A trailer for a film
that does not exist yet.
Give it the logline and the synopsis and get back a 45 second trailer: the world, the grade, the cast, the tone. Something to attach to the query instead of asking a stranger to imagine it.
- You bring
- A logline and a synopsis
- You get
- Forty five seconds, graded
- Runs
- 45 seconds
This is for you if
You have a script, or a treatment, or one very good idea. The person you need to convince reads two hundred loglines a week and has never once pictured yours the way you do.
What it will not do
This works from a pitch, not from a screenplay. There is no way to hand it your script, so what comes back is the film as your logline and synopsis describe it rather than the film as you wrote it, and the gap between those two is exactly as big as your pitch is vague. There is no lip sync either: the cast do not deliver lines, so a trailer that turns on one spoken exchange is not the thing this makes.
You bring one thing.
You get the rest.
A logline and a synopsis
Type or paste them: the logline, a paragraph of synopsis, the tone you are after and the films you would name in a meeting. This builds from what a pitch document already contains. Nothing here reads a screenplay, and there is no path for a PDF or a Final Draft file, so what goes in is the pitch rather than the script.
Forty five seconds, graded
One look across every shot so the cut reads as one film rather than a reel of tests. A voice over the top, a score composed for this piece instead of pulled off a library shelf, and a downloadable file at the end of it.
5 steps,
and you can stop
at any of them.
Nothing renders until you have read the script and looked at the shots. If it is going wrong you find out before you have paid for it.
- 01
Write the pitch in
Logline, synopsis, tone, comparisons. Two hundred words is enough, and specific beats long: name the location, the season, the hour of the day and the thing at stake.
- 02
Choose the director's eye
The 101 Photoreal and Cinema looks are where a spec trailer lives, and 46 of them are named for a particular director or cinematographer. Golden hour naturalism, IMAX anamorphic, monumental sci-fi, procedural thriller. Pick one and every shot is graded through it.
- 03
Cast the leads
Build a Character for each lead and it keeps one face across the whole cut. Nobody real and no working actor's likeness: this is your film, cast with people who do not exist.
- 04
Cut it before it renders
You see the scene split first and can send any scene back with a note on what to change. This is where a trailer is won or lost: drop the shot that explains and keep the shot that unsettles.
- 05
Render and send it
Download the file and it is yours to attach, post or embed. Forty five seconds is short enough that it gets watched to the end, which is the only job a trailer has.
Forty five seconds is a short render and the full look catalogue is on Creator.
See what that is →The ones
people ask.
- 01
Can I give it my screenplay?
No, and it is worth knowing that before you start rather than after. Nothing here reads a script file. You paste in the logline and the synopsis, which are the two things a pitch document already leads with, and the trailer is built from those. If the whole case for your film is that the screenplay is the good part, this will not surface that for you.
- 02
Will it look like a real trailer?
It looks like 45 graded, cast, scored seconds in one consistent look. It is generated imagery and a viewer paying attention will know. What it is genuinely good at is putting the tone, the world and the palette you have been describing in words in front of someone who was never going to picture it correctly.
- 03
Can I put a real actor in it?
No, and you should not want to. A working actor's likeness in a spec trailer is a problem you then carry into every meeting the trailer wins you. Build a Character instead: nobody real, consistent across the cut, and yours.
- 04
Why 45 seconds?
Because that is the format, and because it is also the right answer. A reader who was not caught in 45 seconds was not going to be caught at 90, and a longer piece costs more to render for the privilege of losing them later.
- 05
Can I use it on a festival form or a crowdfunder?
You download the file and it is yours to post. Check the rules of the particular fund, festival or platform on generated material first, because they differ and several now ask you to declare it up front.
- 06
Can I try more than one version?
That is the cheapest useful thing you can do here. Run the same synopsis through two different looks and watch which one is the film you actually wrote. Each render costs, so it stays a real choice rather than a free one.
