The Most Important Element Of A Trailer

By Tom Getty

When faced with the prospect or demand of having to make a trailer, when faced with the blank editing canvas—what is the most important element that will help you build your movie trailer? You might be tempted to reach for the best shots, the most “trailer worthy”visuals. But if you really want to build your trailer from the ground-up, you should start with the most important element of any movie trailer: the dialogue. Instead of seeking out “trailer worthy” shots, you seek out “trailer worthy” dialogue.

Movies are primarily—at least, now a days—built on words. Not images. It’s been argued that movies are a visual medium. Maybe in effect. But foundationally, movies are first written. And that usually means dialogue in a script. For the screenwriter preparing his or her screenplay, it’s generally the dialogue that’s most tinkered with. This is because it’s through dialogue that a story is ultimately told. Of course, more is going on beneath the surface, within the subtext, but for the purposes of making a trailer, for understanding why this works, movies are built through their dialogue. The modern movie generally tells its story through what the actor’s words.

Thinking in this way, you realize it’s sound that motivates a movie trailer—not its visuals.

To begin editing a trailer, you first turn off the pictures. They will be of no help in the foundational building of your movie preview. Absolutely no help. Ignoring this will lure you into hours of trying to make images express some sort of coherent story. Your first job as a trailer editor is to find trailer worthy dialogue by looking not at the screen, but at the audio’s waveform, fast forwarding to each peak of sound on the dialogue track.

But what’s “trailer worthy” dialogue? When you first start this way, looking for dialogue to build your trailer on, it’s an overwhelming prospect to wade through hours of talking. Don’t fret. The vast majority of movies are filled with so many salutations and greetings, so many hems and haws, that once you whittle away all that, once you really find what is important, there’s really only two types of dialogue you need be on the lookout for:

Exposition and action.

Exposition dialogue is talk that’s used to express facts about the world of the story at hand. That is, it’s dialogue the writer has used to convey necessary information so the audience can follow along with the film. This is whenever a character says something like, “You’ve been gone for 2 months.” Or “Here, in this house, we have rules.” Anything that states a fact and betrays information. There’s a reason so many trailers used to begin with, “In a world…” Our job as trailer editors is made much easier when the adage “show, don’t tell” has been mostly ignored. We can all think of films where exposition fills the majority of a film’s talk.

Action dialogue is found within characters trying to getsomething. That is, it’s found whenever a character (or the actor) is trying to achieve something with their words. “Give me the detonator,” an example of a simple attempt at, of course, getting a detonator. But also, more subtle: “You’ll never get out of here alive,” is a character trying to get something—here, the character wanting to menace. In a sense, action, the main action of a piece of dialogue, is found within the subtext. What is really being said in the words. To locate action dialogue, listen to not only the surface of what’s being said, but what goes unsaid. Again, listen for what the character is trying to achieve with their words.

Then, once you have a collection of exposition and action dialogue, you tell the story. You parse out some information about the world of the story—perhaps you start with some action dialogue. You do a little information, a little bit of action. You find some way to parcel in an inciting incident, then an act reversal, a little information, action, and another act reversal. You essentially make a mini movie.

This is what it really means when teachers of trailer design say a trailer should have “three acts.” What they leave out is that this is done through the dialogue and an understanding of what story components the dialogue is conveying. Again, it’s in the dialogue you’ll find your story action—not really in the visuals. It’s then getting good at designing and organizing this dialogue into telling a story that you’ll build a solid foundation to really build your trailer on.

What’s important is that you pace the dialogue, and then leave enough space for not the music—but the sound effects.

Because it’s the sound effects—the booms, the impacts—that are the second most important building block of a trailer. Which is for another time.

For now, it’s important to just get good at not watching a movie—but listening to it. That is, listening to its dialogue. And how it tells the story.

This applies to any film.

The story can be inferred from simply listening.

So, you train yourself to listen for the story being told through dialogue. In fact, you do this by finding five movies you enjoy—or, if you’d like to test the method—five movies whose stories you believe are told through visuals—and you don’t watch, just listen, and you jot down what you feel is trailer worthy dialogue. Jot the dialogue down on individual notecards so that when you’re finished with the respective film, you’ll have a pile (probably 50 or so); you’ll organize this pile into your own trailer for the film.

Then, you’ll go and compare your organization to that film’s actual trailer. Your organization may differ—but the comparison will yield you a world of riches.

This is not also to ignore what else you should do—and that is get five trailers for movies you enjoy, or want to test the method out, and write down each line of dialogue on individual notecards. Put them in order, and just read to yourself what’s written. You’ll find that a story, a conception of the film, is being beamed into your mind.

That is what it means to build an appeal, create a concept, within a trailer. It’s the story and expectations that are projected into your mind. The more clearly you do this, the greater expectations you place in the mind of the receiver, the better the trailer—the more audiences will want to see the movie.

This is the foundation of building a movie trailer.