Garbage Cut: How to Start a New Trailer Timeline
It's easier to fix up a terrible looking game trailer timeline than it is to fill one out. If the first step in creating the timeline is a video outline consisting of a bunch of title cards, the second step is to replace the title cards with clips captured from the game.
I'd like to think putting text on the timeline is an easy hack to get past the dreaded blank timeline, but in truth, the step where I put in captured clips is the REALLY difficult hump for me to get over. I try to refer to this step as "The Garbage Cut" so my expectations are super duper low, but it's still really hard for me to get past this step.
This step is so difficult for me because once the trailer has real game clips in it, this is the first stage it could look at somewhat like a real game trailer, but there's almost no way it will look at all good at this early stage. This is the step in which it goes from a concept in my head full of possibilities, to a bad and unpolished rough cut. I'll sometimes spend hours or days agonizing over what clips to put in when in actuality I just need to put in ANY clips at all to fill the space.
A good trick I sometimes use is to use footage released by the developers whether they're old trailers, devlog footage, or anything else which has been made public. Of course, this is only something I can do if the game is already announced. This trick can work on me because if the footage isn't something I captured, I'll be less precious about it, and feel less like a personal failure if the cut doesn't look good.
Another helpful way to make it feel "okay" for this cut to look bad is to leave subtitles turned on so it's very clear that it's not meant to look at all final.
Here are the important things to focus on when making the garbage cut:
Get a sense of the game components' timing
Find out what's missing or redundant
See if the instructions work
Find weak or flat spots
The Timing
When the timeline is nothing but text descriptors cut to music I can only ever have a general sense for how much time a shot or series of shots will need to take up in the timeline. For example, the shot idea might be something like the character jumping from one platform to another, shooting an enemy, collecting a power up, and then using the new ability to defeat another enemy. After capturing the shot I usually find out that performing this series of actions in the game requires much more time.
At this stage I often have to recut each section to the music, shorten things where they're feeling long, and occasionally give shots MORE breathing room so the audience has enough time to process what they're seeing. In addition to getting closer to the final timing, this stage is also about figuring out what "reads" well and what doesn't. Lack of clarity could be either due to the gameplay itself looking confusing, or an idea not being seen enough times to properly educate the eyes of the audience.
This is also the stage when you realize in-game text might be too small to read quickly in the trailer.
What is Missing or Redundant?
The other important part of this process is it reveals stuff you forgot to include and stuff that feels redundant and could be replaced with something else. For example, I might realize there are a number of biomes from the game which aren't represented in the cut and could be included in some shots where the biome or level location doesn't have to be super specific. Or I might realize an idea is repeated too many times, like maybe a type of lever in the game is seen four times in the trailer.
Do the Instructions Work?
The most important part to figure out at this stage is whether or not the trailer is providing enough of a visual tutorial for how the game works or what the story premise is. This is most important in games with novel mechanics or combinations of mechanics. Not quite as essential in games where the mechanic is something like shooting enemy soldiers.
This could of course be a matter of the capture still being rough, but sometimes it becomes clear that additional or different shots are necessary for the trailer to be clear.
Figuring out the readability of the proposed ideas is really key at this stage.
Find Weak or Flat Spots
This part might be more difficult to assess for less experienced editors, but oftentimes I'll realize at this stage that the string of ideas I put in sequence feel kind of boring when watched one after another. Maybe it's because the sound effects for each section aren't very interesting, the visuals accompanying the voiceover are all pretty much the same, or something else.
Usually a trailer feels "flat" to me when it looks or feels like a run on sentence. The recent trailer for Hollow Knight: Silk Song is actually a pretty good example of a trailer which can feel kind of flat. In this case it's because the music is relegated to the background and the pacing of the shots doesn't have any large peaks or valleys. Its shot types feel like an even mix of epic moments and slower ones.
To be clear, because it's Hollow Knight, I'm still hyped as all heck and the editing of this trailer really doesn't matter. Kind of like how it barely mattered how good the editing was for the Star Wars prequels because the audience was so ready to see ANYTHING from the films.
If the trailer is ever feeling flat at this stage, I'll try to put accents and punctuationwhenever the trailer feels like it's hitting a lull in momentum, pacing, or audio/visual interest and appeal.
This is also when you might realize jokes don't land for one reason or another. This gag was removed from the trailer I made for Psychonauts 2 because while funny, the static shot of the character turned into a playing card didn't have much visual interest.
When the garbage cut is finished and every section of the trailer is essentially showing what it should be showing, this is also a good time to create the outline for the composer (if you're working with one) For more about creating an outline for a composer, you can read this old post. Timing will still likely change, but usually not so terribly much that it will require significant retooling on the video or music side.
Like I said at the beginning, fixing up a bad timeline is easier than filling out a blank one. So the faster you make it past this stage, the easier it will be to critique, review, and fix up the trailer. It can be super painful, but you learn a LOT about what you need to do next during this process.
