![]() ![]() If I use them, I try to have no more than two debug camera shots at the start of a trailer and I make sure they don't take up more than a few seconds. SOLUTION: Minimize use of debug camera shots showing the game environments. ![]() If the shots don't show gameplay, they need to at least tell part of the story. ![]() It largely succeeds in the Firewatch Announce trailer because of the strong visuals, good music, and top notch voice acting. I made a video and blog post about this topic just to say it's risky to do this for too long in the intro of your trailer. PROBLEM: Opening shots which are pretty but don't show player controlled gameplay. For example, developers who use Unreal Engine are required to use the logo in their trailers, BUT they don't need to be shown at the start of the trailer, you can put it on the end slate. Only show the logos when you're legally obligated. Or integrate the logo into your game footage in a clever and unobtrusive way. SOLUTION: Start with gameplay and then show logos for no more than 1 second each. Think of it this way: If the beginning of the trailer is what most people see, do you want it to be footage of your game? Or do you want it to be a bunch of logos? I'd say the majority of game trailers do this because it makes it look "real" or "official" when it's mostly just burning up precious time. PROBLEM: Over 15 seconds spent on logos!!! You might think this is drawn out to make it extra absurd, but I've seen game trailers which spend AT LEAST this much time on their logos. I've written more about how to find the right music for your trailer in this article The Firewatch Reveal trailer has a really great custom music track by Chris Remo. If you can't get one made, then look to license some royalty free music or music from a trailer music company. ![]() If none exists, see if you can get one made. SOLUTION: Find (or make) a track which has a good intro, middle, climax, and ending. This flattens out the trailer's pace and makes it feel like it's going nowhere. Lots of game trailers fall into this trap of using gameplay music which sounds virtually the same at the beginning, middle, and end. PROBLEM: The music I chose is from the game (which is good), but the track I chose doesn't change or have much of a rise in dramatic tension. Consult this page on my site for end slate specifications. It's up to you whether or not you're ok overlaying the icon (which might be distracting) or putting 2 seconds of dead air at the start by using full screen version. If the trailer doesn't contain extreme violence, you can instead overlay the little ESRB rating icon during the first four seconds of the trailer. The box needs to be at least 50% of the vertical height of the frame. SOLUTION: The ESRB rating is at the start of the trailer for a max of 2 seconds. It's on the required 2 seconds, and has an unnecessary fade out. An ESRB rating taken from Google Image Search which is low-resolution, but matched with a crystal clear serif font for the descriptors. PROBLEM: From the first frame, the trailer is already a disaster. There's already plenty of ground to cover, so please witness my beautiful monstrosity and I'll walk you through each of the flaws I deliberately incorporated. But I honestly haven't seen trailers which were bad for those reasons. For example, I could make it 30 minutes long, compress the footage to 240p, added star wipes, used Comic Sans, etc. There's always a way to make something worse, but it becomes less instructive if it's not informed by real life. The only rule I gave myself when making this was to not do anything which I hadn't already seen done in a real trailer. I could make this trailer far worse than I did, but I didn't have the time to recapture the footage to make it the beautifully horrible creation it could truly be. So instead I made the worst possible trailer I could for Firewatch using the official trailers (the majority of which I made for work) as my raw material. And as instructive as analyzing them can be, I never want to drag someone through the mud, especially if they're still learning. I watch a LOT of indie game trailers on my Twitch stream made by inexperienced and/or first time editors. ![]()
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