I think of the second act as the “Slap”. You’ve set up normalcy, you’ve hopefully invited the viewer to share it, and even though it’s been only a short amount of time, they should feel at home in that new reality… now it’s time to slap them. In the Ghosts trailer, the slap is broadcast pretty obviously. The music stops, and the "Nothing Lasts Forever" card tells you that this normalcy you’ve seen is about to be disrupted. In the Oculus trailer, the slap is a single fade out: he’s explained the mirror’s history, told you what he’s planning on doing with the cameras, you understand his plan; and then the mirror is mysteriously uncovered. BOOM, slap, fade out.
Coincidentally, I do a lot of cutting to black in the “second acts” of both of these trailers. For Oculus, the heartbeat sound carries the rest of the trailer to its conclusion. In Ghosts, this is just a bridge to the third act. The point here is to find examples of conflict, and you want to walk a fine line here – you want to show enough specifics so that people can get an idea of the conflict, but you can’t spell it out for them – it’s important that audience start to imagine what they believe the scenes that contain this conflict will be themselves. That’s some of the fun. You can’t be incoherent, but you’ve got to suggest enough specifics that people can really imagine a rich and complex story is going to be played out for them, should they invest time in the entire film.
The third act is my favorite in trailers, and I like to think of it as “Catharsis”. You’ve laid the foundation; you’ve given the audience a good slap and suggested tension, now it’s time for the finale. Think of a fireworks presentation – it escalates. Act three of any good trailer will take you from the tension of the conflict into the exhilaration of its hinted resolution. Ghosts uses a very driving piece of music to accomplish this, and here is where your musical choice is the most important. Songs are structured naturally like a good trailers – using the bridge and final chorus of any song will give you the desired effect of, well, open-ended completion.
The editing should pick up pace. Select shots that now show your characters at the peak of various emotions from the film. If you’re going to show them angry, show them at their angriest. If happy, blissful. And put emotions directly in order that contradict each other. Seeing these kinds of contradicting emotions, locations, and jumps in the film’s timeline suggest a richness to your film – it suggests that your film is complicated, and will reach a number of different types of climaxes. In horror films, this is where the screams are. For romantic comedies, this is where we see the footage from the third act “running to get to their love” sequences. For dramas, this is lots of reaction shots, whatever action sequences they’ve included, and some good old fashioned SHOUTING. (For example, watch the volume increase steadily throughout the Few Good Men trailer).
I cut pretty fast for the third act in Ghosts, and got so wrapped up in the music that I decided to do something very “Hollywood” and introduce my actors before going to my title card. This is all right – the more “Hollywood” you can make your trailer look, the better.
Finally, after the title, you have the option of using a “Stinger”. This is done a lot in pro trailers, and it should be something that kind of summarizes what you’ve shown them so far, or hints at a deeper secret. For the action movies, it tends to be the image of a car flipping into the camera, or a good one-liner. For Ghosts, I wanted to hint that our main character (and the audience by proxy) would find themselves in the exact antithesis of the “reality” established by the first act of the trailer. In Oculus, I wanted to make people think there was something very scary that I wasn’t willing to show them unless they watched the whole movie.
All in all, remember that the people watching your trailer haven’t seen your film. They don’t know how awesome the thing is in its entirely, so you’ve really got to make sure you put your strongest stuff forward. Use your bets shots. Use your best takes. Avoid shots with bad lighting, shots out of focus, or other production bungles no matter HOW much you may dig them in the finished product – sometimes, people are watching these things only for reasons to AVOID your film. Use professional graphics, and don’t over-do them.
And most importantly, let this little trailer show your film at its best. Sure, there aren’t any real rules, and inventive editors can get away with some neat tricks in a trailer, but try to keep it as true to your film as you can. If this is all people ever see of your vision, what do you want to INSIST they take away with them? Because after all, anyone will watch a trailer. For an independent, it may be the most important two minutes of their career.
Mike Flanagan is an award-winning writer, director and editor of four feature films, including the critically acclaimed horror film ABSENTIA. Based in Los Angeles, Mike has also worked as a professional television editor for over a decade, helming programming for Discovery, Bravo, A&E, and other networks. He is currently in pre-production on his fifth feature film, OCULUS, a feature version of his award-winning short.
