Why no one is watching your movie trailer / videos on social media.
Views low? Wondering why other people's trailer videos perform better? Have you actually looked at your 1-minute view stats?
NO ONE IS WATCHING YOUR MOVIE TRAILER FOR THE PRODUCTION COMPANY LOGOS!!! 😫😫
STOP stuffing your social media trailers with 15 seconds of intro logos and branded idents. It's losing you attention, views, and leading you to missing actually attracting an audience.
You have 1-3 seconds to capture someone's attention on social media before people scroll on.
If your film trailer starts with a bunch of production company and distributor idents, you've lost your audience already.
They care about your story. The action. The plot. The drama.
They do not give two sh*ts - pardon my french - about the 10 production companies that funded the film.
If you're trailer isn't stopping the scroll instantly, and standing out with punch amongst all the other entertaining, funny, engaging and shocking content people are scrolling through then you're not getting those eyeballs, interest, or view time.
And view time is the measure by which social channels rank your content as good quality, and worth pushing to more people. No view time, no more pushing your content to people. You'll get lost and your views will tank.
TIP: Go to Youtube and type in MOVIE TRAILER in the search bar. Watch the first 3-8 seconds and note how many get straight to some action within the first 3 seconds. Give you something to watch / an intrigue / something quirky.
Example. Here are two pieces of content to promote IN CAMERA, an upcoming independent film in the UK, on Instagram.
One is the trailer: 3 seconds of logo idents with no action, 64 likes, 1223 views, 2 comments.
Second is a clip: Logos are discreet and superimposed onto action that starts immediately. 581 likes, 54,500 views.
Obviously noth pieces of content serve their own purpose, but it illustrates the difference that small adjustments to your social content can make in terms of capturing views.
Pay attention to the thumbnails used as well. You want something there that captures attention and stands out.
This is a fundamental error I see time and again from studios / distributors trying to promote their films on social media: using the same assets for cinema as they do on their social channels.
In cinemas you already have a captive, paying audience who are seated and don't have anything else to do.
Social is a different platform, with different best practice and audience behaviours.
Shoving the same trailer format from big screen to small, DOES NOT WORK. An edit for cinemas should be different to your edit for social - and even then, you might want a cut for Facebook that’s different than on TikTok - both in terms of format, and length, and who the audience demographic might be on each.
Below are stats from an account whose principle video content is trailers. 295 people watched 3 seconds of trailers (yep, they saw some logos). Only 3 people watched a whole minute. You can access this information for free, and down to each individual piece of video content you share, on Meta Business Suite Insights - so you can get an understanding of which bits of your content deliver, and which don’t, and adjust accordingly.
Notice how many 3-second views there are, vs 1 minute views.
If you are contractually obligated to logo-stuff your social media assets, find a way to cut them in creatively in AFTER you've already garnered some attention... Use the stats to make the point to your funders / investors / supporters if you have to.
After all, they want eyeballs because eyeballs = audience = revenue.
Please start creating social first content, social-optimised for your social channels. Otherwise you're trying to fit a square box into a circular hole.