Trailer Music Video Style Editing

I focus a lot on how to make gameplay comprehensible in a trailer, because a lot of indie games' hooks are designed around new ideas and mechanics. But what should a trailer editor do when the gameplay is easy to understand?

HAVE FUN!

Clarity is probably the most important thing in editing, so when you're confident the footage and concepts are clear, that's when you get to focus on flourish and style!

This is the main reason AAA game trailers are edited the way they are. For better or for worse, most AAA games tend to feature violence, and things which exist in the real world. It's easy to understand footage of a video game about shooting and fighting people or even jumping on platforms, because those mechanics are well trodden ground. This also applies to games which are based on things people do in real life like: fishing, golf, racing, or cooking. At a glance, it's not difficult for people to understand what they do in these games. 

Without the concern about teaching the audience what they're seeing, the trailer editor for these games mostly has to worry at about telling a story, but otherwise has free rein to use every editing trick in the book. This means things like quicker shots, syncing actions, sound effects and cuts to the beat, maybe some sort of motion graphics for flourish. You pretty much have carte blanche to edit as you please, provided the editing doesn't become distracting or disorienting.

Take a look at this trailer for Battlefield V. In general, I dislike realistic war games because they make me feel gross to look at and play, but I can't help but find trailers like this incredibly entertaining to watch even though it's ostensibly doing the thing I find most distasteful about war games, which is to make war look "cool." But take a look at how this trailer syncs up gunshots to the beat for what amounts to a trailer saying: "We added new locations to Battlefield V."

A war game is a simple and easy idea to digest, and the trailer only had to show what the new content was, therefore the trailer editor got to just edit for pure style. I wouldn't be surprised if the audio of this trailer was edited first, and the visuals were added in later. It's almost a guarantee the guns in the game cannot actually fire at the exact tempos used in this trailer, but it doesn't really matter. I recently found the most literal representation of the idea that sound effects can be percussion in this YouTube video which borders on parody of American culture, but I suspect is 100% sincere.

When I plan to edit something so in sync to the beat I'll take an inventory of the things in the game which have their own timing. For example, there are a wide variety of weapons in Dead Cells which have some sort of built in combo when you mash the attack button. Based on which weapon you use, the tempo could be three quick slashes then a big one. Or maybe three big ones in a row. I'll find the weapons with interesting rhythm, and try to slot them into the parts of the trailer where the music is doing similar things. Occasionally I'll "cheat" some audio a few frames for the sake of having it land closer to the beat. This trailer isn't nearly as in sync as the Battlefield V trailer, but watch to listen for the parts where multiple beats sync to the gameplay in one shot.

Sound editing is one direction the editor can go with stylistic editing; now let's look at stylistic visual editing. This is a video which I saw a few years back; it left an indelible impression on me through its use of match cuts, speed ramps and cutting on action. Though it isn't a trailer, it uses a LOT of the editing techniques you'll find in modern day trailers. If you watch only one video in this newsletter, you owe it to yourself to watch this!

An advantage this video has is that there isn't really a discernible narrative which it's worrying about telling other than showing off some amazing images from Turkey, and syncing it to the music. This is a great example of how matching edits on motion can create seamless transitions, and be hypnotic in its own way. I touched on this a little bit in a previous post about match cuts, but this video takes it to a whole other level through use of changing the footage's speed at transition points, camera moves, zooms, tracking movement, and I think there's some light masking in a handful of the shots. 

The risk of getting TOO stylish in a game trailer is you might convince the audience part of the editing style is reflective of the actual gameplay rather than the editor having some fun. I think this is one reason I tend to try not to dress up the editing of my game trailers very much. But AAA games are a very known quantity which like movie trailers, get to flex some more creative editing muscles. 

The other thing I would caution is adding too much style for the sake of it. If it doesn't somehow fit into the feel of what you're making a trailer for, the editing style can take away. For example, hard cuts feel more appropriate to a trailer about a serious subject matter than long dissolves and fades, because there's an immediacy and matter of fact feel to hard cuts, whereas fades feel more dreamlike. I think style should never be used at the expense of clarity, because then it becomes noise. 

For example, if you search YouTube for something like "Call of Duty edit" you'll find a community of people who capture footage from games like Call of Duty or Battlefield, then use After Effects to cut together montages with fancy transitions. They seem like exercises of pure style, but they go so far that I find them headache inducing to watch for more than a few seconds. 

As far as I know, none of these have a goal of telling a story; they exist as pure exhibitions of style, so none of the transitions feel motivated by anything. I can conceive of the possibility there is some sort of trailer or video which would benefit from this style of editing, but I haven't encountered a project yet which I think this would match up to. 

Again, clarity is of utmost importance for a good trailer, but watch lots of different videos with different editing styles for inspiration. Just like how movie trailer editors collect music in the hopes of eventually finding a project which will match, it's not a bad idea to collect editing inspiration for when you encounter a project for which that style will fit perfectly!