Cutting an Effective Indie Trailer

Posted on January 16, 2009 in Marketing | No Comments

Zak Forsman via The Workbook Project offers some tips and lessons learned from cutting a his trailer for “Heart of Now.”

…I’ve just released a trailer for HEART OF NOW and wanted to share the things I’ve learned about this little marketing niche. What I’m doing is taking the lessons of the commercial world and applying them to my indie film work. So these are the conventions, the general “rules”. And yes, they are just waiting for someone like you to come along and break them!

Trailers can be a real challenge for filmmakers. The tendency is to withhold some of the more dynamic and compelling aspects of the film to preserve the experience of watching the film in a theater, streaming to one’s laptop or on a DVD. And that is admirable, but often lessens the potential impact of the trailer.

I used to cut these things for a living for the studios and I’ve developed the rare ability (for a filmmaker) to be able to shift gears from invisibly revealing the emotional truth of a scene to whipping up a concise, tantalizing preview. And I’ve come to some conclusions that I’d like to share…

— The Workbook Project | Read The Full Article