Why Trailers Should Convey Feelings Before Information

I once ate a turkey burger at a restaurant in Park Slope in Brooklyn which I hated. I don't remember exactly what I disliked so much, whether it was: the consistency, the flavor, the seasoning or how it was cooked. What I do know I'm never going back there again. 

There's a place in NYC called Hummus Kitchen which has the best hummus I've ever had in my entire life, but what I remember most from my first visit was how the waiter reacted to my choice of pita. He asked me if I wanted whole wheat or plain; I asked for plain. He smiled approvingly as he wrote down my choice and said something like "Yeeeesssssss...!" I laughed at how completely transparent his preference was (the pita was also delicious) and I felt good I'd made the "right" decision. I also felt good when there wasn't a single spot of food left on my plate, which pleased him greatly.

There's a person online who shares business and entrepreneur tips I used to binge watch. But I completely stopped following after getting on a sales call with him for one of his higher priced products. The call made me SO uncomfortable. I felt pressured in a way where he wasn't explicitly pressuring me to buy, and even though he spoke pleasantly, I FELT like I was being manipulated. He said he'd follow up with me later, but I felt so uncomfortable I blocked his email and never watched or read any of his content ever again.

This is all a long way to say, people remember feelings, not details. There's the saying (which has been attributed to many people, but mostly to Maya Angelou):

"People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did,
but people will never forget how you made them feel."

Maybe it's part of our evolutionary makeup that we remember feelings in this way. We remember feeling uncomfortable when we walk down a certain street, or warm and cozy upon smelling certain aromas. This is a huge reason why I always push for trailers to evoke feelings rather than just deliver raw information.

On one end of the spectrum, there are game trailers which cite bullet points like the number of modes, game mechanics, and amount of content which is intercut with corresponding game footage. On the other are the trailers which tell a story and evoke: laughter, excitement, tension, curiosity, awe, fear, and more. 

How can game trailers elicit these feelings? 

• Music

• Show, Don't Tell

• Sound Design

• Voiceover

• Editing

Music

This is probably THE reason editors will forever cite music as the most important part of a trailer. Really good music can create a very particular tone, emotion, setting, pace, energy and so so much more. This is why you have to be incredibly careful when picking or composing music for a trailer. Some music tracks might work great when heard in-game because it's meant to be more of a background element. 

But in a trailer, music is frequently the hero of the story. Think of the Inceptiontrailer BRAAAAAAAMs, the children's choir version of "Creep" by Radiohead in the trailer for The Social Network, the music in the "Madworld" trailer for Gears of War, or the soft piano music for the Dead Island trailer.

What is the mood and tone that befits your game? Find a way to encompass that in a music track that has a dramatic beginning, middle, and end, and you'll have a better chance of making the audience feel something as they watch.

The music custom composed for this trailer by Chris Remo has a great building tension

Show, Don't Tell

I've written about this before, but it always bears repeating. The more the trailer explains, the less room you give the audience to draw their own conclusions. We cannot process what we've heard if we have to constantly pay attention to what is being said. 

The audience wants to engage with the trailer by watching footage, and drawing conclusions. If your narrator is constantly saying: "In this game you do this, then this, then you'll want to do this, which means you can then do this...!" there's no breathing room to watch the footage, extrapolate or speculate. This is a huge reason why I try to let a lot of games speak for themselves via their game footage rather than through voiceover (unless it's a very cinematic game where dialogue is a key pillar of how the story is told).

I'm not saying don't use narration or have characters talk about themselves, just make sure there's space in the trailer for people to take a breath and think before you give them new information. Or cut down the number of ideas in a trailer and use the time to explore just a few.

"Show, don't tell" is the ethos of the game Tunic, so it made sense to use the same philosophy for the trailer.

Sound Design

I'm often surprised how little consideration is given to sound design in game trailers, especially in light of the amazing work constantly being made in game sound design. The style of sound can immediately establish a genre, tell a story, flesh out a game's feel, and highlight visuals. A good sound effect can make you amused, tense, exhilarated, nostalgic, cringey, expectant, and awestruck. 

When I made the 1.0 launch trailer for Noita I knew I wanted the "Oh shoot" moment to be the sound of a glass lantern breaking, firstly because the sound of glass breaking pretty much universally elicits an "oh no" reaction, but in Noita, a lantern breaking can mean a chain reaction of fire which turns into a raging blaze.

This trailer for *Inside* by Playhead uses ominous marching sounds to create suspense.

Voiceover

There's nothing quite like just the right voice either for a trailer narrator or character. The accent can set you in a particular region of the world. A voice can be: calming, sensual, friendly, jokey, corporate, cute, authoritative, annoying, antagonistic, condescending, mysterious, elusive, unsettling, and so many more things! 

Similar to music, a well done voiceover can give your trailer an incredibly amount of specificity. There are a lot of game trailers which just feel like "Guy announcing game features" when they could be so specific they become a hook of the trailer or simply add detail and nuance to the game world.

For example, the "Feelgrid trailer" I made for Neo Cab was intended to look like a modern product explainer infomercial. The voiceover was performed by Erin Yvette who described the direction she chose as: "... a mix of “yoga coach” and “tech industrial ad.” This was not a one-size-fits-all voice for a game trailer, which is what I think made it so good.

Choose and direct very carefully if using voiceover in your game trailer, especially if the content is going to be rather straight forward and bullet point-y rather than telling a story. I wrote a post about directing voiceover which may help!

This voiceover also helped flesh out the world, and show how it fit into "real life" situations.

Editing

Of course editing is a huge part of creating a particular feeling in a trailer. Editing is all about pace, rhythm, timing, juxtaposition, directing, holding attention, releasing energy, and lots more. Do you want to create a sense of frenetic urgency? Maybe your game is more about being a chill slice-of-life story. It might be aggressive, and hard-hitting. Or it could be so thick with tension you could cut it with a knife. 

A lot of game trailers just cut shots together with little to no consideration for pacing, rhythm or timing (this is another reason to work with good music which sets the mood and pace; it's like a cheat sheet for how to pace the editing). It can feel as if a new shot appeared just out of necessity rather than editorial intention.

This fan trailer I cut for the point and click adventure game The Dream Machine I cut to be as slow paced as I could to not only match the music, but to match the tone and pace of the game. This represents my experience of playing the game, which I wanted to accurately portray in the trailer. 

Music music music music!

Without this music I probably wouldn't have been able to edit with this pacing.

As you can see, there are SO many tools at your disposal which don't even touch on what footage from the game to capture and show in the trailer. These things are like the connective glue, the secret sauce, the small details that add up to a lot. It's the difference between an engaging storyteller and one who just tells you what happened. This is probably an overwhelming amount of stuff to consider when you're new to video editing and struggling just to get clips on a timeline (it can be for me too!) But if you can make a trailer which really makes the audience feel something, that is what they'll remember.