Dead Cells - Brutal Update Trailer

This was another gig that I was amazed to see in my inbox! I liked previous trailers for Dead Cells, so I assumed that they already had someone helping them out. When I saw their booth at PAX West this year I didn't even bother going to hand them a business card, because I thought I'd be stepping on someone's toes. Just goes to show you can never assume, but it all worked out in the end!

Dead Cells by Motion Twin is a 2D side-scrolling action rogue-ish game with procedurally generated levels. The game has some of the most beautiful, juicy art and animation that I've seen in a recent game. Before I got the gig I was holding off on purchasing it, because even though I heard it was very polished, as of the writing of this post it's still on Steam Early Access and GOG Games in Development. 

Sufficient to say this is about as fun a game to capture/cut for as there can be. I usually favor working on games with narrative driven gameplay, but of course I also love really crunchy video game-y video games. The art, animation, sound effects, music, and snappiness made it a TON of fun to cut this trailer. I also don't often get to cut with epic music, so it was an all around delight. 

Seriously, this game is juicy as all heck. The game feel, art, animation, lighting, effects, sound, and music are all a delight to the senses.

Yoann Laulan composed a piece of music specifically for the trailer, which was exciting and epic in all the ways you could want for a trailer. A couple weeks before I started work, he sent me a draft. I listened to it, and had just a couple notes that I sent to him. Originally the electric bass in the beginning lingered throughout the whole piece, but something about it felt unresolved. The other note was that the cue felt like it had too many climaxes, so he tuned the ending, and then it was perfect!

Right before I received a build, Motion Twin created a Slack channel for the trailer, and wrote up a document for what this trailer needed to highlight. They wanted a very fast kitchen sink sort of approach with title cards and quick cuts.

"...focus on the “WOW I didn’t understand everything but it looks really amazing” effect. :D"

Trailers with epic music, action, snappy animation, and slamming title cards? I was more than happy to oblige.

Title cards can be very boring in trailers, especially if they're being used to teach something to the audience, so I tend to avoid them if at all possible, but if there was a time and place for them, it's in a trailer like this. Action games like Dead Cells communicate well visually, because "player avatar hits bad guys, who explode into blood and gems" is something very easy to understand. Therefore, the title cards can be there just to hype the audience with some quick text.

Motion Twin already had made some nice and simple title cards from a previous trailer, so they sent me their After Effects file. For this trailer I spiced them up a bit with a lens flare, some glow, more particles and a slam animation. 

I knew from the doc that they wanted to highlight new levels, the new boss, wall grab, enemies and weapons (not necessarily in that order). So after marking up the music cue, I put in placeholder title cards to see where they should fall on the beats, and also what order they should go in. Even though I prefer having few to no title cards, they're a nice thing to have when editing a trailer, because they're an easy way to start building your timeline. 

I originally put weapons around the end, because I thought it would be a strong way to finish. But later I decided to put them first because it would give context and permission to use them in the shots that came after. I also assumed that new abilities and weapons are what would get the audience excited from the get go.

If there's anything that you know HAS to be in your timeline, put it in first to get yourself started, and also give yourself constraints!

Dead Cells is a very good example of a game that is great to edit a trailer for. The specific reason is its animation and effects. When editing trailers I'm always looking for motion, and snappy actions to sync up with music. Dead Cells has this in spades with its ground pounds, weapons with weak and critical strikes, arrows, magic, explosions, teleportations, elevators, kicking etc. It's a mix of anticipation, hard hitting action, and climaxes that are *chef's kiss* for trailers.

No matter how many trailers I've cut, facing a blank timeline is still very intimidating. In my mind I don't want to put anything in unless it'll look immaculate, but of course this is INCREDIBLY UNREALISTIC. So what will happen is I'll agonized and writhe on the floor (slight exaggeration) until I somehow work up the courage to put something in. I decided that this time I would put in shots that were generally what should be in the section, but knowing that the capture was going to be terrible. Then, seeing those shots in there would help guide me towards what I needed. It's much easier to fix something that's bad, than it is to create something from nothing. This worked great, but it was still painful to look at the horrible timeline.

The debug tools for the build I had were extremely helpful. There are a lot of enemies, weapons, items, power ups, and status effects for just about every item. I was able to do this all from a handful of keyboard commands, and gamepad menus. I could also teleport between levels, adjust strength and health, and also make enemies ignore me. 

For the wall grab I played a lot in the new levels using the ability, then cut together the two shots that were my favorite. Originally, the quick series of jumps was in a smaller space, but the camera moved so quickly that it felt too jarring, so I used jumps in an area that was about twice as wide. Any game that allows original Ninja Gaiden style wall jumps has a special place in my heart <3 

I lined up the motion of these two shots by adjusting the opacity of the first clip, and overlaying it over the second, and adjusting its scale/position accordingly.

The weapons section took a while to do because not all of them communicate well visually. I also wanted the rhythm of the abilities to interact with the music as much as possible. So when recapturing for this section I tried to use weapons at the tempo of the music in each section (as much as the weapon combos permitted). A very handy debug tool here was the ability to spawn any enemy from the game by clicking in the left thumbstick. This made retakes very fast and easy! 

The other problem is that Dead Cells gameplay can look very chaotic when on screen there are multiple enemies, damage numbers, status effect text, sound effects, explosions, etc. In the game, the weapons have different "levels," the higher the level the more additional effects they have like: shooting grenades, arrows, or other status effects that add little icons to the player. This would've made the visuals more confusing, so I opted to use the first level for each weapon so that no additional effects would compete for attention.

With the audience hooked (hopefully) by shiny new abilities, I put the "New Levels" title card which wasn't as exciting visually because stuff isn't exploding, but the lull in the music paired nicely with the steady pans of the levels. The vocals in the music nicely climaxed out of this section, and I augmented it with a rise. In the debug build, I could move the camera freely throughout a level, so I used this to show how tall the Clock Tower level is. I added motion blur in After Effects using Reelsmart Motion Blur which is a great tool that will add blur based on the motion in the shot.

Shots in Dead Cells can very easily look incredibly busy, so I had to mitigate it in every way possible for visual clarity and readability. This is an unused shot where I had the damage set INCREDIBLY high via the debug tools.

The enemies section was pretty easy to cut together. I'm not sure it's clear that the Golem teleports you close to it so it can hit you; I wanted to avoid making it look like the player had a teleport ability, so I tried to emphasize it by having the player running away when it happens. When capturing, the grenades of the cluster grenadier would occasionally blow up in a pattern that matched the music, so of course I incorporated that! Then for the boss, I just played a lot, and got lucky with a couple shots where I was playing well, and were very readable.

The end montage was an opportunity to just show some more abilities I didn't highlight earlier. Originally I had some other clips with action and precarious platforming, but we later changed the end text to "It's going to be... brutal," so the last shots became the player dying. 

The final touch was the scene of the glowing moon after the first title card. I originally had a shot from in-game, but since it was just a scaling animation to mimic a camera zooming out there was no parallax effect; Motion Twin sent me a Photoshop file which allowed me to make the shot in After Effects with 3D layers. 

alternate angle for the opening shot in my After Effects project.

And that's it! This was a short and sweet project. From the time I received the build to the final edit was about a week and a half. I got to cut with amazing visuals and music, which made it that much more fun. Lots of thinking of eye trace in this trailer because it's cut so fast. A bunch of the shots are zoomed in a bit so that I could compose the shots as needed for better eye trace. 

Now that the update is out, it's time for me to grind out some more abilities in Dead Cells. I'm already up to about 22 hours, and most of that time was just from when I received the code, and was waiting for the developer build O_O

Guacamelee 2 - Announce Trailer

Another gig I got from a referral by Kert Gartner!

I was pleasantly surprised and excited to see this email, because previously both Kert Gartner and Marlon Wiebe did great trailers for Drinkbox Studios on Guacamelee and Severed. Just goes to show you that there's a LOT of work out there, and when people have so much awesome stuff to work on, eventually difficult decisions have to be made. 

