The art of making game trailers attracts viewers

Surely you have seen the game trailers, more or less. They are likened to the cavalry escorting a new game to the front lines, the first major blow in a massive campaign to win your hearts and minds. Of course you can wait for commentators and streamers to play that game before deciding to buy, but there’s a good chance you’ll be intrigued by the trailer first. And at least one of the trailers you’ve seen was most likely hand-crafted by Derek Lieu – a freelance trailer editor who creates trailers for Shadow of Mordor, Firewatch, Subnautica and many other games.

The details and images packed into a 90-second video can tell you what a game is like and get you ready to buy it, but we rarely think about who made it or what. meticulousness in how they are made.

Lieu’s job is complex and requires many skills. Besides editing, he frequently acts as a performer, camera operator, cinematographer and director. Making game trailers is a complex undertaking that combines many technical expertise and exquisite artistry.

Purpose of the game trailer

“In a way, the game trailer is like a tutorial for the game,” Lieu said. One of the first things he thought of was showing viewers the main, key elements of the game first to attract attention, and then expanding on those elements, gradually showing them why. This game is awesome.

“Think back to the instructions in the games, like the ‘jump’ button in Super Mario Bros.,” said Lieu. “And then jump over to the right, and gradually expand upon that. The trailer is also made according to the same rules.”

So when he started a project, Lieu played the game and started listing its main activities like jumping, climbing, shooting. And then start putting them together in strings. “Jumping on normal blocks is fun; jumping on sometimes spiked blocks is more fun; and jumping on gradually exploding blocks is even more fun, so it should be left at the end.”

But viewers need to understand the context of the game before the key elements come into play. Which meant Lieu often had to explain the game as succinctly as possible before showing everyone what was so special about it.

Let’s get the game trailer Dead Cells as an example. The scenes first let the viewer know about the game genre – action platform games – before showing off the new elements of the Brutal update, first some simple elements, then more complex ones, to help viewers understand and recognize what they are watching.

You may have noticed a similar structure in thousands of other trailers, but it’s not the only way to edit them. And that’s because….

“An important feature about the trailer is that if the background music and visuals are good, then the trailer is basically okay,” Lieu said. “Because music and visuals are often what people rely on to judge an entire video.”

Trailer The Adventure Pals His focus is on rhythm, which is rendered over both visuals and audio to capture the viewer’s attention – Lieu describes it as “like a music video” – before it begins to list its features. main feature of the game.

“You should start from the sound first.” he advised. Lieu often needs music to lean on before starting to edit, because creating mood, tempo, and structure is so important. In the trailer Way of the Passive Fist his own, a fighting game with the mechanics of parrying your opponent’s hits until he gets tired and collapses with your first hit, Lieu will first come up with a concept for a sequence of events in which the player The player performs a series of blocks, continuing the “running” phase like that until culminating in the main character launching the finishing blow.

The game’s composer would then write music specifically for that concept, and Lieu was able to present a sketch version to the developer, Household Games, with the soundtrack incorporated. It looks pretty bad, but the audio feels similar to when watching the finished trailer.

Lieu is very good at editing and editing to music. Check out the Guacamelee 2 trailer below. Once the story is established, it is important to emphasize the action elements with the energy of the soundtrack.

Before he could start editing, Lieu needed to shoot the footage first. He didn’t use a capture card, instead simply Nvidia’s ShadowPlay, and used an Xbox Elite controller, because its joysticks move smoothly and it has pads on the back to he can control the camera while using the buttons to jump, reload or whatever the game requires.

Sometimes the game can move smoothly naturally, typically Tacoma, helping Lieu to perform the scenes well. He used the handle because it was less jerky when using the mouse. “My aim is to find deadzones, not to test the response speed but to see how smoothly I can move the camera.” For other games, Lieu relies heavily on debugging tools, which allow him to customize and reduce input for smooth movements.

Shooting VR videos is more difficult, because the camera movements are tied to the movements of the VR gear.

“I took the Oculus and put it on a stuffed animal, then on a blanket, then on a box, then on a chair, and I was watching the screen as I pushed the chair. .” Even so, there were slight fluctuations in the footage, but they were small enough that he was able to stabilize it in Adobe Premiere.

The debug tools can also edit the camera’s position, something Lieu took advantage of to create the trailer for Ooblets. With a freecam he can shoot different and more impressive scenes.

There are many ways for Lieu to filter the footage. Sometimes he relies on an existing manuscript, like with games Way of the Passive Fist. Sometimes he shoots the whole game, like with The Adventure Pals – The game that Lieu collected footage from is more than five hours long. “I won’t be satisfied until I’ve seen everything and picked the parts I like,” Lieu said.

Editing was really tough, Lieu knew she had to shrink a five-hour video into a less than two-minute trailer. He reduced it to an hour at first, then 16 minutes, and eventually just his favorite scenes, which Lieu admits he had to re-shoot many of. “I wonder if shooting a five-hour video is really necessary if I end up doing everything all over again, and the answer is often yes.”

Lieu says developers shouldn’t worry about the length of the trailer, though many specifically ask for 30 or 90 seconds. “I always ask them if this length limit was set by the head of that platform or is it to fit the E3 timeframe? That’s fine if that’s the case, but usually as long as it’s necessary.”

“The editing part is deciding what something will look like and for how long.” A trailer should have moments of ups and downs, because lows cannot be considered lows without ups. Sometimes a trailer makes me feel bored, and often because the editing of the footage doesn’t show me the author’s intentions, it doesn’t make any sense.”

The trailer needs to make the viewer feel like it’s aiming for something, that the shots are there on purpose, whether it’s because they fit the rhythm or because they tell a certain story. . But even the biggest games can violate these guidelines. Lieu took the dialogue in the trailer Red Dead Redemption 2 out and try reading it. “They mean nothing. These episodes are not connected at all, they have no logic, but you watch it because you want to see new visuals, graphics, and characters. For games like that, poor editing can easily be overlooked if the viewer is only concerned with the nature of the game.”

For other games, the trailer editor will give them a voice, using the magic of the story from start to finish, combined with an artistic eye and passion to keep you hooked. Keep all of these factors in mind as you sit down and watch all the trailers at E3. And guess how many of them are made by Derek Lieu.

By PC Gamer