Filmteaser
Making a trailer for “light Warden”
Introduction
As part of our Thesis MA project at the Hochschule Anhalt in Dessau, we created a custom Teaser for Leffie’s story “Light Warden”.
Below you can view a colored animatic version of the teaser.
Finished Shots
Work in Progress
The Research
First impressions truly matter. Teasers are important intersections where film-making and marketing meet. This thesis takes a deep dive into the realm of animated teasers to uncover how storytellers can present their ideas in an intriguing way.
The research of this thesis consisted of reviewing papers, articles and films, as well as conducting interviews with industry professionals. Their insight in particular was fascinating. As they have created teasers for their own animated shorts, it was interesting to note what their personal experiences were like.
The research in itself was split into five main topics:
Defining the word “teaser”
Introduction to animated teasers
Storytelling
Marketing
Visual development & animation
In the introduction we defined, analysed and gave examples of different types of teasers. Storytelling consisted of learning about story archetypes, and how these can be applied in teasers. In the marketing section, we took a closer look at honourable and infamous animated movie campaigns. And finally for visual development, we revisited the basics of the principles of design in order to deepen our understanding on visual storytelling and animation.
First Ideas
After the research gave us a good understanding of the significance and structure of animated teasers, we decided to deepen our learnings by creating one of our own.
As we are both passionate illustrators and storytellers, we have many stories in our heads that we wanted to explore. We felt that Leffie’s original story “Light Warden” in particular was suitable to develop in our thesis. In summary, the story is about a girl named Alina, and her elder friend named Hugo, as they embark on a journey to find the Light Warden.
While the general character designs and narrative were already set prior to our thesis, we still had a lot of creative freedom. This is because teasers usually consist of custom-made shots that don’t have to fit with the narrative of the film. While a teaser can include shots from the final film, it certainly doesn’t have to.
In total, we created 6 unique storyboards which were edited to fit the rhythm of 6 different trailer music tracks. Luckily, we also got to use a track that was composed specifically for the story.
The Survey
For the user-testing phase of our thesis, we felt it would be valuable to test 5 of our animatics in a survey. The survey concentrated on obtaining information on the audience’s preference regarding the narrative and mood of each teaser. It concluded with a ranking system, through which the participants could score their most and least favourite idea.
The feedback from the survey was very valuable, as it offered some insight into the preferences of our target audience. We carefully examined the results and aimed to implement the feedback that was given. The teaser we ultimately decided to further develop was Teaser 1. This is because it was the participant’s favourite, and promised the most exciting story.
Developing the Teaser
Teaser 1 was refined by adding, replacing and completely removing shots. We experimented with multiple variants and ended up with an improved version.
Since color and light are essential parts of visual storytelling, we decided it would be important to create color keys for each of the shots. Multiple sketches were made in order to explore the possibilities of different lighting scenarios. It was interesting to see how these different variants influenced the mood and overall reception of the teaser.
We also created lineups and character sheets to ensure visual consistency throughout the animation. While we were only able to animate one shot of the actual teaser, it was interesting to see how the finalized version differs from the initial storyboard.
Documentation
Interested in reading more about our insights? Feel free to contact us and we’ll send you a copy of our thesis documentation!
