "Bureau". Or the narrator says it. Two strangers on a sofa are nobody.</li><li><strong>The frame belongs to the speaker.</strong> 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.</li><li><strong>Seat people where people sit.</strong> A man briefing two officials faces them across the end of a table; he is not alone in the middle of its long side.</li><li><strong>One emotional truth per shot.</strong> 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.</li></ul>
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<h2>6. Cause before effect</h2>
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<p>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.</p>
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<p>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 <em>road</em>, we are looking at the road.</p>
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<h2>7. Sound</h2>
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<p>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".</p>
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<h2>8. What this means for our pipeline</h2>
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<div class='tw'><table><tr><th>craft rule</th><th>how we do it</th></tr><tr><td>On-camera lines from the book</td><td>checker objects to an on-camera line not in the manuscript; page badges every line</td></tr><tr><td>Narrator</td><td>a cast member with a voice and no appearance; all lines <code>lip_sync: false</code></td></tr><tr><td>Shots run their written length, line placed within</td><td>stretched Action/Cut slate, <code>say_at</code> start / middle / end</td></tr><tr><td>Accelerating climax</td><td>wordless shots may be as short as 1.5 s in the edit (each still costs a 5 s generation)</td></tr><tr><td>One action too big for one take</td><td>split into two shots (the abduction became 17 and 17a)</td></tr><tr><td>Objects and cars stay the same</td><td>tracked props with reference pictures</td></tr><tr><td>The camera can actually see it</td><td>line-of-sight rule (no urn "seen" from the back seat)</td></tr><tr><td>Nothing bought twice</td><td>request-hash guard on pictures, clips and audio</td></tr></table></div>
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<h2>9. A checklist for judging a script before anything is drawn</h2>
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<ol><li>After the first 15 seconds, am I curious?</li><li>By 35-40 seconds can a stranger say who, what is wrong, what he wants?</li><li>Is every person identified the first time they are seen?</li><li>Does the opposition have a face and a reason by the middle?</li><li>Is every on-camera line the author's? Does each work with no context?</li><li>Does every effect have its cause on screen or in the narration?</li><li>Do the shots get shorter towards the end?</li><li>Does it end on a question, not an answer?</li><li>Would I want to read the book?</li></ol>
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<hr>
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<h2>Sources</h2>
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<ul><li>Filmmaker Magazine - <em>The Art of First Impressions: How to Cut a Movie Trailer</em> <a href="https://filmmakermagazine.com/37093-first-impressions/" rel="noopener">https://filmmakermagazine.com/37093-first-impressions/</a></li><li>Derek Lieu - <em>Basic Trailer Story Structure</em> <a href="https://www.derek-lieu.com/blog/2017/9/10/the-matrix-is-a-trailer-editors-dream" rel="noopener">https://www.derek-lieu.com/blog/2017/9/10/the-matrix-is-a-trailer-editors-dream</a></li><li>StudioBinder - <em>How to Make a Movie Trailer</em> <a href="https://www.studiobinder.com/blog/how-to-make-a-movie-trailer/" rel="noopener">https://www.studiobinder.com/blog/how-to-make-a-movie-trailer/</a></li><li>MasterClass - <em>How to Make a Movie Trailer: 6 Tips</em> <a href="https://www.masterclass.com/articles/how-to-make-a-movie-trailer" rel="noopener">https://www.masterclass.com/articles/how-to-make-a-movie-trailer</a></li><li>Trailer sound design (stop-downs, rises, hits): Derek Lieu, <em>Secrets to Trailer Sound Design</em>; Violet Recording, <em>Sound Design for Trailers</em></li></ul>
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