A teaser has one job: make a stranger want to see your film. It does not need to explain the plot, introduce every character or prove that the production was expensive. It needs a feeling, a face and an unanswered question, delivered fast enough that nobody scrolls away.
That sounds simple, and it is, but most filmmakers find it hard to cut their own teaser. You know every frame and every compromise. The audience knows nothing. This guide walks through the process the way an editor would approach it, from pulling selects to exporting vertical versions.
Teaser, trailer, clip: know which one you are cutting
These words get used loosely, so set the terms before you open the project.
- Teaser: short, usually 15 to 60 seconds. Sells tone and premise. Ends on the title and, ideally, a question.
- Trailer: longer, typically one to two and a half minutes for a feature. Lays out the shape of the story, more characters, more plot.
- Clip: a single uninterrupted moment from the film, lightly trimmed. Clips work well on social platforms because they feel like a real scene, not an ad.
For a short film, a teaser and a handful of clips is usually enough. For a feature, you will want all three. The teaser planner suggests how many cutdowns to plan based on your film's length.
Step 1: Watch the film as a stranger
Before you touch the timeline, watch the film once with a notepad and no scrubbing. Write down every moment that makes you feel something, even if it feels minor. Then ask someone who has not seen the film to watch it and note the moments they mention afterward, unprompted. Those are your strongest candidates, and they are often not the ones you expected.
Look for four kinds of material:
- Images that stand alone. A shot that is beautiful or strange without any context.
- Lines that intrigue without explaining. Dialogue that raises a question rather than answering one.
- Reactions. A face reacting to something we do not see is one of the most reliable teaser shots there is.
- Sound moments. A door, a breath, a silence, a music cue that could anchor a cut.
Step 2: Build a selects reel
Create a new sequence and drop every candidate moment into it, with a second or two of handle on each side. Do not worry about order yet. For a short film, a selects reel of two to four minutes is plenty. For a feature, it may run ten minutes or more.
Label each clip with a short tag: image, line, reaction, sound, title-worthy. When you start assembling, you will reach for categories, not timecodes.
Step 3: Choose a structure
Every effective teaser has a shape. The most dependable one has five parts:
- The hook. Your single strongest image or line, in the first moments. No logos, no slow fade in.
- The world. Two or three shots that tell us who and where.
- The turn. Something changes. Usually a line of dialogue or a hard sound.
- The escalation. Shorter shots, rising sound, stakes made visible.
- The title and button. The title card, then optionally one last beat after it: a line, a look, a laugh.
Genre bends this shape. A thriller teaser might hold a false calm longer and end on a sting. A comedy teaser should usually open on its best joke and save a second one for after the title. A documentary teaser often works best when it opens on the subject saying the most surprising thing in the film. The teaser planner offers starting structures for drama, thriller, comedy, documentary and AI shorts.
Step 4: Pace the cut
Start slow, end fast, then stop
Most teasers accelerate. The opening shots can breathe, then the cuts get shorter as the music or sound builds. The moment before the title is often the fastest part. Then you stop dead, cut to black or to the title, and let the silence work.
Cut on sound, not just picture
The best teaser cuts land on a beat: a drum hit, a door slam, the first syllable of a line. Lay your music or sound bed first, mark the hits, then cut picture to them. If you cut picture first and fit music after, the result usually feels pasted together.
Hold something back
Do not use your ending, your twist or your best visual effect. A teaser that gives away the climax has borrowed against the film.
Step 5: Design the sound
Sound is half of a teaser and more than half of its emotional effect. A few principles:
- Use a dialogue line as a spine. One clear line, heard over three or four shots, gives a teaser an argument.
- Drop the music before the title. A sudden silence makes the title card land.
- Mix for phones. Most people will watch your vertical teaser on a phone speaker. Check that dialogue is intelligible there, not just on studio monitors.
- Clear your music for the use. A license for festival screenings does not automatically cover online promotion. Read the terms before you publish.
That last point is not theoretical. YouTube says Shorts can now run up to three minutes, but a Short over one minute with any Content ID claim is blocked worldwide until the claim is released. If you are unsure about the music, keep the teaser under a minute or use the film's original score with written permission. The guide on sound and voice for AI films covers licensing basics that apply to any film.
Step 6: Write the text on screen
Text cards are where many independent teasers look amateur. Keep them sparse.
- Title card: the exact title, in the same typeface as your poster.
- One line of context, if any: a premiere, a festival selection, a release month. Use laurels only for festivals that have actually selected the film.
- Subtitles: burn them in for social platforms, because many people watch without sound. Keep them to two short lines and give each line time to be read.
- No paragraphs. If a card needs more than one short sentence, the footage is not doing its job.
Step 7: Make the vertical versions
A vertical teaser is not your 16:9 teaser with black bars. It is a new edit that happens to use the same footage. Plan for it.
Reframe every shot
Center cropping a widescreen frame to 9:16 throws away most of the image. For every shot, decide what the subject is and move the crop to it. Two-shots often need to become singles, or you may need to cut between the two faces.
Respect the interface
Vertical apps place captions, usernames and buttons over the bottom and right side of your video. Meta's Instagram Reels ad specifications recommend keeping at least 14% of the top, 35% of the bottom and 6% of each side free of text and key creative. That guidance is written for ads, but it is a sensible reference for any Reel. Use the safe zone guide to preview your title placement.
Front-load even harder
On a vertical feed, your hook needs to work immediately. If your 16:9 teaser opens on a slow wide shot, the vertical version may need to open on the reaction that comes later.
Cut several, not one
Instead of one vertical teaser, cut three to five short pieces: a teaser, two or three single-moment clips, and perhaps one built around a strong line of dialogue. Different moments find different viewers, and you learn which ones work before your premiere.
If you have a finished cut and want a faster first pass at those vertical pieces, you can turn your film into vertical clips with ViceForge, the clipping tool from the team behind this site. Its AI Creator mode is built for talk-driven video, which suits interview-led documentaries and dialogue scenes, and Manual mode lets you set exact start and end points for each moment you picked. You can export Vertical (9:16) output, and captions are added to every clip automatically. Treat the result as a rough cut and finish the edit yourself.
Step 8: Test before you publish
Show the teaser to three people who have not seen the film. Do not explain anything. Afterward, ask two questions: what is the film about, and would you watch it? If they cannot answer the first, the teaser is too vague. If they can answer it in detail, it is giving away too much. You are aiming for a confident guess and a yes.
Teaser checklist
- Opens on the strongest image or line, with no logo first.
- Has a clear turn and an unanswered question.
- Cuts land on sound hits.
- Music is cleared for online promotion, not only festival screenings.
- Dialogue is intelligible on a phone speaker.
- Title matches the poster and festival paperwork exactly.
- Vertical versions are reframed shot by shot, with text inside the safe zone.
- Subtitles are burned in for social versions and proofread.
- At least three people who have not seen the film have watched it.
Once the teaser is done, plan where it goes. The guide to promoting a film with short clips covers release timing across a festival run, and the festival checklist keeps the rest of your package on track.