Game Trailer Editor

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2-Steps From Fan Trailer Editor to Professional

This post is for the video editors who make game trailers as a hobby but haven't yet done any paid work (and would like to!) If you've made fan trailers for games, you can get paid to make game trailers professionally. I'm here to tell you the door is WIDE open. You just have to know how to get those first jobs and you need the confidence to try.

In years long past, to be a trailer editor you had to work at a post-production house, trailer house, movie studio, or something similar. The barrier of entry was super high largely because the equipment required was monumentally expensive and inaccessible. In the 1990s, an Avid Media Composer video editing system cost TENS OF THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS. Nowadays you can get professional video editing software like DaVinci Resolve for FREE you just need the hardware to run it.

There are certainly still financial barriers to being a video editor, especially if you have to own the equipment. There's the computer, graphics card, hard drive space, capture equipment, gamepad, etc. But if you have the equipment and can make videos which you upload to the internet, then you can get paid to do it.

If you're a fan trailer maker thinking to yourself: "But I'm not good enough to get paid to make game trailers professionally!" let me stop you right there.

You are good enough.

Know why? Because there's a WIDE spectrum of experience amongst game developers just like there's a wide spectrum amongst trailer editors. On one end is someone who is editing fan videos for the first time ever. On the other is the grizzled trailer editor who started on film, transitioned through a half dozen video editing platforms and is now creative director on the latest Hollywood film.

If you've only made fan trailers, of course you can't expect to get hired by the game studio of your dreams (unless maybe you know someone there). Know who you CAN get hired by? Someone with about as much experience making games as you do making trailers. Actually, you could probably work with developers with more years of experience making games than you have years experience making trailers. This is simply because you have a particular set of skills so incredibly different than theirs.

I've been making trailers as a fan and a professional for about 20 years now, but if I have a serious problem with my toilet, I'd probably hire someone with just a few years of experience as a plumber. That's certainly three more years of knowledge about toilets they have that I don't. 

One of my first paid jobs as an independent game trailer maker which I got by posting on forums and subreddits was for a Binding of Isaac-like game called Brandon Must Die which I did for I think $300 USD back in 2014. This was 11 years after graduating college. I'd already been video editing for about 14 years. I probably could've made that trailer with the skills I already had in 2001.

lol, I should do a self critique of this :P

Don't get me wrong, it is a WORK getting the first jobs, and I was incredibly privileged in SO MANY WAYS that let me get some really cool work at the start of my game trailer editing career. My friends at The Behemoth, my connections which got me an interview with Hammer Creative, and the incredibly generous overflow work I got from Kert Gartner when I went independent were HUGELY critical to my game trailer career.

That said, there are so many more ways now to make yourself visible nowadays. This is why I recommend people getting started to make fan trailers for very small games you like, @tag the creators on Twitter when you post them and then repeat. Just have fun getting the experience, show appreciation, don't expect anything in return. If they like it, they might retweet it, share it, tell their friends, or even hire you! They also might not, but as long as you enjoyed the experience then you're good. 

By the way, when I say small, I mean SMALL. Like, the game hasn't released, they maybe have a demo, they have no publisher, the game is 1 hour long, it's experimental, no one has heard of it, and they have 100 followers on Twitter. You're more likely to catch the attention of developers with fewer followers. For example, if you make fan art for Supergiant Games they might see it, but it's less likely than for a game which has no fan art. Game jams are a great place for this sort of thing, because those games are TINY.

If you want to transition from a fan trailer maker here are just THREE things you can do to increase the likelihood of getting hired. I occasionally bump into fan trailer makers, check out their social media presence, and most of them aren't doing at least two of these three things (if they're not doing it because it's just a hobby and they don't want professional work, then that's ok)

  1. Change your online bio

  2. Make a website

  3. Make friends with other trailer editors

Twitter is the Linkedin of the indie games industry, so aside from real life local events and meetups, that's where you're probably going to make connections. If your Twitter bio says something like: "Aspiring game trailer editor" do yourself a favor and just take out the word "Aspiring." If you make game trailers, you make game trailers. The only thing the word "professional" means is getting paid to do it. If you don't want to pigeonhole yourself into only games that's fine, just put trailer editor at the top of your bio. You don't even have to put any additional stuff in your bio (but it's an opportunity to add more personality)

At a glance, which one is a game trailer editor?

MAKE A WEBSITE! 

Yes, you might have a YouTube channel where you've reposted your work, but it also might be mixed in with lots of stuff you didn't make alongside so much other stuff. For someone looking to hire an editor it's so much easier to just look at a website where everything is clearly labeled. At worst, make a YouTube playlist of your work which you send to people, don't just send them to your channel. People want to see a nicely presented portfolio, not a sketchbook with all your random scribblings.

"But Derek, I don't have any professional work! What do I put on my website?"

Put your fan trailers, but just label them on your website as "Spec Trailers." This is a glorified film industry term which basically means work you did for free in the hopes of selling it to a company or at least, selling yourself to a company. This is called "Working on spec"

Your fan trailers are basically spec work; you just didn't know it because you were doing it for fun not for business purposes. Just because you weren't paid to make it doesn't mean potential clients can't use it as an indicator of what you can do for them. Start the website with you fan work labeled as "Spec Work" or "Spec Trailers" and when you get that first paid job, but that on top of your website. As you get more paid jobs, the spec work will sort closer to the bottom and you'll have less need to show it. Even my website has a section of my fan work because I'm proud of that work, and I'm mostly not working on games at that scale of production.

My website circa 2010. I even included my MGS4 fan trailer :P

The biggest detriment to fan trailer work is it doesn't tell people what you're like to work with, or if you can hit deadlines. With fan work you generally have no deadlines, so if you take months to make a trailer, will you be able to make a trailer if a client gives you three weeks? 

This is why I also recommend writing case studies and articles about your process (and one reason why I write!). You might be thinking: "Derek, I'm a newb, no one wants to read what I have to say." Well, if you think you're not an expert yet, just write about editing discoveries or things you've learned. Share your journey as a fledgling trailer editor. Also, your audience is probably not video editors with more experience; it's game developers with FAR LESS EXPERIENCE (by the way, as an editor with lots of experience, I still love reading anything written by other editors at all levels)

WRITE! Even if you don't post it, write journals and document your process.

Make friends!

I know a bunch of game trailer editors and we celebrate each other's work, and we share work with each other when we're too busy or not a good fit for a particular project. Don't think of other editors as competition; there's PLENTY of work to go around. Kert helped me so much early in my career, so I feel obligated to pay it forward when and where I can. I've referred friends to jobs it PAINED me to turn away because I want every game to have a trailer it deserves, and I know we all win in the end when we help each other out. Game marketing expert Chris Zukowski writes in this blog about similar businesses doing better when they cluster in real life, rather than find their own space with no competition around.

All this to say, if you're a fan trailer maker who wants to get in. You already have the skills, and the skills you don't have (like working with clients) comes with experience. I can tell you everything I've ever learned from working with clients, but it would still be no comparison to you actually doing it. Also, everyone is different, so you might encounter situations I've never dealt with.

Change your bio, make a website, and @tag game devs on Twitter when you make fan work. Be gracious, be kind, and have FUN!