The credits appear on the screen riding a piercing note. A montage of shots follows, building up the protagonist with every blink. Long shot, close up, laughter, actions, till Rajini saar, in his inimitable style, sums up the parts and presents you with a swagger — Ka-baaaali Da — the Great Gangster. 

The first teaser of the Rajinikanth-starrer Tamil gangster drama Kabali was released on YouTube last month. The 66-second teaser notched up 40,000 views in the first 20 minutes. In the next 24 hours it clocked five million.
“We thought it would create a buzz, but not at this level. It took us a good two days to digest the impact the teaser created,” says Praveen K.L., the film editor who also created the teaser. 

In the grand, protracted striptease that is the run-up to an actual release, the teaser is the first step — the first official titillation offered not just by production houses, but also popular artistes and even publishing houses to the larger, online audience. 

A teaser is often the precursor to a trailer. “As more people have access to social media and are able to get online, new forms of narrative are available to creatives. I see the trailer/teaser in this category,” says Rathna Ramanathan, head of the visual communication programme at the Royal College of Art, London. 

The trend is global. In April this year, pop icon  Beyoncé released a minute-long “mystery” video on Instagram, followed by a longer trailer that premiered on HBO, for her visual album Lemonade. Some liked it, most panned it, but people kept watching it — to date it has over 1,03,42,924 views.  

And, yes, even books have teasers.

The Wedding Photographer by Sakshama Puri Dhariwal was published by Penguin Books this year. Dhariwal has uploaded the book trailer — some still photographs and one-liners set to music — on her Facebook page. 
“It was my idea. It’s a clever way to break the clutter on social media. Facebook sees over 8 billion video views daily, so between promoting the text blurb of my book or a snappy video, it made sense to invest in the latter,” Dhariwal says. 

Sample the book teaser of End of Watch, Stephen King’s yet-to-be released novel from Hodder & Stoughton. The minute-long video is made up of jerky frames — a lone umbrella, upside down, bobbing on shallow waters; the waters, first still, then rippling, catching the umbrella’s blood red reflection. By the time you get to the last shot, bubbling red waters, your heart is in your mouth. 

Is there an art to crafting that shareable, tweetable, eminently viewable, teaser? 

“Teasers and trailers go for a very obvious impact. The sound design and the pace are exaggerated and everything has to lead to a ‘wow’ in a short time,” says Prerna Saigal. Saigal, who graduated from the Film and Television Institute of India, Pune, has worked as an editor for films such as Peddlers, Tigers and Bombay Velvet. 

“The moment I saw the way he (Rajinikanth) delivered that particular line in the rushes, I knew it had to be in the teaser; but a few shots were filmed specifically for it,” says Praveen about the Kabali teaser, adding that it was produced in a day. “Everyone who watched it in the edit wanted to see it again and again.” 

That’s where the teaser is different from the traditional trailer; in the “again and again” factor. Long after the film has come and gone, the teaser lives on in the world wide web. And with this enhanced longevity comes great creative responsibility. 

A week before the Kabali teaser, Yash Raj Films (YRF) outed the second teaser of the film Sultan about a wrestler’s struggles. While teaser 1 was actually an effort in building up the persona of the male protagonist — watch Salman emerge from the dust, fall and rise again menacingly — teaser 2 was dedicated to the female protagonist played by Anushkha Sharma. The second Fan teaser, also from YRF, was less direct, more dramatic. The teasers of both films — Sultan is slated to be released in July — were created by Mohit Sajnaney. 

For those who missed the teaser of Shoojit Sircar’s Piku, it is not too late. The clip shows the three lead characters, played by Amitabh Bachchan, Irrfan Khan and Deepika Padukone, in an argument over the film’s trailer. And after the images and witty dialogues have zip, zap, zoomed away, Piku’s Baba’s impatient summons rings in your ears — “Pikuuuu, Aaai Pikuuu” — at once familiar and intriguing. According to some reports, Deepika herself came up with the idea.

If there are so many styles, there are also so many editors. Oftentimes, the same film has different editors for the film, the trailer and the teaser. Do the different formats need different skills?

“I think a good editor is well equipped to cut for any medium,” says Saigal. “An editor who’s editing a film generally would not have time to cut promo teasers. Then again, the film editor follows the director’s vision, whereas the trailer editor has to follow the marketing team or the producer,” she explains. 

Sajnaney believes creating a trailer is more challenging than editing a film. “But there are various reasons for having different people for the two jobs. The primary reason is to bring a fresh mind and a fresh angle,” he holds. 

The thrill of the tease is further sustained by weaving little ceremonies around the teaser. The second Sultan teaser was released by Salman Khan on Anushka Sharma’s birthday, the second Fan teaser on Shah Rukh Khan’s 50th birthday by SRK himself on Twitter — not happy coincidences, but part of a closely orchestrated marketing plan. 

“The landscape of the movie industry has been changing rapidly especially with the advent of digital marketing. It allows filmmakers to connect with their audiences like never before,” says Gautam B. Thakker, CEO, Everymedia Technologies Pvt. Ltd, a leading integrated marketing communications company. 

A team of experts at Everymedia uses various tools for real-time conversation monitoring, sentiment analysis and geo-targeting to collect data from various digital platforms. The team also conducts ground level surveys to collect inputs from non-digital sources. 
“Based on the data, we advise our clients about what the best launch environment would be. This includes deciding the best time and date as well as the best platform on which to launch the teaser/trailer,” Thakker says. 

So much hoopla for something that is barely a minute long? 

“The hoopla is often ‘created’ because there are ways of ensuring likes or views by paying money,” says trade analyst Komal Nahta. According to him, the genuine hits could translate into box-office collections, but there’s no guarantee that they would. 

According to Amrita Talwar, senior marketing manager, HarperCollins, book trailers are no longer seen as a viable marketing tool. “It used to be a couple of years back, when we cut one for Amish’s Immortals of Meluha. In fact, till last year, we came up with these trailers, but not this year.” 

Revenue or no revenue, good returns or not, Ramanathan applauds this visual trend. “I think it is a positive mood that we can access content now in different ways and this is bringing a new understanding to how multi-media and multi-form something can be.”