The first Guacamelee game came out in 2013; it's a Mexican folklore inspired side-scrolling metroidvania game with beautiful art and animation. There's no game that looks anything like it. The game really tests your dexterity to circumvent all sorts of combat encounters and platforming challenges.

When Drinkbox came to me, they already had a rough animatic of the introduction, and music to use. My job was to take their final artwork, tweak the pacing, bring it to life with some animation, and add in a final gameplay montage, and sound design. Oh, and in 4k.

Final timeline

For the cutscenes they wanted some 2.5D parallax effects where appropriate. I was glad to hear that it wasn't going to be TOO much more complicated than that, because I don't consider myself an animator, and didn't want to bite off more than I could chew. Initially I started by putting everything in 3D layers, but in some cases like the very first shot it didn't really make sense because the objects weren't far enough apart to parallax. 

For all of the 3D parallax shots, I used pt_Multiplane from AEscripts.com. It's a fantastic tool that will take your 2D layers, and set the apart in 3D space to a distance you specify without any of the size of the layers appearing different. This means it automatically compensates the scale of the layer based on the camera focal length and distance from the camera. Absolutely invaluable for this sort of project.

Multiplane view from a different angle, including stuff that's out of frame

The second shot had the most layers by far. Everything was made in Photoshop using shape layers which meant that I could resize it to whatever I wanted without losing resolution. I worked off the original file which had a TON of layers for every single element; I had to merge several layers so that they'd be on the same plane, because it just didn't make sense for every single element to be offset in 3D space. For example, two hands for a character might be on a separate layer, but in physical space, they're likely about equidistant from the camera.

Initially with this shot I was really lazy about how I created the comp for each character. I just separated them individually with little to no regard for where they were in 3D space. But when I combined them into one comp and pressed the collapse transformations switch, the layers all went crazy; some were on top of layers they shouldn't have been have etc. So on a spreadsheet I wrote out what layers would be on what plane for every single character, and in relation to each other. pt_Multiplane also allows you to say from where to where in z-space layers should go. This worked perfectly the first time I tried it, phew!

A look at the layers of a character offset in z-space. In my spreadsheet I wrote down each pixel distance, and what layers should be on each one.

I loved timing the guacamole dipping sequence, and adding super dramatic sound effects. Originally, Juan dipped the chip, the chip broke, and then he went back in to dip again, but I thought it wouldn't read that way, especially because it wasn't fully animated, so I changed it to just the chip breaking (with some reverb FX on the break sound effect)

One thing that Drinkbox paid really close attention to was how video compression affected the artwork. The first time I received art there were a lot more gradients, but when gradients get compressed you can get some bad "banding" where gradients get simplified into what looks more like a rainbow with discrete sections. To combat this, several pieces of art were revised to have solid colors instead of gradients.

Most dramatic shot of dipping a chip in guacamole ever?

The montage of quick shots was a lot of fun. I don't often use the Puppet Tool in After Effects, but I had to use it a bunch for this. You'll probably recognize the 80s movie reference in the shot of the arms flexing as two hands come together. That one was the most complicated one to do. I used PuppetTools to create inverse kinematic rigs for the arms, though one of the arms stubbornly refused to function properly so I ended up keyframe animating it manually. It's such a quick shot that I think it barely mattered. Some extra layers had to be added to the Photoshop file; since in the final pose one hand's fingers aren't visible, it wasn't necessary to draw them. So for just a few frames (if that!) the hand is there before grabbing the other. 

From my After Effects project. Blink and you'll miss the hand in the background. I used video from the film for reference.

Tostada also has some very light puppet tool animation on her limbs, and also I added some 3D depth of field blur to the enemy objects in the scene. For the final shot of Juan, I used the puppet tool to animate Juan breathing (I used Kert's Guacamelee trailer as reference) and also had to use the puppet tool to make the rooster head/necks wiggly. In early versions there was some artifacting caused by the puppet tool, so I had to change the resolution of the puppet segments to fix them.

Notes from Drinkbox about the puppet tool artifacts I missed.

Gameplay for this trailer was all captured by Drinkbox. My goal for this one was to just make it all flow very nicely. There's a lot of new stuff to show in this brief montage, and I wanted to make sure the audience didn't lose track of any of it. With the exception of the last few shots I'm pretty sure that the direction of motion at the end of each shot is the same direction that continues into the next. Then if the direction is changed in that shot, the following one also reflects that change. Of course I also did my best to cut to the music, and keep the eyetrace consistent.

The downward motion of this shot continues in the next shot!

That's pretty much it! A lot of the structure of this trailer was already there when I first started, I feel like I just tweaked it here and there so it all fit together better. I had a lot of fun making it especially because of the great music I got to work with, high impact shots with lots of nice action in them, and the voiceover set the perfect tone. It's also just so COLORFUL!

Paperbark - Release Date Teaser

I first saw Paperbark at PAX East. I really loved the art style and the adorable wombat, so I handed them a business card. Several months later they contacted me about making a trailer! If you've read my other behind-the-scenes posts you'll know that I get most of my gigs by referral; this is a nice exception that shows sometimes handing out cards DOES lead to work!

This is a simple teaser, but it doesn't mean that I don't have anything to say about making it. The build I was provided for the game was just one area, which was fine because this was just to tease the game and reveal the 2018 release date for PAX Australia, At PAX East I played it on an iPad; the wombat walks towards where you tap, and if you tap in the white space, some of the world is briefly revealed with the paint effect you see in this trailer.

Paperbark is instantly striking even just from simple screenshots!

The game starts with a lovely shot of the camera coming down to the wombat's lair before it stumbles out. Unfortunately this shot was too long, so I initially shortened the shot via a dip to white. For the final version we ended up creating a luma matte so that I could start the shot later, but retain the painterly reveal effect. I wanted to make sure it was as true to the game as possible, so lead programmer Ryan Boulton rendered the matte out, and I added it in Premiere.

One thing I have to remind myself is that game devs and video editors often use different terminology to describe similar effects. I had to explain what I meant when I said "matte." Maybe someday I'll make a glossary of terms to facilitate communication between our disciplines.

A "luma matte" where the black portion either reveals or conceals the layer it affects.

I was once asked how to approach a trailer for a game where there's not much action or movement. The answer is that "action" is relative.

This is a short teaser, and all of my clips are some variation of the wombat walking through the woods. So I had to pick just a few moments that had more going on in them than the wombat walking. Compared to walking, the wombat eating grass is pretty exciting! The wombat getting stuck in the log is EVEN MORE exciting, and it has an element of suspense to it. Will the wombat get out?? (also, awwwwwwww). Then the wombat hops over a different log and surprises some birds. The wombat getting stuck, then circumventing the other log is the climax of this trailer. Then the wombat rolling in grass, sneezing and walking away is the denoument.

Always leave the audience walking more. If you want the satisfaction of seeing the wombat get out, you'll have to play the game!

See? Even a relatively sedate trailer can still follow a trailer's 3-act structure. At least, that was my thought while making it; maybe I'm making a mountain out of a molehill. While making this I knew that I was mostly leaning on how cute the wombat is, but that doesn't mean I didn't do my best to follow the same ideas about trailer structure, music editing and game capture that I hope to bring to all my projects.

So the lesson is, that action and excitement can be found in everything as long as there's contrast! 

Wheels of Aurelia App Previews

I got this gig via both Kert Gartner, and my friends at Campo Santo!

Wheels of Aurelia takes place in 1970s Italy. You play Lella, who's taking a road trip on the Via Aurelia. It's an interactive visual novel where you're making dialogue choices, choosing which roads to take, and deciding whether or not to pick up hitchhikers etc. The art style, unique setting, and music are what really piqued my interest.

For the iOS 11 App Store, developers now have the option for three app previews instead of only one. Studio Director Pietro Righi Riva wanted to take advantage of that feature. I took this gig as an opportunity to get a new iPad Pro to replace my ailing iPad 3. I also rented an iPhone 7 Plus from Dyal Rental.

