Trailer Essays

It’s easy to tell people why your game is good, but it’s very unconvincing. It’s much harder to show footage of your game to allow other people to come to their own conclusion that your game is good. Here’s what a hard sell looks like and what you can do to avoid it if you so choose.

I’ve noticed in trailers for films and games featuring Asian characters: it feels very telling about the people making the trailers and more broadly how Western culture sees Asian cultures.

If you’ve managed to avoid the basic pitfalls and have a pretty good handle on cutting to the beat and adding some sound design to your trailers, it’s time to take your skills to the next level with these techniques which will really help you control the pacing of the trailer.

Your game trailer ideally says more about the game than it does about you and what you think of the game. This is what it looks like when the trailer makers’ ideas don’t align with the game itself.

Someone watching a game trailer has expectations and needs which you need to consider in order to meet and fulfill them. A trailer which doesn’t give them what they want, it will be very frustrating. So here’s what I recommend.

Trailers are kind of like restaurants I’ve been to only once; I can’t remember most details, but I remember how I felt after consuming what they had. Through the language of film, trailers have the power to make people feel things, which is more powerful than using them as a delivery system for bullet points.

Once you’re experienced enough to avoid all the basic mistakes and pitfalls, it’s time to start looking for ways to take your trailer editing to the next level. Here are three things which tell me an editor is at an intermediate level

Here are my top most common indicators of an amateur editor, and the relatively easy solutions which can significantly improve the quality of their videos to what I’d consider a baseline of quality.

It is sometimes more valuable to look at poorly made trailers than ones which are well made. Here are a couple trailers I watched this holiday season for low budget Christmas movies, and the things that made them either difficult to watch, understand, or both.

If a game trailer is meant to be an accurate summation of a game, then it needs to also depict the game’s views on representation of different groups of people whether by gender, nationality, ethnicity, age, etc.

If you can watch a let’s play or Twitch stream, are game trailers even necessary anymore?

Yes.

If your story trailers are getting lost in the details and minutiae, these two synopses for La Boheme will help you understand what a good story trailer needs to convey the narrative.

Why don’t game trailers share the movie trailer reputation for spoiling the entire game? The interactive nature of video games is a big part of it, but let’s dig deeper.

As a trailer maker, there’s a fine line between making the audience curious rather than confused. The end result seems the same for both, but they elicit very different emotions from the audience. Here’s why curiosity will garner a better response every single time.

Having a video or trailer in a livestream event is a HUGE opportunity to get your game in front of a lot of eyeballs. In this post I talk about how to decide what sort of trailer to make depending on the game and where it is in its marketing campaign.

The Xbox Series X Gameplay Reveal livestream event suffered a large backlash from parts of the internet, and what emerged was a semantic argument about gameplay, in-game footage, in-engine footage. Here are the takeaways for both Microsoft and game developers who might be in an event like this in the future!

A really funny game trailer can be a viral hit, a really unfunny trailer can elicit scorn and ire from a particularly unreceptive audience. Here are some game trailers which successfully managed to make people laugh and win them over enough to share it far and wide, and some things you can take away from their success.

There are a handful of tricks in a trailer editor’s belt which can help them make an entertaining trailer even with very bad or weak source material. But this cuts both ways, because the same techniques can undermine good source material if it looks like the trailer editor has something to hide. Here are examples of how both can look!

Working from home is very difficult, and requires great discipline because you’re managing your own time on top of trying to simply get the work done. We can be our own worst managers if we don’t set up the boundaries we need to maintain a good work/life balance. Here are some tips from my years of experience!

Too many trailers focus on the minutiae of the gameplay experience, and not the dream, fantasy or objective the minutiae add up to. Here’s a look at why that difference can be so significant.

Pacing has a unique ability to make us feel the emotion of a story in a way similar to music. Here are a few of the ways the pacing of a trailer can be used to emphasize the tone or feel of a movie or game.

Starting a game trailer with a series of 3+ establishing shots is not a great way to start a game trailer, and yet it’s incredibly common. The first question a game trailer audience wants answered is usually: “What is this genre?” and establishing shots do not help answer this.

If you want to make a successful trailer, you need to learn how to make something familiar look surprising, but sometimes you also need to take something surprising, and make it familiar!

J.J. Abrams gets flack for his “mystery box” approach to storytelling, but it turns out this format is the perfect mindset for story trailer editing!

This trailer for Jackie Chan’s movie Vanguard is truly awful, let’s use it to discuss how to critique trailers!

Authenticity is a strong buzzword in the modern world of marketing; it’s presumably why influencers are so much more trusted than conventional direct-marketing approaches. Here I take a look at the trailer for Creature in the Well which was extremely well received for its unique voice.

How you sell something is a huge part of marketing, and if done incorrectly or in an off-putting way can affect the audience perception. Here I take a look at how different approaches to selling things related to war can look.

Trailer music is a very specific beast which requires a certain ear to hear and ask for when working with a composer. Here are the things you should look out for in a trailer music track!

When you’re working on a game which with very easy to understand mechanics, it’s time to have some FUN with the editing, and make it as flashy as possible!

“Show, don’t tell” is the age old mantra of filmmaking, and it’s even more important for trailers, because advertising is literally trying to get the audience to buy something, not just “buy in” to a story. Here’s why showing works better than telling, and why telling is so dangerous.

It’s very easy to make a video game trailer look generic. What are the common pitfalls trailers which cause this to happen?

Trailers don’t need to tell everything about a story, and there are many cases in which providing more information makes a less effective trailer. Here’s why character names and other minutiae are at the top of the list for things to leave out.

What can a 4 second Vine with only two shots in it teach you about trailer editing? It turns out, a whole lot.

Trailers are best when they’re a means of telling a story, but sometimes you barely need any plot details to make something entertaining to watch. How do you do more with less?

I’ve worked in both the movie and game trailer industries. There are similarities between the two, but there are many ways they are fundamentally different beasts. Whether you’re looking to enter a career in either or just curious, this will answer your questions!

I didn’t like Red Dead Redemption 2’s third trailer. In this post I explain what bothered me so much via an explanation of the “paper edit” phase of making a trailer.

Trailers are frequently described as being better than their films, but what does it look like when a reasonably high budget film gets a low budget trailer?

Stand up comedy and trailers have a lot in common, and understanding their structural similarities can help you better understand how to how to make better trailers.

Here are some simple montage editing lessons that you can learn from the introduction to the Japanese reality TV show “Terrace House.”

Trailers are notorious for containing spoilers, but there are ways to use spoilery shots without alerting the audience. How can this be done, and what does it look like when it's done wrong?

The Inception Braaaaaaam sound is one of the most influential bits of sound design/music in modern trailers.

What that made it so popular?

Sometimes when there's a built-in audience for an already popular property, great trailers are made, and sometimes it's clear that the trailer producers knew that how the trailer is edited isn't as important as just showing what the audience wants to see.

How the heck do you get a job as an editor in the trailer industry? It's not that different from any sort of creative job you might want; you just have to know where to look, and what to expect.

Some of my favorite trailers are for love stories I either didn't like in the final film, or didn't find as affecting as I did in the trailer. What is it about the storytelling of a trailer that works differently from the final film that causes this to happen?

Two stories about the events that lead up to me getting two of my favorite gigs. Nothing I did that got me these gigs were done for the sake of getting hired, and yet it worked out that way in the end.