While the majority of teaser trailers might just involve a quick montage of shots or just lazy graphics, some marketing bods actually go about creating a bespoke teaser with specially shot footage which you won't see in the finished film.
We salute these special folk for making an effort and to celebrate such innovation, we've singled out 20 of the most memorable examples.
Do let us know if we've missed off your favourite.
The Minus Man
Year: 1999
A bit of an odd one here. The company behind this little-seen indie thriller, which starred Owen Wilson as a serial killer, decided to go down the alternative route with its marketing by making a trailer that featured two actors playing cinemagoers discussing the film. It's worth watching until the twist ending.
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Godzilla
Year: 1998
If you happened to go to the cinema during the summer of 1997 then you'll probably hold an extremely fond memory of this mischievous teaser for the following year's blockbuster Godzilla. Yes, the film was a crushing disappointment but this snarky dig at The Lost World was brilliantly realised and increased excitement for 1998 by about tenfold.
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I Still Know What You Did Last Summer
Year: 1998
Admittedly, it wasn't exactly the sequel we were all crying out for but during the slasher movie craze, any attempt to squeeze more money out of teens getting stabbed was an automatic greenlight. In this teaser, a scene that would have made no sense as anything but a trailer or a dream sequence, Jennifer Love Hewitt goes to see her shrink. But someone still knows what she did, yeah you get the gist.
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Star Trek
Year: 2009
The relaunch of a much-loved property such as Star Trek is a tough one to sell to the fans. In this classy tease, the marketing campaign got off to a damn near perfect start. The 75-second trailer gave us a mysterious look at a giant construction project which slowly revealed itself to be rather familiar. Soaring stuff.
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Jurassic Park
Year: 1993
This early trailer for Spielberg's multiplex-packing dino-thriller focused on the potential wonder of discovery without any of the running and screaming that was to come. It's an effective tease, with the mere suggestion of dinosaurs inhabiting the same space as man proving to be enough to sell the film to us.
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Spider-Man
Year: 2002
A slightly controversial one this and not an easy one to track down. This initial trailer, released a year before the film came out, focused on a rather cartoonish heist which ends in Spidey trapping the perpetrators in a web between the two towers of the World Trade Center. It was understandably pulled after 9/11, along with a poster which also featured the towers.
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Terminator 2: Judgment Day
Year: 1991
After the micro-budgeted original (just $6.4 million) made a killing at the box office, things were super-sized for the sequel and the rumoured $100 million budget was first seen in this slick teaser. Taking a trip along the terminator production line, it hints that bigger, badder things are to come.
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The Green Mile
Year: 1999
Selling a prison-set film from the writer and director of The Shawshank Redemption and starring Tom Hanks was never going to be a particularly tough sell. So Warners get some points here for not going down the easy, or at least easiest, route. It's heavy on the enigmatic side and features a mouse more than it features Hanks. Which is something.
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War of the Worlds
Year: 2005
Starting with a montage of stock footage coupled with some severe narration, this early look at Spielberg's alien epic soon moved into something rather ambitious. We move to a small town who are intrigued by some rather menacing happenings in the distance. Things soon get nasty.
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Psycho
Year: 1960
Coming off as more of a featurette than a trailer, this extended look at Hitchcock's groundbreaking thriller follows the director himself as he gives us the audience a tour around the Bates Motel. For anyone who complains that contemporary trailers give far too much plot away, this one trumps them all in terms of spoilers.
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Strange Days
Year: 1995
In her wilderness years between Point Break and winning an Oscar for The Hurt Locker, Kathryn Bigelow made some films that no one really bothered to watch, including this mid-90s piece of sci-fi. This teaser acts as an advert for the technology which the film revolves around and, despite being a good idea, is quite fantastically dated.
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The Addams Family
Year: 1991
This rarely seen teaser is a smart and swift way of re-introducing the iconic family back to audiences. Worth noting that Fester isn't played by Christopher Lloyd though. Make a note now.
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Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa
Year: 2013
The most recent entry to this list was a reassuringly smart way to kick off the campaign for Alan Partridge's first big screen appearance. A meta discussion on what the film should be called, it prepared us well for what was to come: more In The Loop, less Kevin & Perry Go Large.
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Back To the Future
Year: 1985
Another early example, this deliberately tricksy ad starts off like a Nike ad before turning into what appears to be a car ad before finally revealing that things aren't what they seem...
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Hulk
Year: 2003
This well-pitched teaser certainly helped our excitement for Ang Lee's Hulk by delivering all we needed to see at such an early stage. It was also a fairly decent visual metaphor for Lee's trademark brand of small-scale drama breaking out into something a tad more, ahem, big.
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The Omen
Year: 2006
This teaser trailer works on pretty much the same basis as the remake it's promoting: kids are scary and creepy and weird. That's about all you need to know.
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Transformers
Year: 2007
The phrase "less is more" might not be typically associated with Michael Bay's frenetic Transformers franchise but in the very early stages, things were a tad more restrained. This found footage-y original teaser for the first film gave us a tantalising glimpse of what was to come without showing us that much. This was soon corrected. Repeatedly.
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Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me
Year: 1999
After the original film turned out to be a surprise sleeper hit, a modest comedy turned into a blockbuster franchise and anticipation for the second film was sky high. In this memorable teaser, New Line used the release of The Phantom Menace to fool us into thinking we were watching something else. PS Remember when we were all amused by Austin Powers?
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Dirty Rotten Scoundrels
Year: 1988
Frankly, we love Dirty Rotten Scoundrels so much that we'd happily watch Michael Caine and Steve Martin stare at a white wall in total silence. So, while not entirely original, this short teaser for their con artist comedy is still pretty great.
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The Hills Have Eyes 2
Year: 2007
Although it was an unwanted sequel to a remake that no one asked for, Fox decided to go all out and make a pretty fancy (for the genre) teaser trailer. Poor box office returns meant that the hills no longer have eyes. Thankfully.