The logistical challenge was the multiple versions of each app preview. Wheels of Aurelia plays in portrait mode on iPhone, but landscape on iPad; each app preview needed separate capture, and graphics had to be custom made for each aspect ratio. That meant a total of 6 versions. I've worked on app previews in some agencies in Los Angeles, but in those cases, the apps displayed in landscape mode on both devices, so the solution was simply some creative cropping. This usually worked just fine unless there were UI elements formatted specifically for iPhone or iPad.

This was absolutely not an option for this project.

I did my best to choose short, but illustrative dialogue!

The other challenge was figuring out how to give myself the flexibility to choose dialogue, the car model, the different areas to drive through, and the timing of each individual element. For example, if I only took dialogue from the moment it occurred in the game, I might not be able to show a wider variety of backgrounds.

My solution was to capture the game with no character dialogue overlays, and recreate all the dialogue as separate layers in After Effects.

Oh, and each preview had to be localized in 6 additional languages. 

3 app previews x 2 aspect ratios x 7 languages = 42 versions!

The amount of work was further compounded because:

• App preview #1 had 6 title cards + 7 dialogue scenes = 13 gfx

• App preview #2 had 5 title cards + 4 dialogue scenes = 9 gfx

• App preview #3 had 4 title cards + 5 dialogue scenes = 9 gfx

Multiply each of those graphics counts by 7, and that's about how many graphics files I had (not including graphics that didn't require translation). This probably could've been aided by some dynamic linking between Premiere and After Effects, but I've had troubles using that function, so I decided not to risk it on such a huge endeavor.

Considering the amount of work it took, seeing all these files at the end felt very anti-climactic

First let's talk about the fun stuff which is the story, direction and editing of each app preview! 

The game is meant to be played in short sessions, because each trip only takes about 15-20 minutes, but it encourages multiple playthroughs because of the variety of characters you might encounter, and the multiple endings.

The main directive for these previews was that they wanted to make it clear that it's an interactive visual novel, not a racing game. I took a look at the original launch trailer; I wasn't sure whether or not the editor intended for the audience to read the dialogue in the trailer, and also there was an entire section with no dialogue overlays. 

For these previews I wanted the dialogue to be the focus; the background would make it pretty, and add visual interest. I played through the game several times to see as much of the dialogue as possible, and did a breakdown to see what I had to work with.

The standout parts of the game are its characters, the setting, and time period. I don't know anything about modern Italian history, so I found it interesting when the characters talked about real life events.

I liked this exchange in particular.

I decided the previews would be:

1. an overview of the game

2. a look at the variety of characters

3. a focus on the time period.

Each would also have to feature at least one moment when I could show the dialogue selection interface. I had to nail down the full screen title cards as soon as possible, because they had to be translated. I went back and forth with Pietro and Dana Trebella (who worked on the messaging for the game).

The first app preview takes the broadest approach; the dialogue focuses on the road trip, self discovery, freedom, and also some direct callouts to the features, such as choosing routes, multiple endings etc.

For the second preview I tried to show the humor of the game via its colorful cast of characters. I especially like the joke at the opening with the priest. My goal was to use dialogue to show the breadth of the characters. If they were all talking about the same thing, the audience would get a narrow view.

The third preview uses topical dialogue (for the 1970s time period) to show the audience how the game uses the history to give some context, and maybe even teach them a thing or two.

These title cards were in the style of opening credits from the game.. From this project I learned that Farmer is "Bauer" in German. Just imagine Kiefer Sutherland saying: "This is Jack Farmer..."

All together I think these app previews give a nice variety for the interesting facets of the game. Had I made a full launch trailer I would've tried to combine these all in one, but for iTunes, the app previews are far more important because it's the first thing a potential customer sees.

Something else we went back and forth on a bit was the pace of the previews. I initially went straight for the most exciting music cue, but Pietro was worried it seemed too action-y. His hope was to attract the audience who played games like 80 Days. This direction helped me to hone the feel of the first app preview; I used a different piece of music, and let the shots breathe a bit more.

Okay, back to some technical solutions I had to come up with.

The first hurdle was replicating the dialogue bubbles. The most important part was making bubbles that would dynamically change in size based on the text that was inside of it. I knew this HAD to be done by After Effects expressions, because the amount of manual work would've been unthinkable. 

Unfortunately I'm not an After Effects Expression wizard, so I had to go looking for some sort of template. I found this preset on the Creative Cow forums which worked PERFECTLY; I just had to add some rounded corners, and adjust the padding.

Looking at stuff like this gives me a headache, but it also saved me tons of headaches, so I guess it balances out?

I also found this expression for an easy to customize typewriter effect. As always, thanks to Dan Ebberts who always seems to be the person answering expression questions in the Creative Cow forums. Btw, every time I have to fix an expression I feel like a grow a new white hair. So thank you to all game programmers out there who dealing with this stuff on a daily basis, y'all are saints.

Another issue I ran into was how the bubble moves upward when a second line is added. There's probably an expression that exists that would've solved this problem, but since time was a factor, I added some hold keyframes that I would manually adjust for every single bubble. Menial and inefficient yes, but I eventually fell into a rhythm, and it worked fine.

I also had to recreate the dialogue selection bubble, which I did by using video as a reference and instead of trying to fit the particular easing animation in the game, I just did it frame by frame for simplicity; sometimes the easiest solution is just some elbow grease! (not to say that I don't wish I was an After Effects wizard)

With the bubbles all formatted, I created templates for the iPhone and iPad layout. Even with my templates there was still some case by case tweaking I had to do on nearly every single bubble, but it still was MUCH more efficient than doing it all by hand and/or doing it all via game capture.

A dialogue layer before compositing in Premiere.

After the versions were locked, the localization was simply a matter of a LOT of time spent cutting and pasting to/from spreadsheets. There was a lot of reformatting because some of the translations has some very lengthy words (I'm looking at you German and Russian!) After that, it was a lot of double and triple checking the translations. At one point working on localizations it was so late at night that I knew it was better to go to sleep, and continue the next day, rather than stay up late and work slow/badly.

I briefly toyed with the possibility of having all the graphics, and all the sequences in one ENORMOUS PROJECT. But I thought better of it, and decided to duplicate my Premiere and After Effects project files to be specific to each language. The last thing I wanted to deal with were the wrong languages being rendered out with different suffixes etc. This is also when I found out that in After Effects there's no way to batch change the destination for multiple Render Queue items, WTF???

This sight also gives/saves me headaches. The game is of course also available in Italian, but it's not in this screenshot.

Another tool I got to help with organizing was AE Global Renamer 2, which could batch rename comps and precomps.

Fortunately I only ended up making some minor tweaks to each language, mostly related to capitalization, and some translation fixes that were needed for how the dialogue or full screen graphics were being used in the trailer versus being used in the game.

This x 7 languages ^_^;

PHEW!

Like I said, I learned a lot about scoping for this project, but it all got done, and the game is now available in the App Store! The one thing that miffs me is on the iOS 11 App Store, the previews start auto-playing with no audio (similar to Facebook), and there's no scroll bar, so people will have to watch the preview more than once if they want to see it from beginning to end with all the audio >_<. At the beginning of the project, Pietro told me Apple encourages the use of full screen graphics, this must be why.

There's certainly nothing out there like Wheels of Aurelia, so if you want a short visual novel set in 1970s Italy, please check it out!

Absolver - Launch Trailer

Another trailer for Absolver! The other trailers I cut for Absolver were the announce and PSX trailers. The process of working on this was the same as the others, where I was brought on strictly as an editor because they came to me with a rough draft and capture they did in-house. This trailer has a bit more of a central story to it than the other ones. The trailer depicts a relationship between two fighters who are meeting up at the top of a tower. The trailer flashes back and between the past when they fought side by side, and the present day where they seem to be  engaging in some sort of final duel.

The main way I helped with this trailer was adding in some additional shots for the present day confrontation. I wanted to make sure the audience had enough shots to keep track of both the timelines. Some shots were the closeup before the Sloclap title card, the medium shot of the woman landing on the ground, the man turning towards camera, and the duel at high noon closeup on her hands. I also edited most of the gameplay using capture sent to me by Sloclap. Everything else I added to the trailer were very small timing changes here and there to tighten up moments or draw them out for dramatic emphasis. 

