Teaser Trailer and Full Trailer

What is the difference between a teaser trailer and a full trailer?

A teaser trailer is much shorter than the main trailer and is intended to grab the audience’s attention and have them looking out for the film or for the main trailer. It is usually between 60-90 seconds long and are released far in advance to the film, sometimes even years. They usually contain very little actually film footage if any and their main purpose is to tell the audience that the film is in production.

Spiderman is a good example of this whose teaser trailer was released two years before the movie.

A full trailer is longer and contains actual film footage and also tells more of a story to entice the audience to watch it and usually has a more exact date of the movie release unlike a teaser.

The main trailer has more substance and gives a clearer idea of the storyline without giving too much away for the audience to decide if they like it.

In the above example of the 1991 film 'Hook' the teaser trailer is very simple and is mainly used to show off the star director Stephen Spielberg and the star cast of Dustin Hoffman, Robin Williams and Julia Roberts. There is no actual film footage and it lasts for only about 90 seconds.


Whereas the full film trailer contains all actual film footage and starts to reveal the general storyline even though it is only 30 seconds longer than the teaser.