How to Think About Pacing in a Trailer
Pacing is a very squishy editing concept which is core to an engaging trailer. A long trailer with good pacing can feel short and snappy, and a short trailer with bad pacing can feel boring after only 15-20 seconds. A key to pacing is knowing how long to spend on a certain shot or idea before moving onto the next one.
For example, if one section of a trailer is dedicated to a game's boss battles, that will get boring once the audience starts thinking "I know the game has boss battles now, but what else does it have!?" I usually think of my trailers as being comprised of story chunks which combine to form the whole. It's like how a feature film has story acts, and each of those story acts is comprised of scenes.
The launch trailer for Spiritfarer (which I think was made internally at Thunderlotus) is a great example of a trailer with good pacing.
Here is how I'd describe the sections of this trailer:
Characters sleeping
Waking up to start the day
Building the boat by gathering materials etc.
Caring for friends, and doing things with them
Exploring the world
Exciting montage of abilities and activities
A breath
Say goodbye to your friends
Ending
Here's how I see the sections of this trailer in terms of what they're communicating:
This is a serene game
There's a morning routine
You build up your boat by doing a variety of minigames centered around building materials, farming, making food etc.
You play minigames with NPC friends to take care of them
There's a big world to explore
You have lots of ways to move, and there are other minigames which test those skills!
This is a chill game
This will make you feeeeeeeeeel emotions
This is a serene game
At over two and a half minutes this is a beefy trailer for an indie game, and yet it doesn't feel long to me; it feels like it takes me on an adventure. It also functions as a summation of the game loop, roughly meaning this shows the full extent of what you do in the game, which you then repeat until the game is over. The day starts, you check in with your friends, you play minigames to build up your ship, farm, make food, explore, meet people, and eventually say goodbye to one of your friends (though technically, you have several days with each friend before it's time to say goodbye.)
This trailer does a good job of using close ups to make things feel more cinematic.
A lot of this game is played in "wide shots"
Let's take a look at each section of this trailer:
The opening section is about 22 seconds long. It opens with an establishing shot of the boat, then punches in to closeups of two passengers sleeping, followed by the main character Stella with her cat Daffodil. This mini montage of characters does something I like to do which is to show similar things in threes, but to have the third image be either slightly different from the first two, or use it as a transition to the next section. People like things in threes, so as a general rule I find it best to not do montages of similar things in numbers bigger than three. In this case, rather than showing a third person sleeping, we see Stella waking up, which transitions to her doing some fishing as the sun rises followed by the first press quote which tells us the game is a soothing experience.
Stella hears something and jumps onto a slanted rooftop then spins through the air. By the way, because of a well done match cut, you probably didn't notice the lack of continuity; the roof in the closeup of Stella sliding is completely different from the one in the wide shot. Stella then runs across the boat; as she passes each door a passenger comes out to say hello. I'm guessing this shot was custom made to be perfectly in sync, because as far as I know this door opening sequence isn't something which can happen so perfectly in-game. This transition section is a quick 5 seconds before moving onto the section about building the boat.
This section is about 14 seconds long and features a time-lapse montage of the boat building up, a quick line of dialogue, three different minigames, an inventory screen and two shots of materials being harvested. It should be noted that Spiritfarer's art and animation are GORGEOUS. On top of the variety, everything reads very clearly and animates in a snappy and satisfying way. The punchy animations are the sorts of things trailer editors dream of because they add a lot of impact to each shot.
The dialogue text in this trailer is short and easy to read!
The next section about caring for friends is also about 15 seconds long and shows even more minigames along with a quote about the game being full of life and love. These two sections ostensibly show the same category of game content, but dividing them up with title cards make it feel like we're getting something entirely new. The audience is more likely to keep watching if they always feel like they're getting something new and interesting. The next section with a title card about exploring is a transition point which uses the zipline ability from the game to visually rise to the next section and aurally segue to an even more exciting and energetic music cue.
This next section is the first climax of the trailer with rousing music, a wide variety of shots with Stella spinning, running, jumping, and chasing creatures. It ends with comets flying into the boat and Stella collecting a bolt of lightning. After the lightning strike, the music slows down for 5 second transition of Stella floating through the air; this gives us a crucial moment to breathe after the climax.
Just when it seems like the trailer might be over, there's a final title card over black: "Learn to say goodbye." What follows is the longest section of the trailer at about a minute long which takes us through to the title of the game. There's a full 12 seconds of Stella talking to the characters during their journey to the Everdoor where they'll pass on. Then there's the 35 second sequence of a character passing through and turning into a constellation.
This section works for a number of reasons including the beautiful music, art and animation, but also it feels earned by the journey the trailer has taken us on so far. After all that activity it feels nice to savor the moment. Had the trailer not brought us to the giant peak of the lightning strike I think we'd be less ready to take this much time to calm down. Side note: I love how the constellation appears in sync to the music (as far as I remember, this does not happen in the game).
I love how this shot transitions to the climax visually, via sound effects and music!
The duration of each section of the trailer in seconds breaks down like this:
6 - 14 - 5 - 14 - 15 - 5 - 16 - 6 - 60
Not to say there is any one particular length every section of a trailer should be, but by not dwelling too long on any one particular idea, this trailer is always staying fresh from shot to shot and section to section. Again, the music, art and animation do a lot of heavy lifting, but the trailer's editing is what ties it together into a nice package a full minute longer than most game trailers. When people ask me how long a game trailer should be I usually tell them to make it less than 90 seconds unless you really know what you're doing and whomever made this trailer really knew what they were doing.
To be extremely reductive, good pacing in a game trailer is to have a variety of sections which aren't too long or short, and within those sections to have a variety of shots which also aren't too long or short. Put this over music which is also has a nice dramatic arc and a lot of variety and you'll be in pretty darn good shape.