After I was done with my part, it was sent off to the composer and sound designers to put on the final touches! Thanks to Sloclap for working with me; I'm so happy to be a part of these slickly produced trailers. I originally took on this gig almost exclusively from seeing screenshots, and know I made the right choice!

Figment - Launch Trailer

I got this project by a referral from Kert Gartner! Figment is an adventure game made by Bedtime Digital Games. I was immediately drawn to it by the mix of hand drawn art and 3D. 

I didn't get much direction for the trailer, but since they were confident the art spoke for itself, they wanted to highlight the setting of the game, and the music. Figuring out how to highlight the music was the most difficult part of making this trailer. There are some boss characters in the game that literally sing! Of the game's music cues, very few stuck out to me as good for the trailer.

To help narrow down the music, I sorted them into categories based on the pace and feel of each piece. So much of editing is just a series of processes to eliminate options. I wanted to use at least a small part of a boss' song in the trailer, but I knew it couldn't work for the entire trailer (or at least, I didn't know how to make it work).

The opening of the trailer mostly focuses on darker environments to fit the somber music

For the ending of the trailer I re-used the song in the reveal trailer by Trailer Squad, because nothing felt as climactic as that piece, and it had a very positive reaction in that trailer. But for this trailer I didn't cut to the lyrics until the trailer's climax.

The other idea I had for the trailer was based off of this remix video the composer of Figment put together by cutting together the main character hitting objects in the game. I briefly considered using that as the opening to the trailer, but decided that it wouldn't tell the audience enough about the game, and at worst would feel like I was trying to hide what the game really was by cutting so stylistically.

To help figure out the structure of the trailer I focused on the narrative by cutting together dialogue. The main character Dusty and Piper have quite a bit of banter, and some moments of exposition. The trailer didn't really fully click until I put in exposition from the Mayor character who speaks in verse. I realized that putting him at the beginning of the trailer immediately drew attention, because how many games have dialogue like that?

Certain lines of dialogue have a finality to them that dictate they come at the end of a section, and some sound like they should intro a new one, so I just went with it, and ended up creating a cold open.

I chose this shot for after the logo to contrast with the mostly dark shots of the cold open

For the section after the logo I used a piece of music that had some good energy for the exposition. This is also where I made a section that was similar to the composer's remix video. I thought this coupled with the Mayor's dialogue would make the trailer more interesting. Another happy accident was the rhythm of the Mayor's speech seemed to match the tempo of the music!

I went through one of the boss' songs, found a section I thought stood on its own pretty well, and just tried cutting it after the exposition. Surprise surprise, it sounded pretty good! I'm guessing it's because the cues are of the same or similar tempo. I requested an instrumental version of the boss' song to see if it would match better, but my original choice had better energy.

For the boss' song section I used shots of obstacles and combat because it matched the tone and subject. Piper's "Who the heck was that?" was a great line to follow up the end of the song, and segue to the last third. 

The rhythm of the blocks forming on this bridge perfectly matched the music for that section!

Up to this point I'd shown the lyrical quality of the game, the quirky sound design, a couple puzzle-y bits, and the obstacles. The end is where I wanted to show on the somber and sentimental tone. My hope is the change of music, and titles say to the audience: "But wait, there's more!" The end montage focuses on puzzles, cool environments, and some music video-like Mickey Mouse-ing where the movement of the shots match the music.

That's pretty much it! I'm astounded I managed to put all those different pieces of music together, and have it flow together. At least, I HOPE it sounds like that. I didn't have many significant changes to make once I presented my first cut; they were very pleased!

Orwell: Ignorance is Strength - Announce Trailer

I was very surprised to see this gig in my inbox because I really liked the the first trailer for Orwell by Marlon Wiebe. It turned out Marlon was unavailable, so my name was on the short list for people to contact!

In a myriad of ways this project was a very different beast from my previous work. The game was still in very early development, so I was told that game assets available to me would be minimal. The only assets I was provided with were some logos and fonts. They wanted to announce at Gamescom with a teaser, and they already had a general outline.

The first Orwell game is about a future where the government possesses surveillance equipment with seemingly limitless ability to spy on phone calls, emails, social media etc. The selection of information is done by the player, and it’s assumed in the fiction that you are one of many working with a handler to prevent terrorist activity etc.

The game doesn't specifically reference real life events or people, but for the teaser they very quickly establish the subject.

If you couldn’t tell from the teaser, this one is focused on information, and how it can be used to manipulate people etc. I wish we didn’t live in a time where it was so topical, but at the same time I hope it’s but one tool people have access to in order to think critically about the world.

The main idea was to use real life news clips cut together as a mood piece that would situate the audience into the subject of the game, and then reveal the game with a logo. I wasn’t sure if we were going to have access to voice talent or even if we’d be able to legally use the news clips, so I started with a couple approaches.

The first was just a dialogue edit of news clips very similar to the final trailer, but without any stock footage or motion graphics. I sent the first edit just to see if it was headed in the right direction, and added some sound design to ramp up the tension. I spent quite a while on YouTube looking up news channels, interviews and all sorts of videos related to current events or themes the client wanted to discuss in the game.

The second version I made was made using stock footage and some terrible scratch VO that I recorded by myself. My hope was if we went this route that I would work with the game’s writer to come up with some better lines, but for this version I tried writing some dialogue inspired by the many news clips I watched.

In After Effects I added a TV Pixel and tint effect to the live footage to help tie it together.

Even in those rough states, it was clear that the news clips version was much stronger, so we decided to go that route, and also incorporate stock footage into it. I also had to design motion graphics for the slow logo reveal.

The next version combined the news clips with stock footage and placeholder title cards for the graphics with some sound design to further show what I was going for. During the whole process we swapped out different news clips here and there. One concern was to make sure it wasn’t United States centered. Surprise Attack and Osmotic are in Australia and Germany, so that helped me get outside of my USA centered mentality. Though in the end, I think it still skews American since I was the one searching for most of the clips. This project made me acutely aware of how small my bubble is.

Since I was basically the only person with the time to look for clips, I was constantly aware that I should do my best to find a diverse set of voices. It still skews male and white, so that's something I would've liked to improve if given more time. For the video wall especially I did my best to keep the male/female ratio as close to 50/50 as possible, and include a variety of people of color. Overall I feel all right about what I achieved with the time and resources I had.

The other big part of this trailer was the logo reveal. I’ve owned Element 3D for a while, but I’ve produced very little using it because my lack of practice makes me favor designs that don’t require 3D. Of course, I know I’ll only improve if I push myself. This ended up being a good first project!

I wish I did more to fill out the space of the background, but I still like how they came out, and the film grain added made it extra nice.

I started by creating a vector version of the Orwell logo and learning how to create something in Element using multiple masks/textures etc. To start designing, I created a Pinterest board just to see the art styles, colors, gradients and effects elements people made. When designing graphics I’m always self conscious of things looking too “clean” so I struggle to figure out how to dirty them up a bit. I also watched a LOT of “logo reveals” on YouTube which all have a similar format of extreme closeups on the graphics before a wide show revealing the logo.

For the graphics I knew I wanted to intercut the logo slowly forming, but initially I was just experimenting with using Element 3D, so early versions didn’t have the Orwell logo shapes aligning as they would appear in the final version. I won’t bore you with tiny technical details, but sufficient to say I learned a lot about groups and the various controls, but I still came out of this project feeling like I had soooooo much more to learn.

Just looking at these controls gives me a headache. Then multiply it by 6

It felt like most of my time was spent rotating and adjusting position of the different pieces until I found a composition that was aesthetically pleasing. When I’m editing, the barrier between what I want to do, and actually executing is very low, but for 3D graphics it’s still INCREDIBLY HIGH which just means a lot of time futzing around because I don’t know precisely what buttons to press to get what I want.

For the final look of the news footage I experimented with some blue tinting, the TV Pixel plugin, and also film grain to dirty up the motion graphics. That seems to be the biggest takeaway for motion graphics, just add film grain :P I know that’s reductive, but it’s probably based somewhat in truth, because looking “too digital” I feel is definitely a concern for graphics.

