Inside the strange, enthusiastic world of… | Little White Lies

Not Movies

Inside the strange, enthu­si­as­tic world of YouTube’s fake trail­er community

12 Oct 2023

Words by Kyle MacNeill

A laptop screen showing the official trailer for Iron Man 4, featuring a man in a suit standing in front of technological equipment.
A laptop screen showing the official trailer for Iron Man 4, featuring a man in a suit standing in front of technological equipment.
For the last decade, a small group of video edi­tors have spent hours toil­ing over con­cept trail­ers, delight­ing and dup­ing fans eager to catch a sneak peek of an upcom­ing film.

At some point or anoth­er, while scrolling through YouTube, it’s like­ly you’ll come across a new trail­er for an upcom­ing film that you’re des­per­ate to watch. Backed by a bona fide ban­ner, a ver­i­fied account han­dle and mil­lions of views, you ham­mer the touch­pad. You watch it. And, well, if the cre­ator has done a good job, that’s all, folks.

Truth is: you’ve been flickrolled.

See, the trail­er was total­ly fake. Per­haps, if you have an eye for the ersatz, keep tabs on the film release cal­en­dar or just scroll down to the com­ments, then you’ll have realised that it was all just one big tease – a fake, fan-made trail­er. The cul­prits? The con­cept trail­er com­mu­ni­ty – a coterie of cre­atives mak­ing unof­fi­cial trail­ers for upcom­ing (or even non-exis­tent) films and post­ing them online for every­one to see and, per­haps some­times, believe.

Pret­ty much every major com­mer­cial film now gets the trick­ster trail­er treat­ment. YouTube is stuffed with them; right now, there are scores of super­hero sequel teasers (with a par­tic­u­lar focus on the tan­gled web of Spi­der-Man spin-offs) plus a load of Net­flix pro­to­types (includ­ing a fresh­ly-inked Squid Game 2). Sure, you’re less like­ly to find the new A24 mapped out – but it’s play­ing to a crowd of video game, ani­ma­tion and action fanat­ics, mar­vel­ling at imag­ined plot twists. They’re also gen­uine­ly well-made.

It all began ten years ago with Smash­er, a YouTube chan­nel start­ed by free­lance video edi­tor Rob Long. I’ve always had an affin­i­ty for mod­ern trail­ers, so the abil­i­ty to then cre­ate my own and watch peo­ple react to some­thing I made will always be an amaz­ing feel­ing,” he explains. While Long is wary of those jump­ing on the con­cept trail­er band­wag­on for the wrong rea­sons and those rush­ing out ideas, he recog­nis­es there’s a lot of tal­ent out there.

For a long time, Long was pret­ty much by him­self; soon, though, suc­ces­sors assem­bled, includ­ing Teas­er PRO. Start­ed by friends Vladimir and Ivan, it began due to the friends’ shared love of movie trail­ers while grow­ing up. Recount­ing a sto­ry wor­thy of a big-screen Bil­dungsro­man, Vladimir remem­bers mak­ing films on the video edi­tor of his first phone – a Nokia 5228 – cre­at­ing trail­er-like mon­tages to enter­tain his friends, before get­ting his first com­put­er. Inspired by a GTA 6 par­o­dy, the duo went into production.

Take one? A trashy trail­er for The Force Awak­ens. We cre­at­ed a mask for the main vil­lain, made a cos­tume, and start­ed shoot­ing. How­ev­er, when we start­ed edit­ing, we realised that what we had filmed was ter­ri­ble and didn’t look seri­ous at all,” he said. Instead, they decid­ed to splice togeth­er exist­ing clips from movies set in space, backed by research of past comics and the­o­ry videos – their subs sky­rock­et­ed. After that fol­lowed a ver­sion of Marvel’s Avengers: Infin­i­ty War – to date it’s clocked up 19 mil­lion views.

Now, some plat­forms are using the con­cept trail­er as a con­tent stream rather than their soul out­put. I began exper­i­ment­ing with the actu­al con­cept trail­er aspect around Decem­ber of 2020,” says Con­nor, own­er of the pop cul­ture plat­form SLU­URP. Start­ing by stitch­ing togeth­er a Lilo and Stitch con­cept trail­er that was well-received, Con­nor con­tin­ued with a focus on video game movies. It’s def­i­nite­ly become more com­pet­i­tive since I first dipped my toes into this world; every day it seems a new con­cept trail­er chan­nel emerges,” he says.

