How Trailer Editors Edit Dialogue to Music
Let's talk about how to edit dialogue to music like a trailer editor! I was once asked if the pacing of dialogue in my trailers is determined by the music, to which I answered a resounding "YUP!" I typically start building a story trailer by editing dialogue without music, and once I have music I start integrating the two. When trailer editors say the music does all the work, this is a big example of what they mean.
There are a few ways to integrate dialogue and music in a trailer:
Edit dialogue to the music's pace
Edit music to the dialogue's pace
Custom compose music to the dialogue's pace
Though in practice, the first two tend to go hand in hand; parts of the trailer music go untouched, and other parts need to be edited to fit the pacing of the trailer. It's pretty rare for me to find a 90 second music cue that I just drop into a sequence and don't modify in any way.
The first thing I do is add markers to the music cues I think will be a good fit for the trailer. I go into more detail about this process in this video/post, but in a nutshell, I want to find all the parts of the music where there's a notable musical "hit." I don't know music terminology, but I'm simply referring to parts of a song where there's a big note or series of notes.
Think of Beethoven's 5th Symphony with its iconic four notes. I'd mark those notes as "peaks" which I want to make sure to use juxtaposed with a cool shot, a cut, synced to an action, or something else attention grabbing. What I DON'T want to do is to have someone talking when those beats happen. That would be a total waste of an opportunity to use the music to add impact.
After I've finished marking up a music cue, I end up with a series of markers which to varying degrees represent "peaks" or at least shifts in the music. Everything in between those peaks is a "trough" (borrowing a term from my podcast co-host Ric Thomas).
In any piece of music you will see some degree of "peaks" and "troughs."
Just slot the dialogue in between them.
The "troughs" are where I try to fit in the dialogue. How big the troughs are will often help me decide what line of dialogue I use! For example, if I have to choose between the two lines:
"I love my cat more than anything in the world!" and "I love my cat so much!"
If the trough is long, I'll use the former, if the trough is short, I'll use the latter. I want the dialogue to almost perfectly match the length of the trough. The reason is, the tighter the fit for the dialogue, the easier it is to move onto the next moment directly after, which will usually come in the format of a trailer accent.
For example: "I love my cat so much!" [CAT MEOWS CUTELY]
But if the trough was large, it would be like:
"I love my cat so much!............" [CAT MEOWS CUTELY]
The thing I was told early in my trailer editing career was that everything needs to butt up against each other, with no dead air (unless dead air is an editorial decision like in the case of a music stopdown accompanied by a cut to black)
The situations where I'd modify the music to fit the dialogue is when I have few to no options for my dialogue and music, and something absolutely has to fit between two "peaks." In those cases I'll try as best I can to loop the music or extend it to make a trough bigger, or cut out some notes to make it tighter. Ideally, it's edited in a way where pretty much no one notices, but it's not always easy to do.
Watch this fan trailer I made for Uncharted 3 starting at the intro, and you'll see how I fit the dialogue into the troughs between the peaks!
There is one section where I had to loop the music slightly to fit in a line. Can you find it? ;)
When editing a trailer which is going to get some custom composed music, that can be both easier and more difficult. It's easier in that you don't have to worry about editing music, but it's more difficult because you don't have anything to edit to when you're making a rough cut. This is when it's good to use temp tracks or even a click track.
Once I get a draft of the music I typically defer to the composer's sense of pacing because it's generally more difficult to take out a musical phrase than it is to add or extend an additional shot. This is a process I used when making the gameplay trailer for Empire of Sin which was composed by Tommy Buckley and recorded with a live band!
For this trailer I think I used some existing music, heavily modified it to fit the cadence of the dialogue, and then Tommy composed a new piece to match.
This is the main reason music searches can take so long when you have the possibility of using pretty much anything you can license from the hundreds of companies making trailer music. When you have all those options you always wonder: "Is there a music cue which has longer (or shorter) troughs that would better fit my dialogue selects?" Or maybe you need more or fewer peaks or troughs to create the intro or middle section of your trailer.
This generally isn't a problem for me since I mostly work with the game's existing music and/or the composer making something custom. When I'm forced to use something I'll figure out a way to make it work as best I can either through some modification, editing multiple cues together or asking the composer for help.
The key is to give every part of the soundtrack a chance to be the hero. Sometimes it's the dialogue, then for a moment the music will get shining moment, then the sound effects. It's a constant dance between the different elements which makes a trailer feel dynamic, fresh, and fun to watch. Not all music cues will have as distinct peaks as custom composed trailer music, but just about every piece of music has stand out moments you don't want to step on with dialogue. So make sure you give those moments the opportunity to shine!
