First of all, these individual types of content are primarily selling tools, engagement tools. They're made to reach your viewers, connect with them and get them to see your film, or talk about it.

But are there any specific requirements for each type of video? Let's break down what we know.

Teaser

Typically we're talking about a clip that is shorter than 60 seconds (though one of the best ones are longer, as you will see later). The footage used in the teaser doesn't say much about the final product.

A teaser can be published during principal photography to build awareness, raise the curiosity of the fans, show a tone of the movie. In general, the main goal of a teaser is to tease the audience.

Kinda like this one, that is technically a clip from the movie itself:

Or this one for Star Trek, which has footage explicitly done for the teaser:

Trailer

Trailer, on the other hand, is made after the movie is finished. It gives us a better glimpse of the film. It contains details about the plot, characters and let us see much more of the footage. The length usually varies between 1:30 to 3:00 (unless it's the Cloud Atlas trailer, extended version) and it includes credits.

To keep the audience entertained, a lot of trailers follow a non-linear structure so that viewers won't get the whole story and are more inclined to go see the movie.

The main goal of a trailer is to sell the movie. You want your fans to be raging (well, maybe just show some sort of emotions) afterwards and saying to their friends "You gotta see this!". Why? Because you want to get people to see your movie.

TV Trailer

When it comes to TV trailers, you may notice that their trailers/teasers run either 15, 30 or 60 seconds long – that is because it's generally a length of a commercial.

Fifteen-second ones are more of a teaser, to be honest, because you got that 3 to 5-second long end-screen with information when they air. Thirty's are regular TV trailers, and sixty's are for big-budget stuff.

PS: You can also see it's called TV Promo or TV Preview.

Theatrical trailer

Theatrical trailers have a lot of regulations to follow. Those are mandated by MPAA, and you have to (well, major studios have to) submit your trailer to approval to CARA (a sister organisation of MPAA). Afterwards, you get that Rating Block that has to be in the trailer for at least 5 seconds.

There are few more things to you need to adhere to, but I won't be getting into detail right now. Unless you want to. Do you want to? Well if so, reach out to me and I'll look into that!

And if you are interested in seeing more great examples, check out our curated playlist of must-see trailers here.

Sneak Peek

These are usually used for TV series, as networks use them to give a little preview of an upcoming episode. Typically we're talking about 20 to 60 seconds long clip that teases the audience, leaving them hanging by the end of it.

Featurette

The original term meant a movie that was between 24 and 40 minutes long. Still, nowadays it is just another term for a Behind the Scenes video.

The length varies from 2 to 25 minutes, and you used to have several of them as a bonus on those DVD (or Blu-rays), each going a little bit in a different direction.

Lately, you can see the use of featurettes as a selling tool as well. They are published before the premiere (or right after), they have very little of actual behind-the-scenes information, and they contain parts of a trailer to be more attractive. Like this one from Ford v Ferrari:

Or this one from Altered Carbon:

And because I am obviously a fan of behind-the-scenes content, I got you a few more examples. First one is an Inside the Episode of Succession by HBO.

And the last one, for today anyway, is a featurette of a film Spotlight (2015). This one is the most traditional of all the examples we had.

Anyway, that's it for now. If you got questions, opinions or tips for what to improve, just hit us up on Instagram or Twitter, or, if you're more traditional, send us an e-mail.