What Makes A24 Trailers So Great?

If you look in the YouTube comments of any trailer on the channel of the film company A24, you'll see something rare:

POSITIVE comments about movie trailers.

A lot of people on the internet HATE movie trailers with a fiery passion and refuse to watch them for fear of spoilers (by the way, statistically, spoilers in movie trailers make people MORE likely to see a film, not less). In sharp contrast, fans of A24 happily eat up their trailers and leave comments like this one for Under the Silver Lake: "I love how this trailer shows you almost everything but tells you almost nothing."

How does A24 hit the sweet spot of piquing the audience's interest, showing them a lot of the movie, not making them feel spoiled, AND making them eager to watch more trailers?

After analyzing several A24 trailers, I think it's a combination of:

• Hooky genre films

• Premise over plot

• Mood, theme, and emotion

• Heads on fire

For starters, it's a common misconception that movie trailers are made entirely by the studios, when in actuality there are dozens if not hundreds of trailer houses doing the work. Some of the movie trailer houses which work with A24 include: AV Squad, Giaronomo Productions, GrandSon, and Mark Woollen and Associates.

Quick, name that A24 film! (We'll get to this later)

Hooky genre films

A24 has a wide portfolio of films, but I'd say a majority of the most prominent ones are "genre films," especially horror. These films trade heavily on unusual premises and unique visuals. In other words, these films have really good "hooks." For example, based on the trailer for the film Lamb, the premise seems to be: "Sheep farmers are shocked when a sheep gives birth to a baby lamb which is half human."

The trailer for In Fabric shows a story about a woman who purchases a killer dress. That's literally a dress that kills people, not "killer" as in looking really good (though it does look nice). Not a horror film, but Swiss Army Man is about a man on a deserted island who befriends a dead body that washes ashore. All of these have really strong and hooky one-line pitches which make them immediately stand out

Because A24 films are so unique, the trailers have a HUGE leg up on more conventional Hollywood films. A lot of A24 trailers make their films stand out in less than a minute, whereas a lot of Hollywood films struggle through the entire trailer to show the audience anything at all novel or unique. While the films themselves are what ultimately make them stand out, there does seem to be a style of storytelling unique to A24's trailers.

The hook is firmly established 30 seconds in, and everything else is just the trailer editor playing with us.

Premise over plot

In this video/blog I explained the basic act structure of most story trailers which can be summarized roughly as:

1. The situation

2. The problem the protagonist faces

3. What they're going to do about it

4. The protagonists taking action

5. Obstacles faced along the way

6. A montage of cool stuff

What makes A24's trailers stand out is if the premise is particularly hooky like in the case of Lamb, the trailer pretty much shows the situation, then just teases what will happen in the film via careful shot selection, well chosen music, and moody sound design. They tend to avoid expositional dialogue where characters explain what is happening, character motivations, and what they're going to do. In the trailer for Lamb, once the child is born we just see how uneasy the situation continues to grow.

Let's look at two trailers, one for Bodies Bodies Bodies, and the second trailer for The Invisible Man to see how their dialogue and storytelling differs.

The trailer for Bodies Bodies Bodies shows a bunch of teens at a party where they play a game called "Bodies Bodies Bodies" where one person is a killer and the rest have to avoid being killed. The problem is, people start getting killed for real. On top of being killed, the teens relate to each other which is very of the moment with phrases like: "Could you not escalate?" "You're gaslighting me!" "You trigger me" and "You are so toxic!"

The Invisible Man trailer starts with Elisabeth Moss' character talking to a lawyer representing her husband who killed himself by cutting his wrists. She finds out she's set to inherit $5 million as long as she's not found to be mentally incompetent. A friend encourages her to move on. Then one night we see the breath of someone invisible behind her as she stands on her front step. There's a segue to a friend telling Elisabeth she doesn't have to be scared. She responds he was a sociopath and control freak, and when she leaves the kitchen, objects move on their own and cause a fire. He'd said he'd find her wherever she went and she wouldn't be able to see him (at this moment we see a handprint appear while she takes a shower). There's another segue where Elisabeth says she can find proof of what's she's experiencing, meanwhile, people don't believe what she's saying, but she's figured out he's invisible. There's a lot more of him attacking people, and the trailer culminates in her apparently getting the upper hand and attacking.

This trailer is basically the polar opposite of what people love about A24’s trailers

This is a HUGE contrast in storytelling. The trailer for Bodies Bodies Bodies goes from establishing the premise to being in the middle of things as people get killed. But it focuses primarily on the characters' social dynamics, and secondarily on the fact that they're being killed. I'm assuming it would've been possible to show moments of tension before people are killed just like in any slasher film. A notable stylistic difference in the trailer for The Invisible Man is it has 2-3 segues; I think the more times a trailer segues, the more it feels like we're getting spoiled. Segues imply resolving a thought and moving onto the next. This is the same problem as in this trailer for Unbroken which has an almost comical number of segues.

