How to Start an Indie Game Trailer Editor Career
If you want to start making trailers for indie games, this post is for you. What motivated me to write this post is there simply aren't enough people making game trailers! To put things in perspective, according to Statista.com there were about
532 original scripted shows on TV
On the Golden Trailer Awards directory page there are over a hundred trailer houses making trailers for theatrical and broadcast releases.
In 2020 over 10,000 games released on Steam
In total I'm aware of roughly ~40 trailer houses or individuals making game trailers. Even if the numbers matched the number of movie trailer houses, it would still be a MASSIVE discrepancy between the number of game developers and trailer makers.
Of those 10,000+ games on Steam, I'm guessing a large percentage of them are so small and low budget there's no way they would hire even an individual freelancer to make a trailer, but there are still a LOT of people who need a trailer for their game and they've budgeted for it.
Even between my circle of game trailer maker friends we inevitably end up getting overflow work which we try to hand off to each other. But especially during busy seasons there's too much to take. So if you want to get into this industry, here's my untested advice!
Start making trailers
If you want to get started making indie game trailers professionally (first of all, don't quit your day job) I'd recommend you start making fan trailers or trailers for very small games. Starting small is good because it means smaller projects which you'll be more likely to finish. If your first fan trailer is for an epic like The Witcher 3, you'll drive yourself mad.
The other reason to work on small games is because I think it will get you more attention from the right people. The right people in this scenario being indie game developers and their community. If you make a fan trailer for a small indie game with only a few developers (or even just one) it's more likely you will get their attention if you tag them on Twitter with your trailer than if you make one for say, God of War.
You might be thinking: "But Derek, isn't working for free a terrible thing to do which undervalues my skills!?" If you're doing it for yourself and your own purposes I think it's fine. If someone says "Hey, can you make a trailer for me? I'll give you lots of exposure!" then I'd say do NOT do that, because if they have enough of a following that their exposure is worth anything, they should be able to pay you.
Where to get started
So how do you find small games to make trailers for? A lot of indie devs share their games on Twitter hashtags like #screenshotsaturdays and occasionally, people in the indie game industry tweet out a call for indies to share what they're working on. A recent example is this thread by Callum Underwood of Robot Teddy. There are TONS of amazing looking games in this one Twitter thread, and I bet a large percentage of them have little to no plan about making a trailer. If they have a bunch of public footage of their game or better yet a demo on Steam, you have enough to make a fan trailer.
Looking up games which have demos on Steam is another good place to start because even if it's a bigger game, the demo will be a smaller and more manageable chunk to work on.
Go where the developers are
Here is where I begrudgingly suggest you get on Twitter if you aren't already. The reason is simply because it's THE social network where indie game developers congregate. But I fully understand anyone who might be hesitant to get on there because it is not the safest place especially for people of color, women and LGBTQ+ people. But if you're just starting out with little to no following, it's far less likely you'll have to worry about being mobbed by unsavory people just because you expressed an opinion.
If you make a fan trailer for a small indie game and tag them (put their @username in the body of your tweet) with a link I think it's very very likely they will not only see it, but be extremely appreciative! Will this lead to work right away? Most likely it will not, but the important thing when you're getting started is to help people know you exist. The more work you do, the more people will know who you are and share your name around if they like the work you do.
Another good place to look are game jams! These are events where people gather together to make a prototype for a game in a very short period of time. This is a great opportunity to meet people to collaborate with, and I guarantee that the number of video editors looking to join in is LOW.
Show your work
Don't just have a portfolio (though you should have that too), document your process and write about it! Your portfolio shows what you can do; writing about your process says what it's like to work with you and shows how you think. Anyone hiring a trailer editor wants the portfolio page they're looking at to be the last one; they want to find someone who they're confident can make a trailer for them (by the way, I think it's totally fine to put fan trailers in your portfolio, just label them as such so people know they were unpaid work.)
Anything and everything you can do to help them make an informed decision is what will help you get the job. They want to see work which is similar to what they're going to ask you to make, and they want to know your level of experience. Don't stress too much about the last one, because if you're inexperienced, but the person looking at your portfolio is similarly inexperienced then it could be a perfect match!
The reason is, someone who is relatively new to game development might love the idea of hiring the most experienced trailer maker, but they know it would be unfeasible and/or overkill. I mean, I'd love to hire the highest level brand strategy and graphic design team to give my website a makeover, but I know that would cost way too much, and it just wouldn't make sense for either of us to work together.
Whatever you do though, keep your portfolio and profiles SIMPLE! Show your finished works, have some articles with your process and put a short and to the point biography which says what you do, and adds a bit of personal flavor so you don't sound generic. Here's my about page bio which admittedly isn't the best, but is probably about as long you want yours to be:
I have over 10 years of experience making trailers for big AAA games and small indie games being made by only two people.
I love trailers' unique ability to help people find games they love. I take great pride in making trailers which players enjoy watching and make developers proud of their work.
In addition to editing, I'm a dedicated martial artist, and enjoy video games, movies, cooking, and cats.
I live with my two cats Uni & Ebi :3
These same rules apply for a Twitter profile or other social media profile, put the important information up front (Game trailer editor). And if you can make most of your posts about trailers, that gives people a reason to follow you. People already have plenty of accounts they follow of friends who they're happy to hear about the minutiae of their day and life, but for someone to follow a stranger, their feed needs to offer something unique. This is why I mostly tweet about trailer related things, so people can scroll through my tweets to know exactly what it will add to their feed.
A privileged job to pursue
Though the tools needed to make game trailers are more accessible than ever, for myriad reasons this is not a job just anyone can just start. Due to low budgets, making indie game trailers basically requires you to freelance, that means starting it up during spare time while working a job that pays the bills or being in a living situation where you don't have to worry about your housing and food situation. That alone eliminates this job possibility for a LOT of people. Also, the freelance or small business life just isn't for everyone. Add on top of that the money needed for a computer with a lot of storage which can be used for video editing and game capture.
The good news is that most indie games do not require a super powerful PC to run, and using capture software like Nvidia Shadowplay which captures to h.264 means you don't need an ungodly amount of storage space to get started. I just wanted to acknowledge all of this because I know for a lot of people it's not simply a matter of just making fan trailers and getting your name out there when you don't have the time or resources to even do that.
But I hope if you're interested in pursuing this job or just helping someone make a game trailer as a side project that this gives you some places to start! To sum things up, the things you need to do are:
Make a fan trailer for a small game
Document your process
Tag the game devs on twitter with a nice shout out
Add it to a portfolio (labeled as fan work)
Find people you can help
Repeat
If you're lucky you might get noticed and get some work very quickly, but consider this a very long term plan. By the time I started making indie game trailers I'd already been an editor for 10 years, and I remember my first jobs which I got completely independently I charged around $300-500 each. It took me 3-4 years of doing a mix of working at game trailer houses and doing indie work on the side before indie work became my full time job.
There are also SO many factors and people who helped me get started. When I was laid off from my editor job in Los Angeles, OG indie game trailer maker master Kert Gartner sent me a bunch of his overflow work (here's the reply he sent to my tweet nearly 6 years ago!) And even then I already had some connections within the industry with friends at The Behemoth, and at that point I'd made the E3 trailer for Firewatch.
So I guess my last tip is to make friends with other trailer editors as well as game developers. The relationships you start now can last a very long time and you never know when they might lead to some amazing work in the future!