How to make a brand trailer from everything you have ever filmed

Last updated 2026-09-05 · 8 min read

What is the short version?

A brand trailer is a portfolio in motion. Its problem is not choosing the moments — it is that footage from three different years was framed, graded and captioned for three different things, and it all has to sit in one piece.

1. Go to Vizard Agent with everything you have.
2. Say the trailer is about the brand, not about one project.
3. Say what the single idea is, so the cutting has a spine.

What do you need before you start?

The archive and one sentence about what the brand is. The sentence matters more than the footage — with it, the cut has a claim to make; without it, you get a well-edited showreel that says nothing in particular.

• Every source. Old, new and unreleased.
• The one idea. What the brand is, in a line.
• The music. An original track, or one to find.
• The length. Ninety seconds to two minutes is typical.
• Anything off-limits. Clients who have not approved use.

What do you type into Vizard Agent?

Say what it is not. "A trailer for The Sessions" reads as a trailer for the latest episode; naming the brand as the subject and ruling out the episode reading is what makes the cut span the archive instead of the newest folder.

Prompt

Variants worth knowing:

• "Not a trailer for one episode." Rules out the obvious reading.
• "One clear idea." The spine the cutting hangs on.
• "Use every source." Permission to go into the archive.

What does Vizard Agent actually do?

Here is the order Vizard Agent worked in on a real brand trailer built from several years of accumulated material. Steps three to six are the reconciliation work, and all of it happens before Vizard Agent chooses a single cut.

1. Checks the project history and the length and format of every clip.
2. Pulls full-size frames to check framing and burnt-in text.
3. Measures the sharp picture strip inside the blurred vertical frames.
4. Zooms on the top and bottom edges with a measurement grid.
5. Checks the lower crop on the sources that were reframed before.
6. Checks the bottom-right corners for watermarks.
7. Looks at the logo as it appears across the sources.
8. Lays out the beat grid in trailer time.
9. Reads word-level timings for exact dialogue cuts.
10. Finds the exact boundaries of specific shots and checks the crops.
11. Measures the loudness of the song, the dialogue and the effects.
12. Assembles the trailer against the grid.
13. Checks how the song itself begins so the opening lands with it.
14. Tiles check frames across the cut and reviews them.

Step three is the one that separates an archive cut from a mess. Older material has often been through a vertical version already — a sharp strip of real picture sitting inside a blurred fill — and cutting that in as though it were full-frame gives you a shot that is softer than its neighbours for no visible reason.

Step six is the professional habit. Footage that has been through a client's platform, a stock library or someone else's edit can arrive with a mark in the corner, and a brand trailer is exactly the wrong place to discover one.

What does the result look like?

A trailer in which material from several different years reads as one coherent body of work — matched in framing by Vizard Agent, free of the marks and burnt-in captions each source was carrying, and cut to a single rhythm that follows the song.

The one idea is what makes it a trailer rather than a showreel. Without it you have a sequence of good shots; with it you have a claim, illustrated.

When does this not work well?

An archive cut is limited by its worst source. Where old material is much lower resolution or was heavily processed, it will show — and the honest options are to use it small, use it briefly, or leave it out.

• Very old, low-resolution footage. It will not sit with the new.
• Sources with burnt-in captions. They have to be cropped or covered.
• Client work you cannot show. Permission is yours to confirm.
• No single idea. The cut becomes a list.
• Music that arrives later. The grid has to be rebuilt around it.

How do you fix a result that came back wrong?

Name the specific shot or the section that is wrong. Vizard Agent keeps the per-source measurements, the beat grid and the loudness figures it took, so swapping one shot re-cuts that slot alone without disturbing the rhythm around it or the mix underneath.

• "That shot is soft." Re-measured, or replaced from a better source.
• "There is a watermark." Cropped, covered, or the shot dropped.
• "It does not build." Re-sequenced against the song's own structure.
• "Too much of one project." Rebalanced across the archive.

How does Vizard Agent compare to doing it yourself?

By hand the cutting is the enjoyable part and the reconciliation is the reason these trailers take a week. Every source needs checking for framing, marks and burnt-in text, and that check is what gets skipped when there are forty of them.

Common questions

How much material can it take? As much as you have. Vizard Agent checks each source before using it.

Will old footage look out of place? Vizard Agent tells you which sources will not sit with the rest, and grades the ones that can be brought into line.

What about watermarks? Vizard Agent checks for them and either crops, covers or reports them.

Can it use unreleased material? Yes, and Vizard Agent often finds the best moments there.

Does it need the music first? It helps a great deal, because Vizard Agent builds the grid from it.

What if the song arrives late? Vizard Agent rebuilds the grid around it, which costs a pass.

Can it find the moments itself? Yes. Vizard Agent uses the transcripts and the picture; name any that must be in.

How long should it be? Ninety seconds to two minutes. Tell Vizard Agent your target.

Will it re-grade old footage? Yes, to sit with the newer material. Say if you want them distinct.

Can it do a vertical version? Yes, though archive material may already have been reframed once.

What about client permissions? Yours to confirm. Vizard Agent lists every source it used.

Can it show the sources it picked? Yes. Ask for the breakdown by project.

Is this the same as a showreel? No. A showreel lists work; the trailer Vizard Agent builds argues something.

Why check every corner? Because one surviving watermark in a brand trailer is the only thing anyone will remember about it.