Teaser Trailers

Teaser trailer

Teaser trailers are unlike film trailers in the way they are typically very short in length usually between 30-60 seconds and usually contain little footage of the film. Usually it is a truncated version of the theatrical trailer.Teaser trailers are released to the audience long before the film which they are advertising is released so as to gather the audiences interest in the film. Teaser trailers received their name due to that fact that they are released sometimes up to two years before the film is released so as to tease the audience.

Typically teasers are only usually made for big-budget and popular blockbuster films, with their purpose being to bring to the audience attentions that the films release date is coming up and to hype up the film up towards the date of its release, rather than to tell the audience of the movies content. The teaser trailer usually made even whilst the film itself is still in the production stages or it displays alternative versions of specific scenes that have not yet been completed and produced in the film. However as is the same with some scenes in film trailers, some scenes are produced for use in the trailer only and do not actually feature in the film.

An early example of teaser trailers are the one for superman produced by Richard Donner, as the film was already a year behind its estimated release date, it’s intention was to re-invigorate the audiences interest in the upcoming film. Other more recent examples of major motion picture films that have produced teaser trailers to gain a hype for their films are; the lord of the rings trilogy, the star wars films and the spider man films. The Da Vinci Code teaser trailer ended up being released even before shooting had begun on the actual film. The teaser trailer for Harry Potter and the Half-Blood prince was seen as being released unusually late until the films release date was put back which then had a reverse effect of the teaser trailer being released unusually early compared with the films release date. This idea is also seen in the way that a teaser for The Incredibles was attached to the May 2003 film Finding Nemo, a full 18 months before The Incredibles was released, whilst also a teaser for Ben 10 Alien Force the Movie was released during the premiere of Star Wars: The Clone Wars about 13 months early. The teaser trailer for Cloverfield was first publicly shown attached to the film Transformers. At this point, nothing about the film was known, and the one-and-a-half-minute teaser did not include the movie title; only the producer's name, J. J. Abrams and a release date, 1.18.08, were shown. Many DVD versions of movies will have both their teaser and theatrical trailers. One of the more notable exceptions to this rule is Spider-Man, whose teaser trailer featured a mini-movie plot of bank robbers escaping in a helicopter, getting caught from behind and propelled backward into what at first appears to be a net, then is shown to be a gigantic spider web spun between the two towers at the World Trade Centre. After the 9/11 attacks, the trailer and associated teaser poster (where the two towers appear in as a reflection in Spider-Man's eyepieces) were pulled from distribution in theatres and have never been released on DVD. Conducting a search on YouTube under "Spider-man Banned Trailer" will show the teaser trailer in its entirety.
Many teaser trailers are similar to TV spots, except that they appear in movie theatres.