In fairness, the plot of Bodies Bodies Bodies seems to have a lot fewer moving pieces, but I haven't seen either film and it could just be that the trailer is making it look like there are fewer moving parts. There could be all sorts of twists and turns they're not showing. The first trailer for The Invisible Man doesn't do nearly as much "and then and then" instead letting a few scenes play out, and I think is much stronger for it. They just decided for whatever reason they needed to make a second trailer.

A24 trailers also don't shy away from using quotes which provide context.

Mood, theme, and emotion

A huge reason I think A24 trailers don't feel spoilery is because they don't highlight plot. They don't fall into "And then this happened, therefore this happened, which resulted in this." The trailer for Men creates intense feelings of anxiety and paranoia. All we know is a woman's significant other died and she's now in a small village where everyone has the face of the same man. The music and editing unrelentingly increase the tension of the situation and really get the blood pumping.

The trailer for Uncut Gems is also incredibly light on plot details. All we know is Adam Sandler's character seems to make a lot of risky bets, which causes trouble with his family and people to whom he owes money. There's no dialogue saying anything about: what bets he made, who he placed the bets with, what specific problems he runs into, who goes after him, and how he's going to sort it all out. All we know is he's in trouble and it looks like a very fraught situation. But it totally works because the context of him being a risky gambler helps us interpret the visuals and moments in the trailer. There's a lot of tension and anxiety in this trailer as we watch the character apparently get in more and more trouble.

On the other end of the spectrum there's the trailer for Waves which starts with the narration: "Love is patient, love is kind, love is not rude, it doesn't boast. Love also forgets wrong." What follows is a montage of black characters having tough times. Some are conversations between parents, parent to child, and between significant others. We don't know who these people are, their exact relationships, the reasons they're having a difficult time, or what happens in the film. Coupled with the review quote: "Waves will tear your heart out" all we can conclude is the film is about love This is impeccably edited to the song "Godspeed" by Frank Ocean. I finish the trailer feeling moved and curious.

I don't know what Waves is about, but I have a good sense for how it might make me feel.

Heads on Fire

It's something of an in-joke that A24 trailers are obligated to include a shot of someone's head on fire, but this to say the real currency of A24 films are unique visuals. Certainly in the A24 horror film trailers you're guaranteed to see something in the you've never seen before. This is more about the films than the trailer, but unique visuals do lend themselves to memorable trailers. The unique stories and visuals of A24 films give the trailer editor more room to play in once the premise is established, and they can spend the rest of the trailer showing more cool stuff.

A lot of Hollywood films have stories which we've seen several times before, and because they're so similar, they need to show so much more to convince us it has anything new to show. For example, this trailer for The Misfits shows us a very typical heist film. Aside from the actors and the setting, there's nothing in this which feels terribly novel. This is like trying to sell a slightly different flavor of chocolate ice cream to someone who's eaten DOZENS of varieties over the years. This is why the editing is so over the top and it shows so many scenes that it plays out because it doesn't have much else to lean on.

I think this is a huge reason a lot of Hollywood movie trailers show so many spoilers, because the films aren't as hooky, and therefore need to show more to differentiate them at all. OR, the people behind the marketing feel like they need to show more to differentiate it. Especially when there's a lot of money at stake I think people understandably get insecure about what they're selling. For example, the film adaptation of Uncharted is a globe trotting adventure film like Indiana Jones. The trailer has to show the big set pieces to distinguish it, because it wouldn't look at all different if it only showed staple shots of the genre like characters looking at maps and walking through caves with a burning torch.

No wait, name THIS A24 film

There isn't just one editing style that makes a movie trailer successful. Most of the time it has to start with the strength of the story. But it's worth looking at whether or not your story can be told with as little exposition as possible and pique interest based off of mood, emotion, themes and a simple premise. A lot of these A24 eschew exposition and move straight into scenes where stuff is happening.

I think a line of exposition in a trailer is like showing a basketball being thrown through the air, and the job of the trailer is to not show it fall through the hoop. A lot of trailers seem to show both, but in a lot of these A24 trailers it's more like we cut immediately to the ball already traveling through the air (and then never see it fall through the hoop) I'm much more use to editing story trailers by using exposition to make my job easier, but this style of storytelling is obviously very effective and I'm curious to try it out for myself.

There are so so many amazing trailers for A24 films, so if you're looking to give your story trailer editing a kick in the butt, I highly recommend watching a lot of them and contrasting them to trailers for other studio films in a similar genre space.