I’m very proud of what I managed to make from virtually nothing, and happy I pushed myself to be more ambitious with my graphics than I have been in the past. It made me want to do some more 3D graphics, but it also made me want to do 2D graphics, because by comparison there’s so much less to think about when you remove that Z-axis.

In many ways this came together at the last minute. My main contacts were in Australia, and we had to be finished by end of day Sunday AEST time. That meant I was on my laptop between 11PM and 2AM Saturday night editing music in and tweaking the sound mix with the composer. I took some very quick naps while waiting for changes and feedback, but thankfully it all worked out.

I hope the trailer is received well. Obviously with such an amount of politically charged clips and subjects it won't appeal to everyone. My main worry was people finding it distasteful using the real life clips for a game trailer. I just hope I did my due diligence to make the trailer in a responsible way. I also hope to see what the final game is like, and how they tackle this very big and relevant subject matter.

Special thanks to Drew Taylor and Marla Fitzsimmons at Surprise Attack for coordinating, Matt Mclean for the amazing music and Otherworld Agency for coordinating the music!

Tacoma - Launch Trailer

About a week before Tacoma’s release, Steve Gaynor of Fullbright asked me if I had time to make a short 30 sec “available now” launch trailer. Of course I said yes, but I knew I’d only have a weekend to do it since at the time I was working an agency gig during the day, and on top of that I had another project I was already working on at night.

I managed to do this on a Sunday in about 7 hours (with some breaks for food/cats etc.), with only a few small tweaks the day after. My familiarity with the game greatly expedited my edit/capture creative decisions, otherwise I never would've considered taking on a project with so little time available. Well... it depends on the project :P

Steve’s initial idea was a short trailer that used the same music as the full trailer, and maybe some alternate takes from what I captured for E3. My first instinct was to avoid the full trailer’s music, lest the audience think they’re seeing more of the same from E3.

When capturing areas I used in the previous trailer I tried to use alternate angles. I also increased the FOV for this trailer to subtly distinguish it.

I constantly worry about fatiguing the audience with multiple trailers, especially when they're released in close proximity. If a game’s marketing campaign is going to incorporate multiple trailers, it’s imperative to make them unique enough to justify the audience’s attention. A guiding principle behind my creative choices is I never want the audience to think they’re seeing the limits of the game, and multiple trailers that showcase similar content is an easy way to do just that.

So instead I proposed a mini-trailer a la the Firewatch mini-trailers to show some pretty shots or a little vignette with dialogue from the game. Before working on this trailer I had booted up the game curious to see what sort of polish there had been since the end of May; I noticed some new subtle ambient music tracks. I requested all of that music, and one of them felt perfect!

My two ideas were: a montage of the Tacoma characters’ AR projections frozen in poses while the camera moves around them, and a version of that with a nice dialogue moment. As is often the case, the final result was a hybrid of the two.

For each of the "statue" shots I tried to find interesting, and expressive poses

First thing I did was cut down the music track from over a minute to what felt like a nice pace, but wasn’t too repetitive. The opening of the song doesn’t have much variation, so I made it shorter to get to the middle section faster. I also placed the title card and “available now” slate at the end, to block out how much room I had.

I went back to my selects strings from May, and the first thing I listened to was some dialogue from the space station’s AI, ODIN (by the way, future me always thanks past me for being organized, but also finds ways I could’ve organized better). For the launch trailer I considered using some exposition explaining the AR recordings central to the game, but found there wasn’t enough room for it in the story I wanted to tell. But since the plan for this trailer was to showcase the AR recordings, it was perfect!

I cut together a couple lines of ODIN’s dialogue, and not only did it provide the perfect backbone to the trailer, but its length fit the music! In fact, the breaks between the lines gave me a reason to cut the music down even further, and have it sound cohesive, and motivated.

Again, this shot was used in the first trailer, but I used a wider angle for this version.

With the ODIN dialogue cut in, I made a video outline using title cards to roughly block out the sort of shots I wanted to put into the trailer for each section. I didn’t know if Fullbright was going to be on board with this approach, so in the interest of time, I thought it best to show an outline before getting in too deep. I knew with this approach I’d still have the option of stripping out the dialogue, and going with the original plan. They ended up liking it, so I got started capturing!

For capture I re-rigged my improvised string/tape 3x3 grid for my TV, and set out looking for good still moments where the characters stood in interesting poses, or were arranged in a way that looked like it told a story. Moments when characters stand with their arms down aren’t very dynamic, but if the arms are in the air performing an action, it suddenly becomes that much more interesting!

For the climax I wanted to find areas that had a lot of movement in the frame when fast forwarding or rewinding, and then a bonus for characters going into the screen for the very end.

The climax included a lot of AR characters going into the camera to ramp up the intensity. This still almost looks like it's from some sort of horror game

I was very pleased with the end result; Fullbright had just a few small tweaks, and it was done! I like that I got to solve multiple problems with this one trailer even though the original idea was just to show some pretty images and put a date on it. I think this manages to teach the audience a bit more about the universe, and set it to pretty images and music.

Tacoma is OUT NOW! Obviously I’m biased, but if you’re interested in unique game narratives, definitely check it out!

Full Throttle Remastered - Story Trailer

I keep saying this, but this was a dream project! I can’t help that there’s so much cool stuff that I want to work on!

Full Throttle came out when I was in high school; my first memory of it was watching a friend play it on PC. That was back when I used to go to Comp USA and Micro Center just in case a new game came out for Mac (I had no way of knowing release dates). I was OVERJOYED when I saw the box on the shelf. By then I knew the answers to all the puzzles, but I bought it, and loved it all the same.

I got this gig via Double Fine’s community manager James Spafford (aka Spaff). I’ve known Spaff since he was community manager at Media Molecule. We first met at a PAX West Double Fine party via Chris Remo of Campo Santo who at the time was Double Fine’s community manager. Chris and Spaff are two of the original founders of Idle Thumbs before it was even a podcast.

Still one of the best openings to a game ever.

Around when Full Throttle Remastered was coming out, I talked to Spaff about making a fan trailer for it, and instead I got to make an official trailer for it! The most important thing about this opportunity is I had access to the clean dialogue files. In the game a lot of the dialogue is mixed with music and/or sound effects, so there’d be no other way to get that clean audio.

My approach for this trailer was exactly the same as the fan/spec trailers I make for games like Uncharted. Full Throttle isn’t a very long game, but I didn’t feel too much obligation to avoid spoilers since it’s been out for so long. I also felt emboldened by the previous trailers by 2-Player Productions which used shots from all over the game. Still, I tried to avoid certain story moments because I want people to experience the game for themselves.  

I couldn’t resist a lot of these money shots. But there’s still a LOT of stuff in the game that you can’t get from even the most spoilery trailer.

The hardest part of making this trailer was finding the right music from the soundtrack. I only had the game’s score by Peter McConnell and soundtrack by The Gone Jackals to work from; a lot of it didn’t immediately jump out as having the sorts of highs and lows that are good for trailers. My main concern was that the best cue for after the logos was very energetic. One of the easiest ways to make a trailer monotonous is to have the energy level be the exact same the entire time. So if I started high, where could I go from there?

Fortunately the cue I used for the middle section did have JUST ENOUGH variation that it worked. There are also some very badass guitar riffs that worked wonders for the transitions. Of course the finale had to end with the main theme “Legacy,” which took things up another notch. The lesson here is that regardless of tempo, music with lyrics will always be more dramatic than instrumentals (in trailers at least).

Full Throttle is incredibly cinematic; this is one of the top reasons I wanted to make a trailer for it.

The other thing I wanted to do was repeat the intro dialogue at the end of the trailer. This is something I took from the trailer for the movie Crank. I love that structure in trailers, and it felt especially appropriate to use for a noir like Full Throttle.

