A trailer generator for films that exist

How a trailer is cut

Open a flick that has at least one finished scene and choose the trailer tab. Every finished scene is listed with its thumbnail; tick up to three. For each pick you set how many seconds to keep, between five and eight, and the studio takes that window from the middle of the scene, where the action usually lives. The cut opens on a two-second tagline card, runs your picks in the order you ticked them, and closes on a three-second coming-soon card with the film title.

The whole thing is capped at thirty seconds. Three picks at eight seconds each with both cards comes to twenty-nine, so the cap is rarely a constraint, but it means a trailer never sprawls. It costs two credits, and if you change your picks you can cut it again; the previous trailer is replaced.

Choosing the right three scenes

A good trailer poses the question of the film without answering it. For a heist that is the crew, the vault and the moment the plan wobbles, not the reversal. For a tearjerker it is the visit and the photograph, not the line that resolves them. Vary the shot sizes: a wide, a close-up and a two-shot cut together better than three close-ups.

The tagline card is worth a minute of thought. The drafter proposes a tagline when it writes the beat sheet, and you can rewrite it on the flick card at any time. Under ten words, present tense, and it should sound like something a poster would say rather than a summary.

Trailers without a finished film

You can cut a trailer before the main cut exists. Shoot the three beats you think are strongest, trailer them, and use the result to decide whether the rest of the sheet is worth shooting. Some people make the trailer first on purpose: thirty seconds of the best moments is a cheap way to see whether a cast and a genre work together.

Publishing a trailer

A trailer is a video of its own with its own page, so it can be shared on its own. When the flick is published, the trailer sits next to the cut on the public film page, and the trailers page on this site lists public trailers newest first. Trailers inherit the flick’s visibility, so an unpublished flick keeps its trailer private too.