So how do you make a block­buster fake trail­er? We brain­storm the plot for the future film based on what has already hap­pened in the pre­vi­ous instal­ment and try to come up with a log­i­cal and orig­i­nal con­tin­u­a­tion of the sto­ry,” Vladimir says. Then, you’ve got to source your mate­r­i­al. We study the cast of the future film (if avail­able), review their fil­mo­gra­phies, and com­pile a list of movies or TV shows where suit­able footage or lines may be found,” he continues.

For Con­nor, it’s para­mount to choose scenes that aren’t par­tic­u­lar­ly well known, explain­ing he didn’t pick the icon­ic Buzz and Woody fly­ing moment for his Toy Sto­ry 5 trail­er. In the trail­ers I per­son­al­ly edit, I have a pref­er­ence against using high­ly rec­og­niz­able scenes or sequences from oth­er films…my goal is always to immerse the audi­ence, mak­ing them feel like they’re watch­ing a teas­er for an entire­ly new film,” he says.

Then it’s time to edit. We need to con­nect hun­dreds of unre­lat­ed clips from dif­fer­ent movies and give them an entire­ly new mean­ing, mak­ing the video look con­cise and feel like a coher­ent work that reflects our orig­i­nal idea of what the movie might look like,” Vlad­mir says, explain­ing that they use colour cor­rec­tion and mask­ing to cut out char­ac­ters, extract lines from oth­er movies to cre­ate new dia­logues and ensure that the music syncs up.

Brave and the Bold: Teaser Trailer (2023) for Batman film
Squid Game Season 2: Teaser Trailer (2024) for Netflix series
Pirates of the Caribbean: Beyond the Horizon - Teaser Trailer (2023) for upcoming film
Venom: A Long Came a Spider - Teaser Trailer (2024) for upcoming film
Deadpool 3: Official First Look (2024) featuring Hugh Jackman, Ryan Reynolds
Avatar: The Last Airbender - Official First Look (2024) for Netflix live-action series

As expect­ed, there’s a lot of sit­ting in your abode, alone, on Adobe. I basi­cal­ly sit at my desk and replay the same two sec­onds of my edit­ing time­line over and over again until I think it looks and sounds right,” Long says.

The advent of AI is play­ing a role in this process. While both the Writ­ers Guild of Amer­i­ca strike, which has just end­ed, and the SAG-AFTRA strike, which has just begun, have been used to express con­cerns sur­round­ing AI, fake trail­er cre­ators are exper­i­ment­ing with its end­less pos­si­bil­i­ties. Long, for exam­ple, is using it to cre­ate thumbs-uppable thumb­nails and Vladimir is util­is­ing it to enhance video qual­i­ty up to 4K, while Con­nor is using AI to speed up the edit­ing process. It allows for intri­cate audio iso­la­tion and char­ac­ter extrac­tion, which has been a game-chang­er,” he says.

Does it threat­en their own art form? I can’t say how things will be down the line, maybe peo­ple will be able to just auto-gen­er­ate trail­ers entire­ly?” Long ques­tions. Giv­en the rapid advance­ments, I wouldn’t be sur­prised if the near future sees us tran­si­tion from con­cept trail­ers to full-blown con­cept films!” Con­nor says. Already, AI is allow­ing cre­ators to make trail­ers for movies that aren’t even based on any sort of exist­ing fran­chise, as with Gen­e­sis, a fake film teas­er that caused a stir in the sum­mer cre­at­ed by a prod­uct design­er on his lap­top. We’ve noticed that some less con­sci­en­tious cre­ators, who don’t put much effort into their work, were among the first to adopt such ser­vices because they allow for the rapid cre­ation of numer­ous sim­i­lar videos,” Vladimir says war­i­ly. I believe that AI is an excel­lent tool that enables incred­i­ble things in just a mat­ter of sec­onds, but it all depends on how and for what pur­pos­es it is used.”

