Trailer Editing Tricks For Better and Worse
I have a complicated relationship with fast and flashy trailer editing. On one hand I marvel at the ability of some editors to cut in an attention grabbing way which I have trouble wrapping my head around, but on the other I can't help but feel like fast cut trailers frequently feel like they're overcompensating, obfuscating or even undermining the source material. When some people say: "Garbage in, garbage out" and "You can't polish a turd" trailer editors will think: Challenge accepted.
This is because when you have hours upon hours of source material, there are so many ways to make the footage look more impressive using one or more of a number of tactics:
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Razzle Dazzle
Fabricate
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This is the easiest one to do. If there is anything in the source material which does not look good, show it as little as possible. It could mean making a shorter trailer, it could mean making all the shots as short as possible, and cutting very quickly between them.
Maybe there's a line of dialogue with an awful read, simply cut it out or use as little of it as possible. Is the game buggy? Then of course you're going to want to cut around the parts where that's readily apparent. If lingering on a shot or gameplay capture isn't going to impress anyone, then license some exciting or engaging trailer music, and cut in only as much as looks good.
Take a look at this trailer for the game Terminator: Resistance
This game appears to be a first-person shooter, and yet the trailer is chock full of alternate camera angles, fast cutting and very little of the first-person gameplay camera. Whenever there is an in-game camera angle it's so fast the only thing you can really see is that it's someone shooting a gun; I barely have time to see if they're even shooting at something. There could be any number of reasons the gameplay shots are so short. Maybe the explosions look great, but the terminator dying animations look terrible. Or maybe the game looks fine, but the person cutting it didn't feel confident enough in it to show more.
Cutting fast can work to jazz things up because a montage of reasonably high quality moments is just that. Not everyone is going to assume it's cut fast because showing a few frames longer would've revealed the ugly seams.
Razzle Dazzle
There are so many ways to make footage more exciting, especially when you have good music. There are some editing techniques which go hand in hand with showing less, like flutter cuts where the image quickly stutters black frames in between the footage. Or maybe some stylistic flash frames, very fast cutting, jump cuts and aggressive sound design.
In the game trailer space, maybe they'll show gameplay from cinematic angles rather than the in-game cameras in order to make everything look more exciting. Camera moves can make a huge difference, especially if the in-game footage is very static. Maybe the camera will rotate around a character moving in slow motion or any other thing which wouldn't look out of place in a Matrix film.
Or maybe there will be motion graphics enhancing the image to provide some sort of framing to the footage which doesn't exist in the actual game. Either just to add some visual effects flourish or cool eye candy transitions. Whenever I see a lot of flair in movie or game trailers, I start to get very suspicious.
Take a look at the trailer for this Rambo game from 2013 (which I didn't realize is by the same developers of Terminator: Resistance until I wrote this)
Most of these shots are "cinematic" which means either they're taken from cutscenes or they're captured using a special debug camera which let them get alternate angles players of the game will never see. But the shots which DO appear to show the in-game camera angle only show a very very short bit of gameplay. For example, this montage of Rambo firing his bow features two cinematic shots and a very underwhelming in-game camera shot.
Mislead
This is when a trailer makes the source material look like something it's not. Thankfully I can't think of any game trailer examples for this, but one of the most famous movie trailer examples is for the Robin Williams comedy World's Greatest Dad.
The film is a black comedy in which halfway through the movie the son accidentally dies in a very embarrassing way which Robin Williams disguises as a suicide, and ends up exploiting to his advantage.
The trailer makers omitted the son's death, picked some quirky Hollywood comedy music, and used the typical red-on-white typography used for so many comedy movie posters. The result is a quirky looking Robin Williams comedy about the relationship between a father and his disaffected son. The only nod they make to the movie's true tone are some critic reviews indicating it's a black comedy, but people are influenced far more by what they feel than what they're told, so I'm sure a lot of people who saw the movie weren't ready for what they got.
I don't like this tactic of misleading audiences, but I also respect the craft of editors who make trailers like these. Especially those famous fan trailers which do things like make The Shining look like a romantic comedy.
Knowing these trailer editor tactics is why my alarm bells go off when I see fast or flashy cutting in game trailers. The reason is that unlike movie trailers, game trailers typically need to show the audience how to play the game, and/or how it FEELS to play the game. This is much harder to do when every single shot is less than a second long. So when I see a fast cut game trailer I can't help but wonder if it's the editor just having some fun, or trying to compensate for the game's weaknesses. Take a look at this trailer for Nioh 2.
I have no reason to believe this trailer is cut fast because the game is not good. The first game performed well enough to green light a sequel, Team Ninja has an overall excellent track record, and the production quality of the art and animation look top notch. And yet, my editor instincts can't help but get suspicious because this trailer is cut SO fast I don't get to see much more than the player hitting an enemy once per shot.
From the game camera perspective and prior knowledge I know this is a 3rd person game with a style of deliberate combat similar to Dark Souls, but it could also be a 3rd person game in the style of Devil May Cry which relies on the player improvising elaborate and flashy combinations of fighting moves.
Even if non-trailer editors don't analyze trailers in this way, I think they'll feel like something is being hidden when they're not allowed to take a good look at it. This is why I generally think fast cut game trailers are not a good tactic, especially for lower budget indie game trailers. A fast cut trailer trying to obfuscate looks aesthetically the same as a fast cut trailer for the sake of style.
A game trailer I watched recently which really got me thinking about this is the PS4 trailer for the puzzle game Mekorama.
There is SO much going on in this trailer from split screens to motion graphics, close ups, and fast cutting. All my alarm bells went off watching this because it makes it so difficult to see an unbroken stretch of gameplay. It's entertaining to watch, but also frustrating since I'm desperately trying to understand the game. At the same time, I can't fully say I think it's a bad trailer, because I still managed to understand enough about the game that I might look it up to find out more, so shouldn't that mean it's a totally successful trailer? It's a tough call to make, because a big part of what enabled me to understand this game is my prior knowledge of similar games; I'm not sure what percentage of the audience would be able to do the same.
All this to say that stylish editing in game trailers is a difficult tool to wield. At best it makes the trailer more fun to watch, excites the audience, and makes the game more appealing. At worst, it creates suspicion and looks like an inexperienced college graduate trying to fluff up their resume with flowery language.
How do you react when you see game trailers with "a lot" of editing and fancy effects? If you have strong feelings to these sorts of trailers I'd love to know!