Creating a trailer as a short

Does anyone have any experience with making a trailer from the start with no intentions of filming the rest of the short? I'm interested in how a screenplay, the amount of locations, how much time it took, and generally how you planned the trailer out. If not, does anyone think you could save significant time with only filming the trailer?

I've always wanted to do this, but I fear getting the true look and feel of a trailer would take just as much work as actually filming the whole story.
 
yeah mussonman did this for space invaders, if you search around for those keywords it's on the forum.
 
I made 2 fake trailers for fun:

To be honest: I didn't have a complete story, but just tried to suggest we had.
Besides that they are both a bit in the parody domain.

This one is shot in 1 day.
Edited in about a week.
Preproduction time I don't remember: but at least 1 week if you count all the hours.
The first hint of the idea emerged over half a year before shooting and changed over time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NUQC9-PH_KA


This one probably makes no sense without subtitles.
But even with it is still a bit of a mysterious story.
The main idea was: 'let's do something with superheroes.'
'Wait. Superpowers are not easy to create.'
'Let's add lightsabers!!! :P '
(Actually only the first half is a trailer. The second half is making fun of it.)

I guess it was 2 weeks of preproduction.
2 days of shooting.
(One the first day the first half. We had quite a lot of locations. We started early in the morning and finished aroud midnight. Most locations were close to each other, but it really took time to move around all our stuff.)
2 weeks of post.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j4y9WeLP0rY

And the most important thing:
it was fun :)
 
In high school it was how my video productions instructor told us to practice storytelling. If you can compile a comprehendible story with a number of cut together shots, then you have achieved storytelling.
 
Thanks foster for sharing that. Everyone was right, the double glasses gag was superb!

This one is shot in 1 day.
Edited in about a week.

That's pretty impressive for 1 day. It almost seems like an art form in itself to be able to film like this. Trailer's seem to have a lot of broll in them, so I guess that's what I need to focus on.

This one probably makes no sense without subtitles.
But even with it is still a bit of a mysterious story.
The main idea was: 'let's do something with superheroes.'
'Wait. Superpowers are not easy to create.'
'Let's add lightsabers!!! :P '

I'm not familiar with Dutch, but I'm pretty surprised at how similar it is to German. I speak enough German to get around and as it turns, I might be able to make out enough Dutch to get around. Maybe.

Thanks for showing me your stuff. Like I said, my main concern is spending tons of time on putting together a minute long clip. Hopefully I'm going to finish filming my first commercial this weekend so I can start putting together a trailer!
 
That's pretty impressive for 1 day. It almost seems like an art form in itself to be able to film like this. Trailer's seem to have a lot of broll in them, so I guess that's what I need to focus on.

..................

All interior shots are in the same living room. (Except for the warehouse.)
The bed isn't even a bed. It's on the floor. I used the diningtable to put the tripod and camera on it to create the topshot.
Then we moved everything around to shoot the conversation at the dining table.
After that we blinded all windows to do the 'morpheus-shot'.

The parking was in front of the house.
The fun to the head was block away.

Then we moved to the warehouse.
Around dusk we shot the extrerior with 'Morpheus'.
After the sun set we did the running shots.

We ended in the warehouse.

After we packed I was just in time for a birhtdayparty (I arrived on 23:45).

So it was a long day, but clever planning the locations will save time.
Moving always takes time, so you want to do that as little as possible.

BTW,
thanks!

German and Dutch are indeed related languages. Some things are almost the same. Some are completely different.

PS.
For a trailer you want to show a situation in 1 or 2 shots.
So it's really a nice exercise for storytelling in 1 or 2 shots.
 
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