How to Make Effective B-Roll
B-Roll is footage used to support the main story of a video. It's easiest to think of it in terms of a news program or documentary where the people speaking are the main story, and shots of what they're talking about are the B-Roll. For example, in this trailer for The 13th directed by Ava Duvernay, any footage other than the interviewees speaking is B-Roll, whether it's news footage or establishing shots of places being talked about.
If you're a game developer, B-Roll is a few minutes of footage from your game which is needed for:
News outlets & content creators making videos about that game
Classic B-Roll for 60 Minutes is the interviewer walking with the interviewee
Knowing how to make good B-Roll is more important than ever, because digital events like the Wholesome Direct are becoming more and more prevelant. For the purposes of the receiver, this footage is something they otherwise have no access to, or it saves them valuable time they'd have to spend capturing the footage on their own.
For game developers, it's their opportunity to ensure the public footage of their game looks as good as possible (until the game is available for direct capture at a private or public event, or the game is released). This is no small task, so here are some things to think about while making B-Roll so you can do to make sure you get it right!
PRO TIP: Put a 1-2 seconds of black in between clips. This helps the editor using your b-roll divide the clips; it makes it very easy to know when a clip begins and ends. You can see this in behind the scenes B-Roll for Hollywood films like in this clip for Thor Ragnarok. This also helps prevent accidental flash frames, which are single frames of footage attached to the main clip. Yes, there's still the possibility of a black flash frame, but that's better than a random frame of real footage.
To HUD or not to HUD?
If the footage is going to be used in a hype montage, turn the HUD off to maximize clarity. You have no idea how long each clip is going to appear in the montage, so HUD and UI elements will only add visual noise, and distract the eye from the focus of the shot.
If the footage is going to be used in a slower paced news story or preview, it might be better to leave all the HUD and UI elements on, because the audience for that sort of video is looking for those details before they decide to purchase.
In a fast montage this HUD adds visual noise, but for a news story audience, it provides essential details.
On-screen text
Similar but different to HUD, you have to decide whether or not to include footage which has on-screen text like word bubbles when characters speak. My general advice is to avoid putting text in your B-Roll as much as possible, because it's very likely the people watching won't have time to read the text; it's very frustrating to see text on screen and not have time to read it.
But even if there is enough time to read the text, if there's a narrator for the video, you don't know what they're going to be talking about. It's very likely they'll be talking about something which will fight for the audience's attention if there's a word bubble on screen at the same time. Or the video might have its own text graphics on top of the footage, which means if there are word bubbles underneath it, there could be TWO blocks of text competing for attention, and maybe a narrator talking over that too!
If it's essential to show word bubbles or characters speaking, it's best to have very quick and easy to read text which requires little to no context to be understood. For some examples of text like this, read my review of the game Coffee Talk, my review of the Gwen trailer for Spiritfarer, and my article about the Star Trek: Discovery Season 2 trailer.
Now imagine this cut into a montage which is mostly action shots with no text or HUD
What an editor needs
Again, this varies based on whether or not the footage is being used in a fast cut exciting montage or an informational story detailing features, and gameplay mechanics. If you want to go deep into this, check out my post about how to break down visuals which describes the categories I separate my footage into before making a trailer. I also go into what editors love cutting with in this post about match cuts.
For games, B-Roll work best if it shows:
How pretty the game is
Something in motion
How the game works
The main characters
The game's narrative
If B-Roll from your game features some sort of lead-in and/or explosion footage, I can almost guarantee a cut like this will occur in some capacity.
A hype montage is one place where beautiful, sweeping establishing shots of a debug camera flying through the game can be good, because they're a means to show the art direction and environment. A character simply walking through the environment can also be good for B-Roll. Just think of how you'd show off the beauty of your game if you could only use ONE shot, because it might be what ends up happening!
This would be a great establishing shot for a montage (if the HUD was turned off)
Clips with unique animations and some motion within the frame make great B-Roll; that gives the editor something to make their cut more exciting. It could be a camera movement, character animation, switch being thrown, lighting change, object moving, item being placed, person turning their head, or anything with a steady or sudden movement. For more about clips with movement, read my article about the opening montages of the show Terrace House.
From the trailer for No Country For Old Men is this three shot (yes three!) cut of a coin being flipped, a magazine being slammed into a gun, and a car crash.
Showing how the game works in a clip means showing the moments where the player performs an action. It could be when they throw a lever, slow down time, jump around platforms, defeat an enemy, place a block, turn their steering wheel, selecting a dialogue option etc. The key is to show the player's agency. What is the clip you'd show to a person to tell them: "This is what you do in the game."
Not all game mechanics are this GIF-able, but this is a good example of a number of game mechanics from Katana Zero in one clip.
Faces read quicker than anything because that's how our brains are programmed, so they make really good B-Roll for montages. If your game is very character focused, it's inevitable a video news story will want to talk about specific characters, and show them on screen as they're talking; putting the main characters in B-Roll will be super useful for them.
Imagine trying to make a video about Aliya from Heaven's Vault without B-Roll!
Lastly, narratively dense shots are great for B-Roll because if taken out of context, they'll still stand on their own. For example: a couple holding hands tenderly, a cat being freed from a cage, or a castle gate being broken down. A classic example is the opening montage for the movie Up which tells so much without a single line of dialogue. For more great examples of these shots, take a look at the game Virginia; the entire game has no dialogue, which means nearly every single shot tells a self contained story moment.
If this were in a hype montage, you could at least understand there are two characters talking about this photo.
B-Roll sounds simple in theory, but to make really effective B-Roll takes a lot of careful thought and consideration. Hopefully with these tips under your belt, you can see that your game looks as good as possible before its release where it's completely out of your control.
For the ultimate B-Roll cheat sheet, watch my anime music video supercut of anime opening visual tropes from 2010 :P For bonus points watch the classic anime version and the one for unique anime openings.
