Millions of views for the teaser trailer — which was an event itself today, because modern society is a quirky place. Millions of views. And most people were probably pleased:
And why not? That’s pretty intriguing.
There’s a subset of Star Wars fans who, for years and years, have been re-cutting even the original films and making their own stories. Some of them are supposedly big departures and markedly better than Lucas’ 1970s vision — where Greedo shot second. I am not one of those people. I don’t even own any version of the movies. But, like you, I probably know them all too well in general. So while I don’t cut video, I did see one thing above that I would do differently. But then I had this sudden realization.
Sure, that’s getting millions of views. It is a 1:45 tour de promotion. Culture phenomenon behind it, Disney’s marketing monster behind that. No record is safe. And YouTube is very pleased with the commercials they’ll have floating around that commercial — because modern society is a quirky place and, if you are smart, you can make money advertising off of someone else’s commercial. The Star Wars people are happy, too, particularly if they have entered into any promotional-financial deal with YouTube.
But, in our modern media world, shouldn’t we think beyond the traditional big screen presentation? Shouldn’t we think beyond the video hosting format? That link is getting passed around like a water bucket at a town hall fire today, but that’s just the link. Why wouldn’t you want to promote your product in other ways in other places?
This requires a few obvious changes. First, since your audience is here, there and everywhere, you need to be everywhere. The problem is every platform supports different sizes, run times, loops, etc. So, for a case like a movie promo, you’ll have to change your editorial stride. You have to get the pertinent information out there and, of course, making viewers want to show up to see your finished product.
(What follows is intended purely as a Fair Use educational exercise.)
Let me give it a try. Twitter these days supports a 30-second video embedded right in the tweet. So here you have the luxury of a lot of time in our hyper-mediated world:
Modern media outreach requires specific promos. The Star Wars teaser is 1:45, but Twitter supports a :30 clip. #fb pic.twitter.com/KDnHaXg12G
— kenny smith (@kennysmith) April 17, 2015
After the obvious and necessary trimming required for this marketing/storytelling/promotional exercise, I made one obvious change to the cut. (Personal preference.) I’ll only do it one more time, in a smaller way oriented more toward production than editorializing.
Now, Twitter is generous and gives you 30 seconds, but Instagram only gives you 15. Also, the square format would require some changes on the production end. That, right away, makes Instagram’s video feature outdated in my book. Anyway, here’s the necessarily shorter demonstration promo:
Finally, we come to Vine. The famous six-second video and the urgency of now, now. And don’t forget, it loops. Now I got lucky. Just watching that teaser with the idea of looking for a quick glimpse-clip you realize you’ve got a ton of iconic choices. A Vine ad might work better for this film rather than next month’s Aloha, a romantic comedy or June’s Big Game, an action film starring Samuel L. Jackson. But for this project, for this movie, this clip works well.
Yes, I know there’s a music mixing issue here. I’m only working with the produced material, of course. (And with hasty editing.)
The one thing missing is the MPAA announcement. But otherwise, this is an idea with legs; an idea whose time has come.
You have some audience overlap, sure, but you have different people on these different platforms throughout the day. And they consume products differently in each format. We must prepare our products accordingly, which is to say differently in each. Do it well then you can use social media’s true muscle, passing along information at the speed of light. Keep dropping in those links to the home-base trailer. Drive the audience to YouTube or Hulu. Watch people come in from Twitter and Instagram and Vine or wherever they were. It doesn’t matter where they were before. Now they’re watching a ship speed across the desert, an X-wing fighter skimming the water, that one guy who we don’t know yet, explosions, light sabers … and I’ve just invented the teaser-teaser.
