Cold Storage Teaser Trailer: A Post-Apocalyptic Christmas

COLD STORAGE TEASER TRAILER

WHAT IS COLD STORAGE?

Cold Storage is a Christmas novel set in Yukon 30 years after the Apocalypse. We did a teaser trailer for the novel, which deals with a particularly harrowing Christmas Eve during a strange, proton heavy, aurora borealis event that awakens deceased pioneers buried deep in permafrost for nearly two centuries.

This being Yukon, the usual rules do not apply. These zombies are craving heat, not brains. They are frozen stiff, not creaking because of rigor mortis.

A bunch of trappers will have to figure out the new rules during the longest night of the year and try to come back out on the other end unscathed.

A silhouette of Santa Claus and his reindeer on the roof of the Dawson City General Store under a vibrant purple aurora borealis.

Building a Story Through Images

Unlike a traditional movie trailer, this teaser had to sell a novel. There are no actors, no film set, no practical effects: only still images, sound design, editing, and imagination.

The goal wasn’t to summarize the plot. It was to create questions.

Who are these people?

Why is Christmas still being celebrated?

Why is the aurora purple?

Why are the dead walking?

The trailer intentionally reveals almost nothing about the story while establishing its atmosphere.

COLD STORAGE: A dark, snow-covered town at night with a purple-hued sky, featuring a church on a hill and a frozen river in the foreground. — A scene from the Cold Storage series, depicting a quiet, snow-covered town at night.

Dawson City as the Main Character

Rather than focusing immediately on monsters, the trailer begins with Dawson City itself.

Snow-covered streets…
Abandoned buildings…
A town frozen in time.

By treating Dawson almost like a living character, every later shot feels personal. When fires burn in the streets or buildings glow against the purple night, viewers already understand what is at stake.

The location does much of the storytelling before a single character appears.

A large group of people standing in a snowy town street at night, holding torches and rifles under a purple-tinted sky. — A scene from the Cold Storage series.

A Different Kind of Zombie

One of the biggest design challenges was making the undead immediately recognizable while avoiding the clichés of modern zombie fiction.

These pioneers have spent almost two hundred years frozen inside Yukon permafrost.

Instead of rotten flesh, they are preserved.

Instead of staggering because they’re decomposing, they move awkwardly because they’re literally frozen solid.

Many shots focused on frost-covered faces, ice-crusted skin, frozen teeth, and blank white eyes. Even close-ups of a mouth emerging from blowing snow communicate the idea that winter itself has become the monster.

A dark silhouette of a person stands behind a window pane covered in intricate frost patterns, illuminated by a purple light. — A mysterious figure appears through a frozen window in this teaser for Cold Storage.

Purple Nights

The trailer uses two dominant colour palettes.

Daylight scenes establish the harsh reality of Yukon winters.

Night scenes shift almost entirely into deep violet tones, inspired by an intense aurora borealis event that drives the story.

The purple glow became the visual signature of Cold Storage. It washes over frozen towns, abandoned saloons, cemeteries, shattered ice, and the undead themselves.

Whenever warm light appears, (a lantern, a bonfire, Christmas lights), it remains naturally yellow.

That contrast became one of the trailer’s strongest visual motifs: impossible purple skies against the comforting colours of fire.

A large bonfire burns in the middle of a deserted, snow-covered frontier town street at dusk. — A scene from the Cold Storage series, depicting a desolate town street illuminated by a central fire.

Fire Versus Ice

Because the creatures are drawn toward heat, fire becomes more than decoration.

Bonfires burning in the middle of deserted streets…
Lanterns glowing inside abandoned buildings…
Christmas lights still hanging from forgotten storefronts…

Every warm light is simultaneously protection and danger.

The visual language reinforces one of the novel’s central ideas without ever explaining it.

A reflective Christmas ornament hanging on a dark wooden wall, showing a distorted image of a post-apocalyptic landscape and a creature's face. — A teaser image for the Cold Storage series.

Small Details Tell Big Stories

Some of the trailer’s most effective shots are also its simplest.

A mason jar sitting alone inside an empty saloon.

Broken ice scattered across frozen ground.

An old Christmas ornament reflecting something horrifying just outside the frame.

Freshly disturbed graves beneath newly fallen snow.

None of these images explain themselves.

Instead, they invite viewers to imagine what happened just before—or what is about to happen next.

A woman in winter gear crouches in a snowy, ruined town square under a purple sky, setting a metal trap in the foreground. — A scene from the Cold Storage teaser trailer.

Characters Before Action

Rather than filling the trailer with action sequences, we introduced individual survivors one at a time.

A trapper setting steel traps. Another carrying oversized pruning shears. A hunter raising his shotgun.

Each portrait establishes personality before revealing almost anything about the plot. The audience meets ordinary people long before they meet monsters.