PostHog Handbook Library / Content

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# Feature trailer process

Feature trailers are social-first videos designed to create excitement, interest, and awareness around new PostHog products and features. They can also be used as short demo videos for product pages and docs.

If you want one made, here's how the process works and what to expect.

### Types of feature trailers

There are two types of feature trailer, depending on how much time you have and what you're trying to achieve:

| Type | Description | Production time | Example | |---|---|---|---| | Teaser (under 30 seconds) | Pure vibes, not a story. It shows a single user experience and is designed to create buzz and excitement about a new feature. | Up to a week and a half | PostHog Code teaser | | Use case video (30–90 seconds) | Narrative-based, showing a single specific use case for PostHog product or feature. Ideally based on our own usage of the product. | Up to two weeks | Slack app feature trailer |

> The team can also make longer demo videos (e.g. 3 to 5 minutes or more), though these aren't feature trailers. They're a much bigger project that can take 4+ weeks, and work best on a product that's already stable – i.e. UI is finalized and unlikely to change. That's why we tend to avoid them for launches and announcements.

### How to request a video

#### 1. Message the video team

Drop a message in Team YouTube on Slack explaining what you want to create and why. There's no official request process – just start the conversation.

> Important: Videos typically take two weeks to make, but a minimum of four weeks is necessary if you want to hit a specific date. This is because we need to fit things around existing video work, and leave time to agree a creative direction before production can start.

#### 2. Talk through scope and timeline

The team will advise on what else is in progress and whether your timeline is realistic. If it's a yes, you'll move on to a storyboard.

#### 3. Create a storyboard

As the requester, you'll put together a short storyboard of what you want the video to cover. This is especially useful for 30–90 second feature trailers.

Use this storyboard template as a starting point – copy it and adapt it for your video.

Also note any existing assets for the product – webpage, blog post, social post, artwork, custom hoggies, etc – and provide URLs if you have them. The team can reuse these rather than starting from scratch.

> The storyboard doesn't need to be polished. It doesn't need a creative vision or production-quality assets. All it needs to do is convey the narrative beats you want the video to hit. For example, the storyboard for PostHog self-driving laid out: show the before and after, show a user solving the problem, ship the fix, then reveal that it was actually fixed autonomously using PostHog self-driving. Each beat just needs a note and a screenshot or rough screen recording.

#### 4. Review the storyboard together

You'll meet with Jordo and Andy to talk through the storyboard and make any changes. Once everyone's happy with it, Jordo will turn it into a scratch edit – a rough moving version of the storyboard with a draft voiceover and script. It'll have plenty of missing pieces, but it gives you something to react to.

#### 5. Iterate on the script and visuals

From here, you'll go back and forth refining the script and wording, then refining the visuals.

Expect to see roughly three versions of the video as it comes together:

1. The basic storyboard version.
2. A more refined version, with the script mostly locked and closer-to-final visuals.
3. A polish pass, catching any remaining issues or making final tweaks.

Depending on complexity, this can stretch to a fourth or fifth round of small fixes.

### Timeline

The whole process usually takes up to two weeks, though it's often quicker depending on how complex the video is.

Canonical URL: https://posthog.com/handbook/content/feature-trailer-process

GitHub source: contents/handbook/content/feature-trailer-process.md

Content hash: `723ba25aaa17480c`