After doing my trailer sound design, I handed over my audio tracks to Camden Stoddard at Double Fine so he could insert the missing bits of sound design from the game that I couldn’t get clean, and do a full sound mix. I gave him a couple rounds of notes to tweak the mix (I could’ve done it in one round, but I neglected to mention something the first time, sorry Camden!). I’m SO happy with how the final mix turned out; the most important thing for me was that the music really carry the trailer since it’s such an important part of the game.

Full Throttle is one of my favorite games; I'm so happy I had this opportunity to make a badass trailer (at least I HOPE it's badass). Of course thank you to Tim Schafer and the original LucasArts team for the amazing game/memories, and the Double Fine team for the remaster!

I hope it encourages many more people to play it!

Ooblets - E3 Trailer

Another trailer for Ooblets! In my post above, I talked a great deal about the great debug camera tools for Ooblets; things only got better this time around!

For starters there was a new flycam controlled via keyboard and mouse. This gave me the means to get cool shots that were either not possible in previous builds or simply more difficult to achieve. 

For example, the first shot is me tracking in with the flycam while simultaneously controlling the character with the controller. This meant I had to use the gamepad thumbsticks to control the character while pressing the up-arrow key on my keyboard with my index finger. 

This shot was probably possible in previous builds, but was much easier this time around!

Since the first trailer only came a few months ago, I wanted the trailer to have its own look and feel. This partially translated into more wide shots; hopefully I was successful in keeping the audience interested even if they’d seen the first trailer.

Character customization is the biggest addition to the game since the previous trailer. Now all the Ooblets have accessories, and the player character has customizable skin color, hair style, hair color, and several articles of clothing. Also, the way the character customization is set up, there is never a prompt to choose your gender; you simply choose your hair and clothing!

Since there were so many customization options we wanted to feature a diverse cast of playable characters.

For music we collaborated with Pedro Silva of Slime Girls. For most of the process I worked with a rough cut Pedro made. The rough track wasn’t dramatically from the end result, but he did add a new section that I used for the dancing montage.  

The other highlight for the trailer is a new region that’s quite distinctive from the rest of the Ooblets world. Along with the new stuff, it was still important to quickly review the basics of the gameplay of Ooblets just in case it’s first trailer someone sees for the game.

The environment is dark, but there are a lot of highlights and points of interest to look at

Some other new debug toys were a menu accessible via controller, some buttons to quickly turn off all UI elements via the controller, and lots more that helped shave time off my game capturing. For the dance montage scene Becky made a blank world where I could choose random color backgrounds or input hexidecimals to get specific colors. I took full advantage of this new tool by using it for the split screen dance montage. 

I love the dancing in Ooblets, so of course I wanted to show as much as possible

Another very fun trailer to make for Ooblets! Hopefully I succeeded in making it distinctive enough that people still enjoy and share it. The game still doesn’t come out until sometime in 2018, so I can’t even imagine what it’s going to look like by the time it’s released!

Tacoma - Launch Day Trailer

Another dream project! I love Gone Home (and first person narrative games in general) so as soon as Tacoma was announced I knew I wanted to make a trailer for it. When I heard Fullbright planned on releasing in mid 2017, I emailed Steve Gaynor to see if they needed help with their launch trailer (couldn’t hurt, right?).

That’s how I got the gig!

Of course, that’s not all it took to get the gig. I previously edited the trailer for Gone Home on console, and I’d talked to Steve multiple times at various trade shows. In fact while at GDC when I was eating by myself at a Vietnamese restaurant, Steve coincidentally got seated next to me during the middle of my meal; we talked a bit before he had to rush off to do some Tacoma promotion.

As someone who makes trailers, it’s never lost on me that a lot of the job is just reminding people you exist! Despite all the times we talked I never once assumed that I was a shoo-in to get to work on Tacoma. So I’m glad I sent the email, and everything all worked out! 

A science fiction game with sign language logins? How could I NOT want to work on this??

Tacoma is now in my top 3 games to capture for! (the others are Quadrilateral Cowboy and Ooblets).

The game takes place on an apparently empty space station which your character Amy Ferrier is investigating. You do this by examining the environment, and via Augmented Reality recordings of past events. These playback in the physical space as if the people were really there walking around (but appear instead as colored holograms)

At any point during playback you can pause, rewind or fast-forward the recordings. It’s necessary to do this because you can only hear conversations in your immediate vicinity. For game capture purposes, this meant at the press of a button I could rewind a scene, change the camera angle, and get a new take with a different shot composition. 

I bet there are live-action directors who wish they could rewind an actor’s performance and film from a different angle

While capturing Tacoma I also made a 3X3 grid for my monitor via some blue tape and string. This helped me compose shots using the rule of thirds. I’ll have to come up with a way to quickly set up this grid on my monitor because this is something I’ll definitely use in the future! One of my favorite Twitter accounts is Comp Cam which overlays various line formations to illustrate beautiful shot compositions in film and TV.

My makeshift 3x3 grid. I was too lazy to take it off at lunch time; I ended up seeing how "Midnight Diner: Tokyo Stories" used the rule of thirds.

This trailer is an expanded version of the teaser that played at the Microsoft E3 Press Conference. Fullbright licensed the music cue "Find Me" by Szjerdene, and made cutdowns of the song for both the teaser and full trailer. The full trailer includes song lyrics, but the teaser just uses instrumental portions of the cue.

First thing I did was very rough capture of all the dialogue (excluding spoilery sections). For the first pass I didn’t care about shot composition, because there was no sense putting that time in until I knew what lines I was using. I also marked up the music so I could see the gaps between the lyrics where I could potentially intercut dialogue.

Before editing with a piece of music, I put color coded markers so I can know the structure of it at a glance. Here, the red sections are lyrics.

The basic story for the trailer was: accident occurs on the space station, the crew members are worried what’s going to happen.

That doesn’t sound like much, but it felt like enough to entice the audience to want to know more. To pare down the dialogue I selected lines that had quick exposition about the situation, and lines that illustrated the stories of the individual characters.

In my first rough cut, the accident scene was in a cold open followed by Amy investigating in the station and watching more recordings. I threw that idea out because I decided that 90 seconds of the crew being worried might overstay its welcome. So instead I integrated the accident into the first half of the trailer.

There’s only so many times I can show the characters like this before it becomes redundant at best, and less affecting at worst

The lyrics of the song are very appropriate to the story because it refers to picking up pieces of something to discover what was going on. Trailers aren’t the most subtle artform out there, so I just cut visuals that literally matched those lines. I intercut the dialogue with pretty visuals, a bit of gameplay, and small visual story bits like the low oxygen meter. Everything in the backend of the trailer was cut to support each character’s little story within the trailer.

Once I had a dialogue edit for the trailer I went back into the game to find the best angles for each line of dialogue. If it wasn't immediately apparently what angle would look best I simply captured from a few angles that I thought looked good, then tried them out in the cut to see which one fit best. It cannot be overstated how much easier the rewind mechanic made this process and dramatically sped up the creative process. It was fun acting like a digital steadicam operator in the game, and trying my best to get as smooth a camera movement as possible while also making the composition look very pretty!

“Pick up those pieces they lead to me…”

Steve and Karla really liked my first cut, and only had some very minor notes about shuffling up the backend dialogue and swapping in a few lines. Other than that, very little was changed!

The song choice for this trailer played no small part in how much fun it was to edit. Great build up, pertinent lyrics, and a beautiful climax. I love cutting in visuals that go well with the feel of the music. Intercutting dialogue between song lyrics isn’t something I get to do often, but it adds a nice extra layer of story.

This was a tremendously fun project to work on, and I really love how the trailer came out! It simply cannot be repeated enough how smoothly a project can be when there’s good music to work with. All of that on top of the gorgeous visuals, and the rewind mechanic translated into one of my favorite recent projects!

Cosmic Trip (VR) - Launch Trailer

The final trailer for Cosmic Trip; this was my first ever series of trailers for a VR game. In a way, it going through Steam Early Access was a way for me to gradually learn about doing a trailer for a VR game. The first trailer was slow and methodical in order to show exactly what you're doing in the game. At the time VR was still very new (at the writing of this post it arguably still is), so I thought it was important to not abstract the game too much with fast cutting. The second trailer was intended to build upon the first trailer by shortening the "tutorial" part of the trailer, then going a more traditional route of exciting capture and faster cutting. 

