The Music

Is the most important thing to have in a tralier. Second only to the video itself.

So I'm going to break this down to three parts: The Minutes, The Music, & The Timing

THE MINUTES

So here's something no one ever told me when I started making trailers--the minutes matter. Why do the minutes matter? Because sometimes things don't go your way. When making a trailer you have to fill in all the spaces of the trailer and what's worst than a black screen (unless of course it's for timing, which I'll discuss later). So what if you suddenly run out of vidoes and you've got like 45 seconds left of screen time? (May not sound much but trust me, that's a lot already). Another thing you have to worry about is the upload time. I'm not so sure with other people (I have a slow net) but anything beyond 2:29 minutes will take make 3 hours to upload--sometimes more (my trailers are HD as well so I guess that would explain things...). Do not, I repeat, do NOT make a trailer that's 4-6 minutes long. Not will you only have a hard time filling in those gaps but people will get bored easily. The safe number is 1:30 above to 2:29 below. Anything beyond 3:39 and you're looking for trouble.

THE MUSIC

Most of the time the requester will decide the background music which is cool, yeah no problem. But the thing is they tend to place in songs. Songs are good of course, it places in the emotions and what not. Problem? Too damn long. As I've said the minutes matter so the best thing you can do is talk it out with the requester to change it into something else. What something else you say? Do you hear that background music that movies always play? Yes those. Use them. Not only do they last for 2-3 minutes long but they happen to carry a good beat for timing. They're short but they can be the best when it comes to background music. I get my background music from Pandora Heart (anime). If you can find another source (even the instrumental of some songs will work too) then be my guest. You're not limited to my resources, if you can find something better then feel free to use them!

THE TIMING

I don't see this in enough trailers and that's timing. What's timing you ask? Do you notice in some music that it starts and then just stops then ends again? Look at the picture below:

See that long straight line in the middle? There's no music there. Meaning you can cheat and just black screen that part because it adds to the dramatic effect. Though you must get your timing right and you have a choice of completely cutting it off or you can slowly fade it out--fading it out makes it look calm and maybe sad but cutting it off completely can make it seem like it's angry and angsty. Which is good depending on the genre your trying to make your trailer.

FINAL NOTES

So here's some of my trailers where I used music, timing, and the minutes. This one was created with Sony Vega so it's much better than the first one woop woop.

TRAILER HACKS

So you've got some thirty or twenty something left of screen time and you've got nothing to place in it? Well here's a great way to fix that:

Scenaries.

Anything can fit really. Leaves, sunsets, buildings--anything. Just make sure it fits the mood of the trailer and doesn't look chuncky and out of place!