Everyone knows that major films always have trailers that lure you in and interest you in buying a ticket. There is no reason why it cannot be the same for short films either. Stuck Up Films has been making short films since the beginning, and 2024 will be a year full of new films from us. As we prepare for this, let us look back at how I was able to edit the trailers for the oldest and newest films.
The Revolutionary Joke
This film began the venture that was Stuck Up Films, and it has not aged particularly well. It was scrappy, a little too long, and left much room for improvement. But I keep it visible publicly for the time being to show how much of an improvement I have made and will continue to make in my filmmaking journey. Every day is a day to learn a new skill, and this film gave me the confidence to start to learn.
If I want a dose of nostalgia for this time, I’m not likely to watch the film. I would rather watch the trailer. It is almost criminal how much better the trailer is than the film, and I think you would be much better off just watching this and carrying on with your day.
What do I like about it so much? First, we should start with the music. For all my current short film trailers, I used royalty-free music. This can always be risky as you don’t want your video to sound overly generic, but I have found a lot of use over the years in YouTube Studio’s audio library. New songs are always being added and it is very easy to filter by keywords and genres. This music presents a fun and quirky tone and is perfectly timed for a short film trailer.
Length is the other key differentiator between a short film trailer and a feature film trailer. If a film is 2 hours long, a 2-minute trailer is a very short sneak peek into what to expect. But for many short films, the length may only be a few minutes, and a trailer of that length would show far too much of the film. So we have to trim the length down proportionally as much as we can, and I think that a length of approximately 30 seconds is suitable for this format.
The titles and names on screen were modelled after feature film comedy trailers, which present their big stars as unique selling points, and paired them with shots of the actors to form that association between them. While actors like Ben Vause may not yet be on the level of Brad Pitt, at that time in our local college it was certainly a name that would raise an eyebrow. We were making something that we could show off, primarily as part of my portfolio to the University, but also to our friends and tutors. It was successful in that aim.
The trailer sets up the premise as quickly and briefly as possible, which is ironic considering that the titular joke takes the whole day to reach a punchline.
In a very Hollywood fashion, there is a post-title stinger at the end of the trailer with one last funny moment as the characters are shushed. This is not something to include in any trailer, but for a film attempting to be in the comedy genre, it works quite well.
The Church in Bidston
In my latest film to release, we once again see a change in genre to a short documentary piece. As a result, it is accompanied by audio of Revd. Joe Smith (the subject) talking about the function of the church, the nature of this specific church, and the nature of his job as a vicar. We had half an hour of an interview which we were able to cut down into the most interesting and relevant answers and quotations, so the material was all there for us to adapt into this trailer.
In the trailer, we use several pieces of footage that are not in the final film. Sometimes this can be a little concerning as you do not want to make it seem like you are misleading the audience into watching the film. We took some of the best leftover footage that we felt best represented the character of the film, and that we wanted to share with the world, even in a small way.
We are also able to cut into the same angle of the vicar in the interview setup to provide a tighter frame. I am sure I will detail this more in the inevitable blog post on the making of this film, but we planned the shoot with multiple cameras in mind. It was only on the day of travel that we were told that we had to drastically reduce what equipment we were taking due to the space on the coach. So we dropped down to a one-camera setup for the interview and felt that shooting the film at a higher resolution would compensate for that. By filming a higher resolution than we were delivering with the film, it gave us the flexibility to crop into shots to provide additional framings for the interview. Our editor however did not like how this looked, and thus it only made it to the trailer, which I edited.
This trailer was also the first that I converted to a vertical aspect ratio at the same time. This helps to make the video more accessible to platforms which prioritise vertical video, such as YouTube Shorts, TikTok, and Instagram Reels. Due to the wider framing on the vicar, a lot of the footage still worked in a vertical format, but some shots needed to be swapped out if it became too difficult to see ‘the full picture’ in them. You can watch this version here.
Honourable Mentions
Even though it has been close to a year since I have been able to edit such a short film trailer, I have been able to transfer many of the same skills to more recent projects. I detailed the editing of the SHU FilmSoc Student Short Film Night trailer in a previous blog.
We also released a trailer to mark the conclusion of the FINNEY Live at the Underground series of videos. That trailer was edited in a style reminiscent of videos such as the trailers for Coldplay’s Music of the Spheres World Tour. The videos are filled with non-synchronised audio and video which prioritise the best and most eye-catching footage from the performances, and also have an assortment of quotes on screen. Luckily, the journalist The Leopheard had done a brilliant write-up about the night and was more than happy to allow us to include some of her words in the video!
Final thoughts
Now if you’ll allow me, I’ll get back to work on some of our new and upcoming video projects! Some are completed, some are in post-production, and some are barely a twinkle in my eye, but I cannot help but think about how I will best represent them in an enticing trailer. Let’s wait and see!
- Mitchell
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