Oh boy oh boy! It’s getting close to trailer time. I put one together this week, so here’s what went into making it!

 

Planning

It started with a bunch of planning and research, to figure out what the trailer had to communicate to be successful. If anyone’s curious, two great articles I found were this one, and this one. In the end, here’s what I got:

• Introduce Wryn’s basic abilities (so viewers understand how the game works)
• Demonstrate how fast the game plays when the abilities are used effectively
• Show off the volume and variety of locations and boss fights
• Say who’s working on the game (they’re kind of a big deal)
• Say name of the game, when it’s coming out, for what platforms, and my website
• Do it all fast, with minimal-to-no text, no drawn-out intros, and a maximum of 90 seconds

Once I had that sorted, I went over the song I was using to see how it fit with my criteria. I think the music strongly informs the emotional journey of the trailer, so the action and information had to flow with it.

That’s what I landed on! As the song warms up, I introduce how to play the game, and as it builds to a mini-climax I use more intense and busy footage. Then the song backs off a little, so I use that time to display credits. Finally, the song and trailer ramp way back up and beyond, showing as many bosses and crazy action scenes as possible before ending with the important info.

 

Intro

I strongly dislike trailers with slow starts. I’ve been paying attention lately, and many (like, TONNNS) of trailers wait 30-40 seconds before they even show you the game in action (what???) So, for mine, I purposefully had it open BAM right on the action. Wryn sees the invasion, the baddies enter the screen, and the trailer begins.

A number of people I showed it to thought it was TOO abrupt, and said they wanted a better idea of what the heck was going on. So, I added no more than 4-5 seconds of intro with Wryn playing videogames, hearing the assault, and running out to meet it. In the end it definitely eases you in a little nicer, and I guess 5 seconds isn’t too bad (the trailer for the original Bleed had about that, and it did okay!)

 

Credits

For the credits, I added little animated swoopy text. I made a point of not cutting while the credits were on screen, to try and help them be at least a partial focus. This is also at the least-energetic part of the song, if you remember, so the longer takes fit that too!

Also, fun fact, the credits are actually animated in-game — they use the same animation I worked up for the level intros. I tweaked it a bit, swapped out the text and hid the level behind them, recorded them separately and layered them over the footage. Yes that’s very convoluted. Yes it could have been done in my editing program. Don’t judge me.

 

Cutting

Finally! There’s a looooot going on and a lot of quick cuts in the trailer, so I did my best to keep Wryn (hopefully the focus of the action) in a similar place on the screen between cuts. I don’t know if this is a common practice (I don’t really know what I’m doing haha…) but I think it makes the trailer easier to follow and the cuts easier to take. Hopefully you can see what I mean here.

This was also accomplished with the utmost technical precision, only possible by ripped-up sticky notes.

And that’s that! I’ve got a trailer all ready to go, and barring any technical issues it should be out very soon. I guess we’ll see — I’m talking with some folks who are helping me out on how to best market and promote my game, we’ll see if there’s anything left they think I need to do. Shouldn’t be long, though!