See Rian Johnson’s ‘Looper’ pitch trailer (VIDEO)

Getting a movie made in Hollywood these days requires more than just a good script and a star. Filmmakers often have to "wow" studio executives with pitch reels or faux-trailers to get the job.

What is a pitch reel? It's usually a combination of storyboards and dialogue edited together to give people an idea of what a film will look and feel like. Often footage from other movies is spliced into a reel to help establish the mood and punch up the action. A pitch reel is how Edgar Wright ("Hot Fuzz") convinced Marvel to let him make an "Ant-Man" movie, and how Joe Carnahan ("The A-Team") tried to persuade Fox to make his hard-boiled version of "Daredevil."

See also: 'Looper' director Rian Johnson talks time travel

Pitch reels are no guarantee a movie will be made (see "Daredevil"), but they're an excellent audiovisual aid for filmmakers who are trying to sell their movies to a room full of studio executives.

With the time-travel thriller "Looper," director Rian Johnson found himself in need of such a reel. Even if he already had star Joseph Gordon-Levitt on board, the sci-fi film's high-concept plot would be a hard sell for studios. So, after finishing his script, Johnson teamed with friend Ronen Verbit to assemble a fake trailer for "Looper" using clips from other films and sketches by his brother Zach. When combined with Gordon-Levitt's grim narration, the resulting trailer is a pretty effective sales pitch for the movie.

"It was meant to show more some of the film's tone, and to show how the odd concept could be presented in a clear and compelling way in the marketing," Johnson wrote on his blog last week.

Judge for yourself by watching the director's "Looper" pitch trailer below:

The fake trailer is definitely a little darker than the movie Johnson eventually created, featuring alternate dialogue that never made it into the film. It also splices in footage from the seminal cyberpunk movie "Blade Runner" and David Fincher's thriller "Seven" among others, two films that helped to help inform the look of "Looper" early on. Anyone who has seen the film can attest that the influence of Ridley Scott and Fincher is very evident in the finished product, so it's cool to see it directly referenced in the trailer.

One might expect something like this reel/trailer for "Looper" to show up on the DVD special features and not online. But Johnson has always gone out of his way to avoid the proper marketing channels in order to share cool tidbits with fans of his movies. During the production of "Looper," Johnson ran the movie's official blog and shared news, stories from the set, behind-the-scenes photos and more.

See also: Five film facts about 'Looper'

The director continues to post on that blog, and recently shared an in-theatre commentary track different from the one that will appear on the DVD (he did the same thing for his last film "The Brothers Bloom"). All these little online extras are certainly an unusual way for a filmmaker to engage with his or her audience, but there's no disputing how effective it's been. In the future, don't be surprised if you see more directors follow in Johnson's footsteps.