It was important to get a lot of new stuff out of the way as soon as possible for the early access purchasers, but also it's just good to show variety!

For the final trailer we had a lot of ground to cover. The game as it existed during the first two trailers was a wave-based survival game where you fight increasingly difficult waves of enemies attacking you. In the final game the primary game is a real time strategy game where there's a MUCH larger map, and enemy bases that you take over. 

The good news from the get go was I had new music to edit to! The music for the first two trailers was good, but for the final trailer I wanted something bigger, faster, and more exciting. The composer Emeen Zarookian took a first pass on the trailer music, but I thought the mood and tempo wasn't quite right. I wanted to give him as much time to compose as possible, but since I hadn't captured any footage yet, I made a timeline using colored title cards, bits of his first draft, and existing music from the game. The colors behind the title cards were to indicate where I thought the music should shift or change in tempo. On the second try, the track was ready to go!

An early timeline with color mattes behind text indicating shot ideas for that particular section. This rough outline was sent to the composer.

Another key tool available this time was a 3rd person camera set up by one of Funktronic Labs' programmers Coty Getzelmann. The camera let me get a number of shots impossible to get with the headset, and most importantly helped me make visuals for the story of the trailer. I also had a lot of help from Coty and Kalin setting options that affected the game's economy, where enemies spawned, and other things that made capture much faster.

Options in the Default.json file, with some of the changes for trailer capture not indented.

The intention of the opening shots was to show the game from the perspective of a traditional real time strategy game, then show the audience "Nope, you actually play it in FIRST PERSON." I'm not 100% sure this comes across; irregardless I think it made for a cool opening shot. Originally I wanted to be doing lots of action upon "landing" but ended up with a more of a "Getting ready for battle" vibe. 

After the logo there are some establishing shots to show environment variety, and introduce the enemy base. This was meant to show some scope, but also important to show Early Access purchasers that there's more stuff in the game now. Technically the enemy base can appear anywhere on the map, but to communicate visually I put the enemy base in the cave so when the audience sees a dark shot they'd instantly know it's the enemy base (hopefully!). The structures in the enemy base are randomly generated, so I had to reload a number of times before getting a formation I found aesthetically pleasing.

These are ostensibly the same shot, but hopefully at this point you understand the cave is where the enemy base is, and the bright area is the player's base.

The next section I quickly go over the basic economics of the game which is gems and ectoplasm. Not sure how this reads to a new audience, but at the very least the visuals and sounds are very appealing. I chose not to dwell on it too much in favor of more action. I figured seeing numbers with a + next to it would show that there's an in-game economy.

Since the story we're telling in this trailer is more complicated, I decided it was necessary to have some graphics, but I thought it'd be cooler if they could be integrated with the gameplay. It made sense to have the word "CONSTRUCT" literally being constructed the same way the other devices in the game are. These text elements were implemented by Coty into a special build of the game. 

The field of view for the computer's monitor vs the headset was very different. To get this shot I had to get what felt VERY close to the text, with it relatively high in my view.

The process of building fabricators, inserting batteries, inserting disks and bots popping out was intercut with enemies spawning at the base. I didn't want to spend too much time away from the enemy base for fear the audience would lose that thread of the trailer. The word "DEPLOY" then pops out just before showing how the player deploys bots by throwing them around, then we see enemies encroaching on the base so that the audience hopefully understands that enemies constantly attack you.

Next up is the section about "CONTROL" which shows the game's map for the first time. This was one of the first moments we came up with, showing a familiar mechanic of selecting units on a map and sending them somewhere, but then being able to look up to see those very units flying out in first person view! I also added a quick first person whip-pan of the bots flying because it just looked cool. On the way to the base there's a shot which showcases some new architecture in the game as they pass the word "CONQUER."

The map is one of many big new mechanics in the full version!

Finally things get really heated as the bots invade the enemy base, and we switch to some first person chaos as the player is fighting the base. This is probably not the best strategy in the game, but it looks pretty cool. Late in the process almost all the cave shots had to be recaptured because in the game some art elements are only rendered when the player camera is present (in order to save memory). Since I was using a 3rd person camera a lot of the time, those effects weren't present, so I had to move the player headset camera to the cave, and then switch to the 3rd person camera to see everything as it should be.

One of the many cool 3rd person shots I captured for the trailer. This shot involved a lot of moving units on the map with the headset on, then quickly removing it to pick up a controller to get the shot on my monitor.

With the basic story of the game loop established I go into full montage mode showing different items like bombs, the bubble gun, shield knockback, and an environment in a waterfall area. One thing we wanted to address was the variety of colors now in the game because of environments and morning/day/night time periods. To avoid visual confusion I decided the bulk of the trailer should simply be outdoors and in the cave, but for the montage I thought it was fine to throw in the waterfall environment since continuity was no longer a concern (plus it's very pretty!) Some combos were special requests like shield knockback, catching enemy bullets, melee saw attacks, and decorations for the friend bot ^_^ The other shots in the montage were just moments or mechanics I thought were cool, and communicated quickly. 

This shot was originally just waving to the friend bot in the desert, but I accommodated two separate notes by waving, throwing on sunglasses, and capturing it in the waterfall environment!

Finally came the question of how to refer to the game now that it was out of Early Access. Should we just say "Cosmic Trip" ? Should we put a 1.0 after the title? My first idea was to have the Cosmic Trip logo with "Early Access" underneath that I would then destroy with a frisbee. Coty came up with the idea of replacing "Early Access" with 1.0, but visually the 1.0 next to the logo didn't work well. So he came up with the alternative "COMPLETE" which I think worked great! I have a paranoid fear that people will instantly turn off the trailer once they see "Early Access" but I tried to get the frisbee up as soon as possible so they'll see it get destroyed.

An elegant solution that solved multiple problems. I would've never thought to ask if another word could pop up once the "Early Access" was destroyed. Collaboration is great!

Phew! I'm really happy with how this trailer came out! I've said many times before that good music makes the entire process a joy to work on. Good music plus good material is pretty much the most a trailer editor can hope for. Special thanks to the Funktronic Labs team for the opportunity to work on their juicy as hell VR game. Seriously, the game is just smooth, polished and juicy as all heck, which made it tremendously fun to work on.

I hope a lot of other VR games steal the great ideas in Cosmic Trip!

The Wild Eternal - Launch Trailer

The Wild Eternal is a first person exploration game where you play an old woman who is exploring a foggy land in her quest to escape the cycle of rebirth/reincarnation. You interact with a demi-god fox, and as you play the game you learn more about your own story and the fox's. I got this gig via referral from Josh Cauller!

The game was primarily developed by brothers Scott Goodrow and Casey Goodrow over the course of several years. When I started the project they had a lot of questions about the direction for the trailer. Atypical of games in the narrative exploration genre, The Wild Eternal has a "skill tree" where the player gains new abilities like: more stamina, the ability to jump further, ability to slide down cliffs etc. A lot of early conversations were about whether or not to highlight these mechanics, but after playing a bit of the game I decided it wouldn't be the correct approach. The reason for this is that the audience looking for a good story aren't likely to be playing for unique game mechanics, and people looking for unique game mechanics won't feel challenged by what mechanics are there. tl;dr is to know your audience.

The first person exploration genre is something a lot of people are experimenting with, but past successes have shown that there are people interested in these games despite a vocal minority decrying them as not being "real games." That said, it's still important to find what is unique about the game in order for it to stand out from the crowd. The Wild Eternal's art style first and foremost is beautiful and striking, but the story is what the audience is going to be looking for.

This shot was to show off not just the beautiful design, but show variety!

After playing through a lot of the game to see the unique environments, items and mechanics, I went through a text document that contained all the dialogue in the game. There's a lot of dialogue that contains stories about the player, the fox, the world of the game and more. But most of the dialogue was focused on too small a part of the game for the trailer, so I looked for dialogue that focused on grand themes, the player's overarching story, the player's perspective on their life, and some big philosophical ideas the fox talks to the player about. 

