you can have your big epic films in the movie theater all I really want to do is go into the movie theater and watch 3 hours of makeup tutorials okay that's what I want so hi Michael Carr here have you ever wondered how movie trailer copy is written on this episode of ask an expert we're letting Brian thinkink spell it out for us Brian is an award-winning copywriter who has a vast amount of experience in entertainment marketing he has worked at agencies such as simmeron open road and trailer par
k on Productions such as X-Men avat AR Monsters University up Pirates of the Caribbean at World's End and Iron Man Brian has won a key Art Award for Disney's Brave and two prax Awards and most importantly he is a wonderful guy who knows how to laugh today we're asking Brian how do we write trailer [Music] copy okay I'm here with Brian Frink Brian how's it going man it's going great dude how are you Brian is this amazing copywriter that has has been doing copy for forever you're very seasoned and
you're skilled and and super experienced you've been in the room with like a lot of big Heavy Hitters over the years you've learned a lot of stuff you specifically work in doing copy for advertising for entertainment advertising right trailers TV spots and so today's question for you is Brian how do we write trailer copy my job is to watch the movie talk to a producer and then give them a packet on x amount of directions and then a client chooses that script and they give it to the producer and
editor and they start cutting it when I started it was actually if you only had an opening and maybe a back end line and the title it was like okay we need a middle and then we need a middle to the middle and then we need a back end and we had to do narration like it was like a threea trailer it was like 3 minutes to wall to wall narrator and and that was still into like the late '90s a family threatened by War we have to do something I forbid you to go I'm not a child you're my child a son fig
hting for his beliefs we're not what you think not all of us who are you people what kind of place is [Music] this here's an example you ask for an example here's one imagine if everything we believed in everything we dreamed of and everything we loved could come true it can for us durit it's just a matter of finding his inner child if his inner child doesn't find him first boom that's the intro now to find out where he went wrong he'll have to put a little faith in himself and follow his heart
to make everything go right this insert date insert Studio presents a movie that proves the first step to finding happiness is believing in yourself and then believing in everything else time flies not joking that's a real script where did it start to change from when you know in the '90s it was like these long essays practically to at some point there's very little copy and and it's still done with a narrator and now as you know where we are now there's no narrators anymore for the most part ho
w did you notice that Trend come about 2005 2006 there were two studios in particular one of of them was Paramount the regime there was like less is more pretty much it was about moving into this era of the editor we were going to a whole different era especially with the technology when it Advanced The Cutting that they're like hey let's showcase the movie instead of showcasing you know the script and it's really funny now now that we're going down this road I remember a producer telling me one
time I wrote a script like this and it was like joke after joke after joke and the producer turned to me said Brian what are we trying this say sell we trying to sell the movie or we trying to sell you as a as a as a writer it made me think for a second like hey this was the first inkling that this was changing and funny enough that year scripts were all cut and hack really it became this era of the editor not to say it wasn't before but the technology just improved Graphics really exploded so
graphics and the whole technology that caught up with Motion Graphics was a lot different than we had in even the early 90s was a whole different thing so people like that that was a part of the piece the assignments I get is trying to like oh we want to build an entire teaser entire entire trailer around Graphics I want a graphic piece and I'm like that's a whole different thing and then you tease him but just showing a little bit of the footage at the end at that point in time when that transi
tion happened where they were using less copy they would come to me and be like hey you're overriding again I'm like oh really I thought like oh having 2 or 3 minutes for a trailer was already short they're like no no no no no it's we we don't have time for for words I always based a movie around the copy from a one sheie so it always starts from a single line and I always expanded for a trailer that way so I kind of returned to that where it was like okay you're really just giving me a claim li
ne or two for the back end and in a setup and that was it I'll be honest there's times that I miss that type of trailer I know you watch it sometimes and it's uh you know yeah it feels dated now but at the same time it was so much easier to follow and I feel like it was almost easier to sell definitely more fun I got you know as a writer it was like I can sit here and like really explore and have fun with words and tell a story but now it's like I'm gonna let the editor do this and I'm just goin
g to do a tagline whether it's like you know kind of a wink wink to what's going on in culture today or some play on words or anything like that let me ask you this Brian so you as one time you were kind of explaining to me the different ways of selling a movie which is you know you can go character you can go story you can go event can you kind of elaborate on that sure one of my favorite ways of looking at a campaign a movie a TV show a music piece whatever is looking at the different angles o
f selling it you have story you have a character and then you have a event and then you have a combo part which I like to do and then the dreaded last fifth part the out of the box now feel like as a society and entertainment business we're already in out of the box everything we do especially with social media which I can touch upon in a minute it's already out of the box the first part would be like Story how do you want to sell this movie um not just genre some like oh well it's a comedy it's
pretty easy right or if it's a thriller it's pretty easy like well not really because if it's a thriller I don't want to give everything away because you always want to leave someone on a cliffhanger a character piece is like maybe if you're working on a movie like sideways or or or her they focused on the characters that were well written and delivered so you would say okay I'm going to do a piece about a character or maybe there is no story so you would just want to advertise the event you kn
ow marvel perfected that with all their superhero movies they made it a really big event that's coming through or and then my favorite is the combo spot so the combo spot would be like you start up with a storyline and the back end you do an event I like to compartmentalize all those directions into a breakdown of a campaign specifically TV spots nowadays you could still do the same thing with digital spots and social media I feel like that theory of how everything you break down for a campaign
