iTunes picked up my Feature Film!

[Shawn Nelson]

wow! very impressive Andrew. I just watched your trailer, the footage is great, even more so on your limited crew, and there looks to be some good performances too.

I'd recommend re-cutting the trailer to have no VO at all (I dont think you need it and I think it detracts) and sharpen up the tone by making it maybe 30 sec shorter.

[Kegan Sant]

I'll second the VO being distracting in the trailer and not necessary. Footage looks good but a tad too long.

Congrats!

Kegan

[Andrew Freeman]

Thanks Shawn for the feedback and support! If you watch the iTunes trailer it is exactly what you just said :)

[Andrew Freeman]

Thanks for the support Kegan! Yes, see the iTunes trailer it is more in tune with that. I just had to cut a longer one for other purposes. There's :30 one as well on my Vimeo page.

[Jack Shanahan]

Andrew - what kind of deal does itunes give filmmakers?

[paulherrin]

the itunes trailer has VO...

that was the only thing that bothered me, i didn't want to bring it up but it's probably best. you should totally cut the VO of the trailer. it's being used as a crutch and it's not telling us anything we can't see from watching it. in fact, it's detracting from it because it's so straightforward. cut it. i really want the film to be successful.

the trailer is super important... look at the example of john carter - terrible trailer/marketing.

otherwise, looks great!

[Andrew Freeman]

Paul - I would prefer it to be that way but I found out very quickly that the "masses" don't really care for that. Take a look at my original :30 teaser on Vimeo and you'll see what I evolved it from. Thanks!

[Andrew Freeman]

Hey Jack - I don't think they (iTunes) deal with filmmakers directly? Like I said previously, my distributor got me on to all of my VOD sites.

[Craig Schober]

Great news and congratulations!

How did you get your purchase price so low at $4.99? That's what I would like to set my price at. And it's less than 1GB. Is that HD?

[paulherrin]

Paul - I would prefer it to be that way but I found out very quickly that the "masses" don't really care for that. Take a look at my original :30 teaser on Vimeo and you'll see what I evolved it from. Thanks!

How'd you find out? Did someone in marketing say that or did you do audience testing? That sounds like something a distributor would say... I don't buy it.

Anyways, just my opinion - but I really think the voiceover needs to go. Text would be better. The real problems are that the voice doesn't fit the mood and sorry, but the writing for the voiceover doesn't seem to match the writing of the piece... at all! I'm sorry, but it's not good. Use dialogue to communicate the story. Since your film is about characters you want to establish the characters in the trailer, but you don't have to know their names to start getting to know them.. There were some good little moments of that happening in the first official trailer, and theres a better sense of the storyline in the extended trailer. All you want to do is focus on the story and characters. Who and what is it about? Good visuals are a plus, but nobody cares about high production value except producers and filmmakers. If this were a huge special effects film, yeah - you'd probably want some epic shots and explosions in there. But for your film, focus simply on story/character. After watching the trailer, viewers need to be able to affirmatively say - it's about... this. And, I really like this character, I can connect with this person, they reveal something about my human experience. Otherwise, keep a little bit of mystery but make sure the intrigue level is super high and there's at least a basic level of communication about what it's about and why they should want to watch the whole thing and why they should immediately go to itunes and download it (don't change the voiceover to literally say that - you're speaking with images, which you obviously already know how to do... so just do it!)

You can always cut new trailers, but in the meantime I'd seriously just cut the voiceover! Just trying to help, can't wait to watch it.