The Last Clockwinder Launch Trailer
I got this gig via a referral from Eka from Outerloop games all the way back in May 2021 (Thanks, Eka!)
The Last Clockwinder is a VR game where you you create clockwork contraptions out of your own clones in order to restore an ancient tree. You do this by recording 1-3 second loops of your actions like: picking a fruit, and dropping it into a receptacle. Once recorded, a robot clone will perform that series of actions in an infinite loop.
I actually first started on this project by doing some consulting for the announcement trailer which was brought to life with some Unity magic by James McGregor. That trailer shows a 3rd person view of the player avatar performing actions that then translate into the robot clones, and then the camera pulls out to reveal several more clones the player had previously recorded. This trailer was designed to make it about as unequivocally clear how the game works (though it seems even then some people had difficulty understanding it).
For the launch trailer the goal was mainly to showcase the narrative to make the game feel like a substantial experience (and to also show how the game works). I think pretty much every VR game is fighting against the stigma that a lot of VR games are "experiences" which amount to an incredibly short series of mini games, something which can be finished in less than an hour, or shorter versions of something which is played on a regular PC with mouse and keyboard.
I totally get why so many game trailers start with pretty environment art, but it still makes me super antsy when I use shots where there’s no player interaction.
Lucky for me, the game has great voice acting via Cissy Jones, Caitlyn Elizabeth, and Ray Chase. As you might know, I LOVE working on games with voice acting where I get to dive into massive spreadsheets or scripts to piece together a story trailer. Not only is it fun to edit with, but I like when the trailer can both tell a story and highlight game mechanics.
The story of this trailer is:
There was a clockwinder who lived inside a massive tree which she kept alive via robot Gardeners
A young woman has returned to the tree after 10 years to help out the tree
She finds the mechanism needed to create Gardeners she'll need to fix the tree
She uses the Gardeners to harvest fruit to power the tree's mechanisms
There will be difficulties to fix the tree, but she's determined.
The story of this trailer's gameplay is:
You create clones of yourself to pick fruit to power the machines
The clones work together to toss fruit to one another
The story progresses partly through audio logs on tape recorders and communicating via a radio
You have an inventory of seeds to make plants
Special gloves give you the ability to create Gardeners from your actions like picking fruit
Make multiple clones to create an assembly line
The assembly lines you create will increase in complexity and variety
There are tools to use such as a knife for cutting plant stalks
You unlock new levels by finding chips you feed into a device
There are a variety of different fruits with unique attributes
When recording my own actions I tried to make the robots’ movement cute and perky wherever possible to match the cute character design!
That sounds like a lot to achieve in a couple minutes, but through carefully selected dialogue I could do both at the same time. Here's the full script and how I used the dialogue to illustrate gameplay:
EDEA: I've been out here at the clock tower for more than 30 years now. Alone for, well, most of that time
This line gives me the opportunity to cut in shots to establish the space of the clock tower. This starts with two environment shots which I'm always careful to limit to only two at the beginning of a trailer. I initially had a Gardener in the first shot because I hate completely empty shots, but it made things a bit confusing because we hadn't established who the Gardeners are. So it was decided to start with this flying shot because the environment art is SO beautiful we hoped it would be a good hook.
EDEA: I don't feel alone though, I have the Gardeners
EDEA: Every day I get up and pump out the rising water. If I don't, the tree and all the precious plants it protects will die.
The first of these lines doesn't exist in the game; it was cobbled together by voice editor Troupe Gammage. I wanted a line that would both show the Gardeners and establish that they are separate entities from the human characters. The second line also helped me connect the actions of the Gardeners to the voiceover. If the voiceover feels divorced from the gameplay, the viewer will clue into that might cause their attention to drift. I think if the editing says: "I'm going to show you things which don't connect" the audience will stop trying to make connections.
For most of production this series of actions was in first person, but I couldn’t get it stable enough to look good so I switched it to 3rd person. A lot of these shots involved doing take after take, but due to the looping nature of the Gardeners, it was dead simple to do this very quickly.
JULES: That's the last recording I have of Edea. Nearly 10 years old now. LEVI: How does it feel to be home? JULES: From out here you wouldn't know it was sinking. I just hope we're not too late.
These lines establish the protagonist's role in the bigger story, but there are no corresponding visuals for most of the lines. There's just the "last recording" which I cut to a tape recorder finishing to show that there are audio logs in the game. And "how does it feel to be home" lets me show clock tower shots. But there's very little to show which is interactive, which is why I wouldn't have wanted this segment to be any longer. This is also why I showed the seed bag mechanic as an accent, because I'm loathe to live in non-interactive gameplay for too long.
JULES: I found her gloves and they still work! Thank goodness, this would be impossible without the Gardeners. LEVI: Oh those things! Yeah, they're pretty neat.
This establishes the gloves and how they control the Gardeners. I'll admit showing the Gardener waving without performing the action first was risky, but they're so darn cute I wanted to keep it.
JULES: When I first arrived here I used to imagine the Gardeners were alive. I loved the thought of the clock tower teeming with people all helping look after the plants.EDEA: The clock tower uses fruit for energy. With the Gardeners this will finally automate the drainage pump. Just like that!
These lines let me show the Gardeners performing a basic task, then a bunch of them working on concert, and then them assembling a more complicated fruit molecule. I punctuated the end of this segment with an accent of crystals being created.
