Teaser

You show a viewer 15, maximum 30 seconds — and they should want to know afterwards that there's a trailer. Not that there's a film. That's the teaser. An appetizer without a story, without the names of the main actors, without a single plot point. Pure mood, a sound logo perhaps, the production company, a tagline. Done. The teaser isn't about the film itself — it's about making the audience want to watch the actual trailer later.

On set, this means: Teaser shots are often beauty shots that you collect parallel to trailer production. A hand touching something shiny. A glance into the camera. A symbol, a color, a texture — without context. For a superhero film, it might be fragmented armor, for a horror film, a door slowly opening. The DP focuses on visual storytelling here — movement, light, editing — because the sound level often consists only of music, perhaps a scream, a word. No dialogue to explain.

In post-production, teaser editing runs parallel to or even before trailer editing. You need less material, but you can edit more deliberately — every frame has to count. Color grading is aggressive, sharp, mood-laden. Sound design is crucial — because without dialogue, the acoustic image is your only narrator alongside the visual. The teaser runs on social media, in cinemas before other films, sometimes surprisingly without announcement ("mystery teaser"). This distinguishes it from the classic trailer, which already provides exposition.

Practically: If your production designer and your director of photography work closely together, you can capture teaser moments during regular shooting — an additional take, a different angle. This saves expensive reshoots. The teaser works best when it's visually so concise that it works even without sound. Think about composition, not story. This makes it recognizable, shareable, and memorable — which is precisely the goal: to make the viewer curious, not informed.