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“In a world…”You’re a screenwriter, so here’s an easy image to conjure. There’s a 20-something writer alone in a small room, tapping away at his keyboard. Awful posture. He’s doing his best to write a screenplay that will sell, but in the end, he’s not sure any of it’s going to work.

From that point in time, it’s easy to project out a hundred different fates for this guy and his script, and most of them end in failure. This time, though, let’s be generous. Let’s follow that one magical strand forward, watching along the way as he sells his script. A star and director are attached. The movie gets the green light. It’s filmed, and now the only thing left is the release. As we reach the end of this timeline, we find ourselves in a very familiar spot.

Another 20-something writer is alone in a small room, tapping away at his keyboard. Even worse posture. He’s doing his best to write some ad copy that will sell the first guy’s movie, but in the end, he’s not sure any of it’s going to work.

I’ve been both of those guys.

To be sure, there are plenty of writers who just don’t care if their movies find a large audience. All they want to do is write a good story they can be happy with, and damn the rest of America and the world if it’s not a hit. I, on the other hand, due to either weakness or vanity, have this irrepressible desire to write movies that lots of people see. Since I started out as someone who sold movies, I have a certain insight into the totality of the process. It’s seductive to think that it’s the studio’s problem, but the reality is that you can build marketing success into your screenplay…or lay the seeds of your own marketing doom.

In 1994, I became a marketing executive for Buena Vista Pictures, which is Disney’s distribution arm. I wrote poster lines and trailer copy and all the words for the annoying television ad announcers. I wrote and produced marketing campaigns for Touchstone Pictures, Walt Disney Pictures and the now happily defunct Hollywood Pictures. Some of the campaigns were can’t-misses for big movies like Crimson Tide (“Danger Runs Deep”, I thought, and lo, a poster was born). Some were for movies that we in the marketing department really elevated to a big opening weekend, like The Santa Clause (“This Christmas, The Snow Hits The Fan” I thought, and moms and kids thought, “Okay, I’ll give that a shot”).

Some we just muffed. And others, well…there were some we just couldn’t do anything with.

During my two years in marketing, I found that there were certain elements that were necessary for a successful marketing campaign. The funny thing about those elements was that they were either there in the beginning, i.e. the screenplay…or they weren’t.

Please don’t view this as some horrendous method of commercializing your wonderful art. I’m sure your screenplay defies all that come before it, and you would never consider marring it with base concerns like the content of the television commercials and trailers and posters that will attempt to attract patrons to it.

Still, if you’re at all interested in having your movie seen by the largest audience possible, here are a few things to at least consider before you send your script off to be made into a film.

A Great Title

As brilliant as it was, not many people went to the theater to see The Shawshank Redemption. If you think it’s because of a lack of big stars or subject matter, I could cite ten hits that would prove you wrong.

It was the title. What the hell is a Shawshank Redemption? The movie sounds like bible study or perhaps an instructional film on how to prepare lamb.

Look, Stephen King is a genius. Far be it from me to second guess his title choices. I’ll go one step further. Frank Darabont is twice the screenwriter I’ll ever be. It’s possible that they knew the title would give them trouble, but they just didn’t care. I can accept that.

Can you? Think carefully about your title. Does it evoke a feeling? Does it communicate the genre of the film? Does it worm through your brain a little?

If it needs to be punchy, is it short? If it needs to be epic, is it cool?

Show me a horror movie trailer that ends with the title Saw, and I learn a lot. Someone is going to saw through a human at some point. That’s a given. And at three letters, it’s kind of hard to forget. Even better, if someone says, “Saw, what’s that about?” and I say, “It’s a horror film,” they’re going to go, “Oooh, gross,” without any other information given.

Which is what you want.

Let’s talk about the other end of the spectrum. You can do a big epic title if you need to, but it really has to sell something interesting. It was very smart of Disney to call their swashbuckler Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl. Sure, it’s long, but “Pirates of the Caribbean” is a ride. We’ve all ridden the ride.

A million times.

“Curse of the Black Pearl” says, “Forget the ride. There’s more. And there’s a curse, so that means the supernatural will be involved…and that means this movie won’t be the boring men-in-stockings sword orgy you were probably expecting.”

Exceed Expectations

Good trailer movies have a “twist”, and by that, I don’t mean the oh-my-god-Verbal-Kint-is-Keyser-Soze sort. I’m talking about the twist that elevates your story from the expected to the unexpected.

Mass audiences love genre films. They love horror movies, they love cop movies, they love action thrillers, they love romantic comedies.

On the one hand, that means they’re already inclined to see your genre film. On the other hand, they won’t be if they feel like they’ve seen it already…and they’ve seen a lot.

If you’re writing a cookie-cutter concept, it’s going to be very hard to sell. It may be reeeeeally good, but when it’s run through the two minute and thirty second duck press of the theatrical trailer, it’s not going to be distinguishable from everything else on the shelf at Blockbuster.

Conversely, your movie may be crap, but if it takes a familiar genre and then turns it on its head or exceeds it in some interesting way, trailer audiences will take notice.

Intelligent people may argue over whether or not Underworld is a good film. From a marketing point of view, however, it’s a dream come true. Genre audiences have seen vampire movies. They’ve seen werewolf movies. They’ve seen the Matrix films. And they’ve seen Romeo & Juliet stories. How about vampires and werewolves beating the shit out of each other Matrix style, while star-crossed lovers from opposite sides try and stop the war?

Well, that would defy my expecations of a typical monster flick. The movie nearly earned its production cost back in gross receipts its opening weekend.

