Making Mockup Game Trailers With No Footage
The Cosmicubes & Roles update to Among Us just released this past week via a 5 minute "live" keynote which I helped make! It was originally just going to be a trailer about Cosmicubes, but morphed into something much larger once the Roles were added to the update. Take a look!
The project was overseen by Innersloth Community Director Victoria Tran, with production help from Melissa Chaplin and the Robot Teddy crew, animation by Jake Clark, music for the Cosmicubes segment by Audiomachine and a custom music cue for the Roles section by Brash Tracks!
I'm not just talking about this to tout my latest work. I wanted to pull back the curtain on this project a bit to talk about making video mockups for trailers!
Originally, the keynote format was going to have the Among Us crewmate talking on stage and describing the different parts of the various features of this large update, because it seemed like that would be the easiest way to get it done with a very limited amount of animation.
I thought it would feel sort of weird to hear the Among Us crewmates talk, since they don't talk in the game or any of the official cutscenes. Since there was no plan B, I knew I had to put something together as a proof of concept for how it could be done in a silent film pantomime style. It was a Friday when I proposed the idea; I told them I would have a mockup done by Monday.
I finished it by that afternoon :P
Here you can see the original mockup I sent to Innersloth with the finished version superimposed. You can see all the ways it was shortened, modified and scoped down in order to get all the animation done in time. Jake worked on it until the very last day before the premiere!
I shot this on my iPhone with a mount attached to my tripod and I was pretty lazy about properly framing myself for spatial continuity, but I figured it would still get the basic idea across. I had a LOT of fun (if you couldn't tell) channeling everything I absorbed over the years watching Apple keynote speeches by Steve Jobs. I even used the audio from the original iPhone keynote for the temp track.
I sent it out to Innersloth and they LOVED IT! I felt a bit bad that I was probably adding a TON of extra work, but they said they could do it in time. The roles animated segment was even more ambitious than I thought it was going to be. After the initial mockup my responsibilities were just sound designing the animated segments and getting music made for the Roles trailer.
I haven't really done many mockups like this before, but it's an incredibly valuable, fast and pretty darn easy thing to do! It might look silly (okay, VERY SILLY) but there are a lot of things you can achieve with something like this:
Direction
Camera angles
Timing
Blocking
Story
(and likely lots more)
In the original version I had too many moments when I mimed "one" which we removed so by the time the crewmate is really saying "there is one more thing..." it would stand out.
I didn't even expect them to reproduce many of the camera angles from my mockup but it turned out that way, and I couldn't be more pleased. In this particular case the mockup was more like a short film, so you might think this approach has limited use in a trailer which is more montage-like. To that I rebut with this mockup by Kaci Aitchison of Valve Software.
This is actually the video that originally got me thinking about this topic not only because it's hilarious, but because it still does a lot of what is needed to rough out or outline a trailer.
What I really like about this way of creating a rough draft is that virtually anyone can do it, and by turning it into a performance you can really get a feel for the pacing. Of course, you can later modify it, but I think if more people just talked through the sections of their trailer, they'd be less prone to make it too long or too short.
I didn't expect this one to turn out so close to the mockup XD
We've all likely seen a LOT of trailers whether we're fans or not, and some of that internalized pacing is bound to come out when trying to act out a trailer. Editing can be a very physical activity, which is why a lot of great film editors traditionally worked standing up. There are times when I'm trying to find the right spot for a cut where I feel like I'm a conductor signaling a downbeat when it feels right.
When making a mockup trailer don’t worry about length, redundancy or pretty much anything that prevents you from creating footage. You can always edit it down and add in text title cards to fill in any gaps. What you’re looking for is:
Does this sequence of events make sense?
Does this fulfill the goals set out for this trailer?
Does the pacing feel good? Too fast? Too slow?
Do we need more shots to get the point across? Fewer?
Another thing that inspired this were all the crudely made TikTok videos people have been making where they play multiple roles, use text to indicate details like who someone is (or what they’re saying). Most of them don’t follow lots of filmmaking rules and techniques like the 180° rule, and yet they still manage to tell an entertaining story. So it’s both effective, low risk and more importantly it’s FAST!
So if you have a basic outline for your trailer, why not try acting it out in video and then cutting that down? It'll get you past the dreaded empty timeline phase and into the fun part of fixing things up and/or replacing the placeholder moments with game footage. There is no wrong way to start a trailer, so if this sounds good to you, then do it! (and tag me on Twitter @Derek_Lieu with your drafts when you're free to do so :P)