still applies to today so when you're doing like a script packet you know for a client you're a lot of times offering a lot of different solutions like here's some different ways that you could go yes it's true one of my favorite games I like to play with my kids right now is Wordle and when we do it I it makes me feel like I'm writing copy you're solving problem so it always usually starts with the script it may not some of the copy may not end up in that final piece but we help the editor and
producer get to that point I totally second that when I was cutting trailers a lot of times you're sitting there staring at a blank timeline which is it shouldn't be scary but it is but then you know the PA runs in and it's like oh hey here's a script or and this is old cuz now it be email whatever and you you start looking at it and you're like okay all right there there someone that's already kind of thought of some creative ideas here right and even if you don't use them it takes the pressure
off it's like okay the the creative conversation has officially started it's a collaborative process and I always looked forward to seeing where the script went and you know there were a lot of writers I know that would be like if the middle wasn't working or they needed a different back in they would be upset I always thought that was great I looked at it as a challenge as a producer told me one time my job as a writer is to inspire an editor and I was just like wow that's really good that's p
retty good yeah I thought I always thought that was really good I found that to be more relevant these days paper cutting for people who don't understand that it's like we would put dialogue bites in between the copy lines we write for the narration and I I get more requests for that these days actually to do more paper cutting which really yeah I do I'm glad that's really interesting to me why do you think that is that you get more requests to do that feel like they want to see what I see like
where do you see this going it helps them to build a project and I think also to save time to be honest with you I think they want to see and be like okay we got to spit these out because a lot of this stuff there's a lot of short form out there that's the one thing I noticed everything is kind of shrunk you know when I first started in trailers you know you can get away with having three minute trailers so now a lot of people are like okay let's do 60-second trailers especially for streaming an
d that's the whole other thing doing copy now for digital or all these stream a lot of these streaming platforms too but mainly digital everything has to be seen as if there's no audio and you have to put cards in there so they come up in the screen so everything has to be shorter so it just feels like over my tenure everything's just been shrinking you know from the threea narration that R VI you in the beginning down to like one line and every we live in this culture which I like to call seizu
re Nation where everything has to be fast cut fast let me see it fast and they have to be able to look at it on their phone or some mobile device to be like hey we're in and out and give me a couple words and give me the gist and two sentences yeah sometimes I'm like surprised these days that people actually go and sit for a movie like for two hours now like have the attention do thatly I didn't understand that until I took my youngest kid to the movies one time we were watching the movie and he
stood he's little and he stood up and he's like Dad pause it I have to go to the bathroom I'm like every in the theater cracked up I that was the funniest thing in the world like but that's the generation I mean then I felt like I failed as a dad this kid like no you can't po the movie but when you have entertainment on demand that's that is what happens for the Next Generation trying to break into entertainment advertising now let's say that's either I guess nowadays there's a lot of copywrite
rs producer combos but let's just say there's someone that wants to break into copyrighting for trailers right what would what advice would you give them would say for if you really want to be a really good copywriter do two things one watch as many movie trailers and movies as possible I always say that to all the young copywriters that I've helped over the years and two read a lot and the reason why I say that is because you have such a small time to get your thought for voice or attitude acro
ss to the audience that you're trying to sell that you have to have a good good vocabulary and then I would say start practicing look take out your favorite movies and write the promo you'd like to see and I remember the was actually Roman the first producer I had told me when you want to go right close your eyes imagine yourself in the movie theater and read that copy aloud you could see the trailer do that right now close your eyes you're look you have your phone you have your iPad you have yo
ur computer you have whatever insert mobile device there what are you looking at and see would that work on there there is something about uh when you're cutting trailers same thing kind of picturing yourself in a movie theater watching it because it gives it kind of lends you to doing more mysterious sort of more theatrical type things you know you have to kind of put yourself in that mindset to think really really epic and huge and and think event like oh this is a huge event and how are we yo
u know that's what gets asses in seats really you know yeah it really does like what what are we going to see that we haven't seen before because now we have even more competition where it's like real life videos they're just showing people either you know fight at a Starbucks or car spinning in circles or something I don't know what it is a cats beating up other cats I have no idea you got to think bigger than that like what's something that we we haven't seen before that's going to be like oh
you know what that's escaping reality I remember being in a meeting with MGM I'm throwing that out since that's barely around anymore but like I remember the guy was pitching us an idea for a special shoot that just like we open on a horizon an aircraft car hubbers in the water a jet goes boom explosion that's the opening shot of the trailer I'm like what that's a special shoot that was crazy to me his point was think bigger shock effect you go to a dark room with strangers to share a common exp
erience of something that's could take you out of reality as a writer I have to help build that bridge to get them there young copywriters producers editors if they want to keep this fantasy and dream and the best job alive think outside just the reality and make it big thank you so much for taking the time man I really appreciate it absolutely your knowledge is so so great and I know a lot of people are going to take a lot from this so thank you very much man I appreciate it thank you buddy goo
d to see you as [Music] always
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