This arti­fice of arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence, along with the com­mu­ni­ty learn­ing on the job, means that these con­cept trail­ers are get­ting more con­vinc­ing. Do the cre­ators actu­al­ly want to fool peo­ple? In the ear­ly days, I was admit­ted­ly irri­tat­ed when peo­ple would com­ment FAKE!” I would gen­uine­ly put a lot of effort into cre­at­ing these con­cepts. But it doesn’t both­er me any­more,” says Con­nor, who is clear that he’s not aim­ing to punk viewers.

Some cre­ators in our niche label their videos as Offi­cial Trail­er’ or omit the word Con­cept’, which I find can be mis­lead­ing. It’s easy to see why view­ers might feel deceived,” he con­tin­ues. Vladimir and Long agree, empha­sis­ing the impor­tance of mak­ing it clear that it’s not the real thing; though many peo­ple still don’t notice. They also all note that, because of the need to use exist­ing clips through YouTube’s fair use pol­i­cy, it’s hard to make a profit.

Most of these cre­ators, though, aren’t star­ing wide-eyed at their screen into the wee hours to make big bucks; instead, it’s for the love of it all. In return, eager-eyed view­ers get to enjoy one pos­si­ble uni­verse in their mul­ti­verse. The feed­back I cher­ish most is when view­ers com­ment that they gen­uine­ly believed they were watch­ing the real trail­er, or they express hope that the offi­cial film fol­lows the nar­ra­tive we’ve craft­ed,” Con­nor says. It’s an indi­ca­tor that we’ve hit the mark. At the heart of it, our trail­ers give fans a fun glimpse into what could be,” he continues.

Long is sim­i­lar­ly moved. There are reac­tions to my videos on YouTube where view­ers have actu­al­ly open­ly cried, jumped up out of their seats from excite­ment or just been left with a calm sense of appre­ci­a­tion. Every reac­tion means so much to me,” he says.

Could it be, per­haps, that along­side the many view­ers indulging in fan­ta­sy, real-life movie pro­duc­ers are tak­ing notes? Are these trail­ers a form of tri­al-and-error for pos­si­ble plots? There have been instances where offi­cial trail­ers dropped, and I couldn’t help but side-eye! At times there have been strik­ing sim­i­lar­i­ties to our con­cept trail­ers from months or even years pri­or,” Con­nor laughs.

Some­times, the resem­blance is uncan­ny enough to make me think that per­haps the offi­cial edi­tor took a peek at our work. Now, if the next Juras­sic World movie has Extinc­tion’ in the title, I’m def­i­nite­ly stak­ing a claim on that inspi­ra­tion!” he con­tin­ues. Long, mean­while, thinks that his viral Friends: The Movie trail­er, which gained 100 mil­lion views and world­wide media atten­tion in 2018, may have sparked the reunion event; Vladimir sim­i­lar­ly claims his viral I Am Leg­end 2 trail­er catal­ysed Warn­er Bros to com­mis­sion the sequel.

Either way, the con­cept trail­er com­mu­ni­ty has made its mark on the movies. While more pre­ten­tious cinephiles may see them as a sort of cheap mag­ic trick, these phoney trail­ers are far from phoned in. Look­ing back on it all, in his own sepia-tinged flash­back, Vladimir remem­bers Teas­er PRO’s orig­i­nal aim: two film-obsessed kids look­ing to impress their friends and enter the world of enter­tain­ment. It’s clear his fan­ta­sy has become reality.

When we start­ed tak­ing this seri­ous­ly, our dream was to even­tu­al­ly cre­ate real movie trail­ers and take orders from stu­dios,” he says. I think that by mak­ing our trail­ers, we want­ed to touch the world of cin­e­ma, even if only a lit­tle bit.”

You might like

Accessibility Settings

Text

Applies the Open Dyslexic font, designed to improve readability for individuals with dyslexia.

Applies a more readable font throughout the website, improving readability.

Underlines links throughout the website, making them easier to distinguish.

Adjusts the font size for improved readability.

Visuals

Reduces animations and disables autoplaying videos across the website, reducing distractions and improving focus.

Reduces the colour saturation throughout the website to create a more soothing visual experience.

Increases the contrast of elements on the website, making text and interface elements easier to distinguish.