Making Changes

After reviewing the first draft of our trailer we realised that there were some changes that needed to be made before we published it final form, and of these there were 3 key changes:

1) Length

We needed to cut down on Trailer length - the original trailer was 2:59, far too long given that standard length of a trailer is 2:00-2:30 in length. This created a serious problem, because the primary purpose of the Trailer (put simply) is to whet the appetite of our audience. One a trailer gets too long (caused by either showing the audience too much or having moments of the trailer drag out too long) it begins to feel more like an extract from the film rather than a trailer.
In order to rectify this I went back to the trailer and cut down on any moments that felt like they lasted too long. This was difficult to do in some places because Silvia Brown's dialogue had specific requirements both as to where it needed to fit and how long we needed it to last. Nevertheless, I was able to cut down on portions that were too long so that the different bits of the film that we tease in the trailer felt more like moments than extracts from different scenes. Once all of the changes had been made, the length of the trailer went from 2:59 all the way down to 2:19 (right where we'd want it to be).

2) The textual information

Within the second half of the trailer we give a bit of a tease as to what the film's going to be like/going to be about using text that is split into four different lines. This text needs to fit several criteria:
a) it needs to make the film seem more exciting tense so that they are more likely to want to see it
b) it needs to be long enough and reveal enough to whet the appetite but no more than that
c) it needs to be on screen long enough to read, but not so long that it feels like it drags or that it overpowers the audience

After discussing it with Evie we changed the original title text which read:

"When something looks too good...and even if things are looking hopeful...asking "what if?" ... may not be such a bad idea."

We realised that this text is not gripping enough for the audience and would likely not feel too exciting to them so, after discussing what we could change it to and some tweaking on the phrasing we came up with:

"When trying to escape your demons...sometimes you run blindly...because darkness has a habit...of hiding in plain sight."

3) The ending

As with any trailer one of the things that people typically do with something that is horrifying or plot twisting is that they will hint and tease as to what is going on but what they won't do is give the game away and we realised that the end of the trailer does exactly that: give too much away.
What we therefore did to rectify this was to cut out a chunk of the last sequence such that instead of giving Mya Brown a whole dramatic reveal speech she just tells Christopher that there is something they need to talk about and that is it.