Let’s take my favorite example (this is mostly because I like sucking up to Ted and Terry, but also because they make it easy). Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl appeared to be an expected genre film. Pirates. Seas. Swords. Bosoms and wigs. But then…well…

Create Trailer Moments

…the pirates turned into walking skeletons.

Exceeding expectations is wonderful. But more than anything else, a good trailer moment will help sell your film.

Trailer moments are those magical little snippets of film that just grab people by their imaginations. They’re typically dialogue-free (we’ll discuss dialogue in a moment), and by their very nature, they require no context to be impressive.

Allow me to remove my lips from Ted and Terry’s butts and instead, kiss my own ass for a bit. Say what you will about Scary Movie 3, but the trailer for the movie was one of the best I’ve ever seen (kudos to the Dimension marketing department). It was so good, it’s one of the only movie trailers Entertainment Weekly ever put on their “Must See” list.

As of this date, this second-sequel-with-no-big-stars still holds the record for the biggest opening weekend in October box office history. 48 million bucks on a sleepy pre-Halloween weekend. And why?

The reveal of Michael Jackson screaming like a little girl.

It’s a great trailer moment, and it told the audience everything they needed to know about the film.

When you’re writing your screenplay, ask yourself if there’s one indelible image that a marketer can just drop into a trailer. Something no one’s seen before. Something that will crack them up or shock them or make them say “Cool!”. Pirates become walking skeletons, a man offers a woman a diamond ring and then snaps the box shut on her fingers, a hand comes out of the back of a woman’s head, a bridge is seen exploding in a rear view mirror as Dakota Fanning shrieks…

Trailers don’t have time to place your scenes in context. Think of a great trailer moment that fits your screenplay…and write it.

Physical Humor

If comedy trailers seem like an endless parade of kicks to the crotch, understand that there’s a reason for this.

Dialogue jokes play okay in trailers.

Physical comedy plays great in trailers (especially overseas).

Sure, kicks to the crotch are done to death. If you’re writing a comedy, make sure there’s at least one great moment of physical comedy, because the marketers are going to need it. Old School had a lot of good jokes, but that tranquilizer dart going into Will Ferrell’s neck sealed the deal for a lot of moviegoers.

One Great Line

This is the hardest thing to pull off when writing. I debated whether or not to even mention this, because trying to write a great line is a sure-fire way to ensure that you write crap.

Still, a great, short line of dialogue can really help sell a film. One of my favorite movies of all time is Unforgiven. It’s a morally complex film with men of ambiguous natures committing crimes in the name of honor and law.

None of that sort of thing matters when you’re cutting a trailer. Movie advertising is reductive in nature; a great line of dialogue may sell the audience on a character, even if the pitch is, well, misleading.

Having a character say, “You just shot an unarmed man,” and then hearing Clint Eastwood respond “He should’ve armed himself” is definitely going to give audiences the wrong idea. It’s out of context, it’s not what his character is really about…and it’s perfect for a trailer. There’s a reason the trailer announcer never says things like, “In a time of moral quandry, one man was indecisive about how violent he should actually be…”

Who the hell’s gonna see that?

Here’s another movie that would have otherwise seemed like homework: The Last Of The Mohicans. A period piece that would have otherwise done okay business with the Merchant-Ivory crowd, the movie’s marketing materials practically boiled down the entire story to one simple line:

“You stay alive, no matter what occurs! I will find you.”

Swooning ensued. The fact that Daniel Day-Lewis appeared to be standing under a waterfall as he spoke this line didn’t hurt.

The marketing for this period piece romance with sub A level stars was good enough to open the film at nearly 11 million dollars (in 1992) in only 1500 theaters, and that was enough to send the total domestic gross into the 70 million dollar range.

Compare that to Howards End, a film that opened just a few months earlier, was also a period piece romance with similar level stars (you could make a good argument that Anthony Hopkins was actually a bigger star than Day-Lewis). Howards End was, by most accounts, a better film than Mohicans.

Yet, without a great heart-pounding line or trailer moment, the movie mustered only 25 million or so for its theatrical run.

If your screenplay isn’t particularly visual in nature, ask yourself if there’s one great line that might captivate a trailer audience. It doesn’t have to be shocking or hysterical, but it must contain one very important thing…

A Promise

All good trailers and television spots for movies are nothing more than promises. The marketers can’t show you the entire movie. They can’t give you the experience of the unfolding narrative, nor can they exploit the quiet moments that are only earned after watching what leads up to them.

Think about it. Marlin picking up an apparently-dead Nemo and flashing back to a memory of his son as the “egg that survived” is only a tear-jerker if you’ve seen the rest of the film. As a trailer moment, that would be an absurd dud.

No, all a good trailer can do is give the audience the promise of a good film. Some concepts have a good promise inherent to them (shark in the water!!!). Some do not (like whatever the hell Last of the Mohicans is about…sorry, never read the book).

That’s fine. Your job is to make sure that somewhere in your screenplay, there’s a moment that crystallizes the promise of your story, the possibilities of the adventure your hero will undertake. It can be a line, a moment, a joke…anything. People don’t go to the movies because they know they will be entertained.

They go because they expect they will be entertained.

They formulate those expectations based on stars and subject matter and reviews…but a good trailer and television campaign can do wonders. Don’t obsess over it or mangle your work in anticipation of it. Given the reality of this business, odds are the time won’t ever come.

But just in case it does, please ruminate for just a while on your counterpart, the lonely studio marketer. If he could talk to you, he’d probably quote one of those great trailer lines.

“Help me help you.”

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