Teasers and trailers are different things. Trailers — those things you see at the movies before the feature shows — are supposed to give a clue concerning what a film is about. A teaser can do one or more of a few different jobs, including: 1) indicating a film is in progress, 2) demonstrating “look and feel,” 3) creating interest in particular aspects of a coming film, 4) providing proof to a funder that, yes indeed, you are working on the damned thing, and 5) testing various filmmaking choices before committing.
I’ve produced two teasers for Trinity, my upcoming (because it’s in post-production) documentary short film about (and here’s where it gets sticky) coping with the Crisis of 2020.
For the perplexed, start by doing two things. search for #crisisof2020 and read this book.
If you’re familiar with Strauss & Howe you’ll “get” this teaser. If not, the look-and-feel thing is still in play 🙂 And the buddy-road-trip narrative arc should be apparent, too.
One of the things I’m wondering about is whether to go color or black & white. The latter is interesting to me because I like B&W and I think the baby boomer ethos lends itself to B&W. We’ll see.
Finally, a teaser has an important personal role to play for filmmakers: You’ve declared yourself, now it’s time to follow through.
Tech note: I filmed this with a Canon C100 Mark II using the Canon LOG shooting profile. I applied a “skin tone” LUT to the footage and corrected for exposure. For the B&W version, I simply desaturated and adjusted for exposure and contrast. Edited with DaVinci Resolve 18.
