As a cinematographer and an editor for the Sunday League pilot, I have been given the task of filming and editing a teaser for the show. The first thing I decided to look at what the difference between a teaser and a trailer, taking into account that I am planning on doing a trailer later after shooting some scenes in February. From the beginning I have had an idea of what a teaser is compared to what a trailer is, which is a short version that actually teases the show in a way that doesn't give much up. A trailer editor in Hollywood called Kuldeep Shah, explains a bit more the difference between them two. She says:
A Teaser is exactly what it's called..It's main purpose is to just tease the audience. They're usually around a minute (give or take a few) and have minimal visuals, dialogues lines without giving away too much of the movie. Teasers work well to build up anticipation.
Trailers are more fleshed out. They have a story line, or a message to communicate. They're longer..around 2 - 2 1/2 mins long (approx). They'll have more dialogues and sometimes narration to reveal more story of the movie.
https://www.quora.com/Teaser-vs-Trailer-vs-Preview-whats-the-difference
A big part of this research was to understand how teasers worked and their difference between TV and film teasers. The majority of people usually watch film teasers on the cinema and social media, but it is very unusual to see actual TV shows teasers unless you watch them on TV or on social media as well, which are not as common as trailers. I had look at some in the past but I decided to give more of a look to some recent ones and understand a bit more of what are the type of elements that teasers include. Although they are different productions, they all include similar backgrounds which as Kuldeep Shah was explaining, is to not include much dialogue or story, and sometimes they don't even have to reveal anything from the story, its usually teasing characters, tone or drama. I had a look at a couple of them that could help me think of techniques form the editing and shooting point of view:
Scream Queens
This teaser is one of my favorites and helped me inspire a bit on finding a tone to our teaser. It shows a character, who seems very girly, probably with money, but a very bitchy attitude. On top of it the music and the blood that comes out of the chewing gum, gives it a bit more of suspense and shows that there will possibly be murders and big suspense in this show. I thought this would help in ours to keep in mind the kind elements I have to pay attention to and include in shots and in post production to makes sure I am setting up the right tone with the right colors and shots.
Heroes Reborn
On this teaser I looked at some other elements based on Danny's (the director) first idea of a teaser which was to tease the characters. This particular one is from Heroes Reborn, teasing one of the new characters called Tommy. Although the teaser is 15 seconds long, it does show and tell enough to tease someone. There is dialogue in this one in which he briefly says he is running from someone, people think he is dangerous and with some visuals this helps to see that he has some sort of powers and people are coming for him. That tells enough to know more or less what this show is going to be about. On top of that the use of color is very important in this type of teasers because it represents the character, in this case green. Some other characters form the same series are represented with a different color. This could have been a good idea implement if we were going to tease the characters instead of the show, but in the end we didn't.
Blood on the Ice
Next one is a really low budget teaser for a Film and TV course, which helped me realize that you don't need big shots or scenes or just to include too much to transmit a message. The teaser is not the best, but in my opinion it does include some elements that are good. First the whole film is based on people that get killed on a mountain full of snow. In the teaser you can see how it is snowing, the music and the filter on the walking between the trees helps to ogive some suspense of expecting something to happen. Some elements like maybe blood on the floor or a scream or something similar would have make it better, but I wanted to use this one more from the editing point of view to see how with some good music, filters and titles, I can easily set the tone of my show without focusing as much on the actual shots.
House of Anubis
I also decided to have a look at this British show, House of Anubis, which used to air on Nickelodeon, but wasn't filmed on big budget. The teaser uses a lot of filters to represent tones and mood. We see a lot of yellow at the beginning, brown down at the cellar and a bit more black and blue somewhere below the cellar. The teaser ones again has no lines and doesn't have any effects or anything big, is just a couple of main shots giving drama and suspense, showing that something is hidden and a secret is being kept and that these people we see are looking for something or someone. With that said, it helps once again with our side because what we want is just to tease what our show is about without really giving much away, but also including some of the main elements.
Any Time Robbery
Another low budget teaser that I decided to include not because of the good aspects but because of the bad ones. Although it is low budget, this teaser is really not very well shot and edited and it doesn't really give anything to hold on to. Although there is no dialogue or anything, we see a kid in like western school clothes walking on mini forest with a lot of suspense music, but it is really not giving away anything. I didn't get what this was about, I actually watched the short film and it was even worse than the teaser, but I would have never guessed it was all about this guy getting robbed in the forest some money he took from the cashpoint. I learned from this one that although teasers can be l ow budget they don't necessarily have to be this bad and that if I don't include the important elements mentioned in the ones before, it will end up making no sense like this one.
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