The doorway behind the Gardener was originally open in this shot, but the brightness of outside drew too much attention, so I recaptured it with the door closed so the brightness of the Gardener would stand out more from the background.
LEVI: things were looking a little bad on the lower levels.
This line is here to set up a conflict which isn't really visible in the game, so instead I just showed one of the environments which looks more run down.
JULES: I'm going to fix this place, Levi i'm going to fix it.
There's no corresponding visual to show what she's talking about in this moment either, so I chose to show this unique moment from the game where you remove a chip from a device. It felt like enough of a direct connection just to keep the audience focused.
YOUNG JULES: Something's wrong! EDEA: What's happening? The pump's offline.
These lines don't have strong connections to the visuals, but for "Something's wrong!" I used a shot where fruit are gushing through the air because it looks like that's not normal and it's very dramatic. Admittedly, the molecule shot for the second line has no direct connection, so it's weaker, but I wanted to show more complicated assemblies.
JULES: This place was my home. And the plants there, they're irreplaceable.
The only connection between this line and the footage is that I show a new kind of plant, but I think it's enough to keep the audience on board.
EDEA: The tree is always running out of time
This line doesn't correspond to finding chips to put into the machine to unlock new areas, but I timed things within the shot to match the delivery to at least form a timing connection between the footage and voiceover if not a story connection.
This is a bespoke little moment from the game so I nabbed it for the trailer to give it variety.
JULES: How did Edea handle this place?
This line is used to show more complicated fruit molecules which look like quite a lot to handle.
LEVI: You reckon you can fix it? JULES: I'm not letting the clock tower go without a fight. Not this time.
These lines don't connect super tightly with the corresponding shots of another fruit molecule and a machine in the clocktower, but the first shot is so quick, and the machine is a unique visual so I thought it would hold interest.
EDEA: The clock tower needs its clockwinder, but the clockwinder is only a person and people make mistakes. So I've made a decision. I will be the last clockwinder.
These lines are spread across the montage which is carried by the amazing music by Joel Corelitz, so at this point I've hopefully signaled to the audience: "This is the part where I just show you a bunch of cool stuff while the voiceover gets deep for a moment." That said, there are some shots which I still try to connect like "is only a person" show Gardeners playing the piano. And "People make mistakes" shows a disassembled Gardener which looks like it could correspond to the line. The last two shots were made by James I just asked that there be a lot of activity, and to be tossing fruit molecules across the room in the last shot for visual interest.
EDEA: you don't know half of what this place can do.
I used this line to show some Gardeners goofing off to just show you can have fun just messing around in addition to trying to play the game ^_^
This is ostensibly both a shot for escalation and content which clues the audience into how complicated the game can get.
To capture the footage, Pontoco made me a special PC build with a hotkey toggle for image stabilization. Unfortunately, due to technical limitations, the stabilization had to be applied to the headset view, not a separate camera that the game rendered to the desktop view like I had with Cosmic Trip VR. What this meant is when stabilization is turned on, your sight "lags." So if I turn my head to the left, what I'm seeing doesn't move to the left until a fraction of a second later. Now apply that to when my head tilts, twists, and every conceivable possible motion in 360°. It's hard to imagine without experiencing it, but trust me when I say it is INCREDIBLY NAUSEATING.
This limitation meant I could only wear the headset when capturing very very basic camera moves. It also meant it was completely impossible to play the actual game while it was stabilized, because the controller inputs also lagged and eye-hand coordination is a key part of the game. Fortunately, the game's design facilitated an ideal circumstance where I could create the Gardeners, take the headset off, turn on stabilization, and then "film" the Gardener while using my desktop monitor as my view screen. I only needed to have the headset on for some camera movs like watching a fruit flying overhead. This is because it was just easier than holding the headset with my hands and trying to pivot it at the right angle and speed. Unfortunately, this meant there were fewer first person shots than I would've liked in the trailer.
There are also a handful of "flying camera" moves which James made in Unity including the opening shot, and the last handful of massive factory shots. The third shot of the trailer was originally a series of shots where I performed an action in first person, and then cut to a shot of a Gardener appearing in place to then replicate that action. I'd incorrectly assumed this would form enough of a connection with viewers for them to understand the mechanic, but it was too much of a disconnect. So Pontoco in the final trailer, Pontoco remade the shot to show both the recording and Gardeners appearing in one contiguous shot. You can see the first version here and compare it to the final one linked above.
I'd initially wanted to do more "silly" shots for the trailer, because a lot of the fun is finding your own solutions to the puzzles, but what I did with the Gardeners ended up being more straightforward for the sake of clarity. I also had to do a lot of takes in order to avoid the Gardeners' arms glitching or clipping through their own bodies too much. I compromised by making the trailer's button a series of Gardeners just goofing off. I have a mix of things in there including some Summer camp challenges, a Jackie Chan Easter Egg, a dance a college friend of mine got a bunch of us to do at an event and various dances.
I can’t resist shots with so much environmental storytelling, so I had to get this shot in.
This was a fun and challenging project with a lot of moving parts, but I'm very happy with how it turned out. It also highlighted the limitations that can crop up when working with a build of a game rather than working in-engine. So either I need to play with Unity more, or know when to plan to get someone who can do in-engine work for me. I do enjoy limitations though, because having infinite possible filmmaking tools at my disposal is incredibly intimidating. Anyway, if you're into VR games I HIGHLY recommend The Last Clockwinder which you can play on Steam and Meta Quest!
