The Ten Commandments of Typography

Take heed and do not sin!

Trailer Help

There's no doubt that making a trailer is a hard thing to do, especially when you don't have an actual film to work from.  So the best thing you can do is keep looking at real trailers to inspire you and help you structure the thing.  Just had a look at this trailer for a new British drama and think it contains lots of useful reminders of what you should be trying to achieve.  Pay close attention to the structural devices - the dialogue as voiceover, the slates etc.  Most importantly look at how few sequences there are and how, where present, they're no more than three or four shots.  The script really does the job.  Dialogue is minimal, one line here and there that sums up the narrative thrust, e.g "we're not kids any more" telling the audience about genre and narrative. 
What this tells us is that you need to aim to 'strike and run' with your shots.  They should grab the audience and then you move on to the next one that grabs them and so on.

Creativity

Dolly Zoom - a visual explanation

Evolution of the Dolly Zoom from Vashi Nedomansky on Vimeo.
If you want to disorient your audience you might want to use a dolly zoom.  As you can see from the examples given above, it offers other possible effects.  Read more about how to achieve the effect here.

Great Trailer Resources

Click on the links below for some great resources to help you make your trailers the best they can be:
http://filmmakermagazine.com/37093-first-impressions/#.VDt2UNItAdU
http://www.premiumbeat.com/blog/editing-a-film-trailer/
http://jonnyelwyn.co.uk/film-and-video-editing/how-to-edit-film-trailers/

Some really important tips from trailer editor, Ross Evison:

1) Remember to keep building the trailer, make the story move forward, running on the spot is a waste of time. The 3 act structure, like the majority of story telling, works great. Set up you place and characters at the beginning, have some fun in the middle then push the turning point into the final act where you either have your final promise of what’s going to happen or throw in some jeopardy. Escalate, escalate, escalate then stop!

2) Don’t let shots and moments out stay their welcome. The perfectly constructed moment you created in your film CAN be trimmed right down in the trailer, don’t worry it doesn’t ruin your film. It will always be perfect in the film.

3) The trailer doesn’t have to be as linear as
the film – often better if it isn’t.

Will Competition Make or Break Streaming?

There are some great stats in this article.  With Google and Apple about to launch streaming services, it's interesting to note how none of the existing services make a profit and that very few of the potential users actually pay for the services.  An argument is that the cost of a subscription puts users off paying it and that, with Apple and Google entering the market, the increased competition will force down the price of subscription and encourage more people to sign up and pay for services.  However, what would be the eventual consequence of this?  When prices are forced down some services will inevitably be forced to close because they don't have the scale of business to cope.  This often leads to a near monopoly situation where just the big companies are left and less choice is available to the consumer.  Of course, this could also impact on the artists as one or two companies dominating the streaming market will mean that they can force record labels to accept lower payments per play on the streaming services.  On the flip side of course, this might be the bitter pill that the industry and consumer will have to swallow if they want to see streaming services continue.  Investors will only support Spotify and Pandora for so long before they want to see a profit.

Has technology improved music production?

http://www.thebeatles.com/photo-album/
early-recording-sessions-abbey-road

Theoretically digital technologies can speed up the production process and make it more accessible.  But what effect do they have in practice.  Paul McCartney (for the Kanye West fans amongst you, he's one the last two remaining Beatles) reminds us that the restrictions of the pre-digital era helped to make musicians more focused:

"We would record four tracks in a day - which is unheard of now - and those four tracks still sell more than most contemporary records. So obviously the system was pretty good. It was very simple, you had to just be very disciplined... we knew we had to play great," he said.
"Whereas now you know you go: 'We'll do another take or we'll get it in the mix, we'll just take that bum note out, we'll stick it on Pro-Tools, we'll fix it.' But it gives you, I think, too many options.
"It's great, it's very luxurious, but I don't think it helps the process."
Read more of what he said on the BBC News site.