The script from these selected dialogues became the backbone of the trailer, and the rest of the focus was on good capture, and showing the variety in the games. Just because the mechanics weren't the primary focus didn't mean we didn't use them at all, so they became the "action" bits between the dialogues to keep the pacing interesting.

While I said story was most important, variety is still very important! That's why I cut to the interior shot after only two shots in the foggy area. That's my way of showing the audience that there's variety in the game. Had the 3rd or 4th shots looked very similar to the first two, they might conclude there's very little scope to the environments (yes, I worry about the audience getting bored after just four shots!) 

While mechanics aren't the focus of the trailer, they add a bit of action and interest to the trailer

The rest of the trailer I tried to build up the "intensity" of game mechanics while the music builds and crescendos. For example, the Fox appearing is very simple, walking with the compass is more mechanical, animals show variety and scope, compass activating something is very "game-y", and same with the tears opening the gate.

At 1:18 is one of my favorite parts as the music crescendos and the candles light up. I captured a version early on which had fewer candles, but they liked it so much that Scott went in to add more candles, and made a custom build that let me set the proximity at which the candles would turn on. This let me get the perfect shot with candles activating at precisely the right moment.

One final behind the scenes thing is the randomly generated dialogue. The game uses a system to procedurally generate spoken gibberish dialogue based on samples from the voice actors. For the trailer I captured as much of this random dialogue as I could so that I could "match" the emotion and intonation of each line so that they fit the text on the screen. 

Pace is a very subjective thing, but this project let me explore how to keep it up for what is essentially a very slow and meditative trailer/game. Hopefully I succeeded in keeping the audience's attention, and people check out the game!

Thimbleweed Park - Launch Trailer

It's finally out!

For this trailer I had the least amount of direction, but Ron really wanted the trailer to pose questions that left the audience wanting to play the game to find out the answers. Since all the voice over was recorded, I knew it was my opportunity to do my take-a-ton-of-dialogue-and-make-a-trailer approach. Ron sent me a text document with all the dialogue in the game. It was A LOT. According to Microsoft Word, it was over 10,000 lines of dialogue. Some of it was redundant, but it was still A LOT. 

First thing I did was skim through looking for broad stroke plot points, and exposition about the town, the story, and characters. In a trailer it's usually better to focus on the big picture, and a lot of dialogue was for very specific moments that require more context. But for example, an NPC saying something like "This is a small town..." is perfect for trailers. It took me a few days, but I whittled it down and separated the dialogue into text documents where I sorted by different categories. For example one had sections like: Exposition - Thimbleweed Park, Exposition - The Body, Generic phrases etc. 

Look at the file sizes to get an idea of how much work it took to distill the dialogue down.

From this sorted dialogue I did a paper edit that covered the broad strokes of the story that went from a cold open to get attention, to exposition about the town, exposition about each character, and then some grand sounding statements from each to sum the whole thing up. I sent that draft to Ron, and he worked on some additions with the rest of the team to flesh out some story bits, and insert some gags and in-jokes. He also wanted to have title cards for each character. Title cards are nice for trailer editing because they give you things to cut to/with. For example, a simple way to get attention or add "flair" is to cut title cards on the hard beats of the music.

This was also my first opportunity to do some design work after taking School of Motion's Design Bootcamp class. The title cards ended up being rather simple, but It felt good to have a process to go through in order to get to those final designs. I started by making a Pinterest board of inspiration. I definitely wanted a noir look, it was just a matter of which look to go with. I did some sketches based on the board, and ended up with a character, text next to them and a diagonal highlight emphasized by the rotation of the text and some fake venetian blind highlights on the characters. I also added some grain for texture. My original plan was to make multiple versions to present, but what ended up happening instead was by the time I reached the final version, I thought all my previous ones were utter crap so I just threw them away.

Some of the iterations I went through before arriving at the final design of the titles. At one point I thought of giving each character a "title."

The difficult part for the editing was figuring out the music. I didn't mind reusing music from old trailers, but this trailer was shaping up to be at least 2 minutes long which is already long by game trailer standards. What I ended up doing was using a very slow and moody track for the beginning so by contrast the middle section would have more energy, and then the end montage is where it really kicks in. Once the character cards start, I'm using the music from the Town area of the game which had several iterations that worked nicely to demarcate each section.

I also inserted small action moments here and there to break up the dialogue. This extended the length to just over 2.5 minutes. Hopefully the audience is engrossed enough in the story that they keep watching. I also finished the end off with some film noir trailer-style inspired graphics. 

I'm very pleased with how this trailer came out, and also all the work I got to do on the previous trailers!

The Occupation - Announce Trailer

I got this gig through via a referral from some developer friends of White Paper Games (I forgot to ask who it was). I got excited when I received this email because I was familiar with their previous game Ether One, and I'm a fan of first person narrative games in general.

This was their newest unannounced game. They sent me a trailer draft they were 80% satisfied with, and wanted to see what I could do to improve upon it. I took a look at what they had, and immediately saw some issues that need to be addressed by essentially throwing almost all of it away, and coming up with a totally new structure.

The first draft leaned more heavily on this argument, but it was trimmed to make the story clearer

In the game you're a journalist who is in a government building right after an act has been passed which is very similar to The Patriot Act in the United States. There's also been a terrorist attack recently on the building, and it's up to you to investigate and report the story. If that wasn't unique enough already, the game is realtime over the course of four hours. The only other game I can think of that does this is Jordan Mechner's The Last Express. That setup means that there are certain events and actions NPCs take in the game that happen at specific times, so if you're not there to see them then you don't see them at all.

The first draft of the trailer was centered around an argument between the characters Scarlet and Charles. The problems were that many parts of the conversation were meaningless without greater context, so they muddied up the narrative. I rewrote the trailer using a mix of existing dialogue, scratch voiceover bits, and some background about the game's story. The simpler narrative boiled down to: Terrorist attack, Scarlet is being accused, immigrants are being blamed for bad things in the country, the government might be untrustworthy, player needs to investigate, and Charles is going do something, but what??

An early shot to emphasize the realtime nature of the gameplay by highlighting a clock and your watch

From this structure we concentrated on what gameplay moments to highlight. Some key things were: sneaking/investigating, the player's realtime watch, hacking into computers, pneumatic tubes, NPCs using sign language, and more investigating. I made some rough cuts using capture from an early build of the game. The last thing I sent off was an edit with text overlays to indicate the shot types that should appear in those moments. For logistical reasons I couldn't do the final capture or edit, because it very much came down to the wire before the debut. Also an 8 hour time zone difference made turnarounds more difficult.

All that said, I still feel a sense of ownership over the trailer, and I'm pleased with how it turned out!

Ooblets - Teaser Trailer

I got this gig via Chris Dwyer with whom I worked on the console version of Gone Home, and A Boy and His Blob.

Ooblets is an indie game being made by Rebecca Cordingly and Benjamin Wasser. I already followed Becky on Twitter because I saw the ADORABLE gifs she frequently posts for Ooblets, and at some point she followed me back (or was it the other way around?). We talked in November 2016 about me possibly working on a trailer for the game, but for reasons out of their control, they weren't sure when they needed the trailer by until about... a week before they needed it. 

With a time frame like that we had to get the ball rolling right away! Good thing we were working with composer Calum Bowen who had some music ideas already. He quickly iterated on some ideas with Becky to hone in on the right sound. After he had a couple tracks, we did some back and forth where I would cut the music together according to how long I thought each section should be, then he would either change it to accommodate my edits, or let me know which edits would be too difficult to accommodate. Once we had the sections figured out, he went to work on fleshing out the instrumentation while I got to editing.

Plant growing timelapse gif!

Because of the bountiful wealth of Ooblets gifs, I was able to use those in my sequence as an animatic to get my basic concept across so I could get the OK from Becky and Ben, and then do the high quality capture. Some very basic ideas like: when to show farming, when to show ooblets, how many ooblets, when to show NPCs etc. That went pretty quickly, and then it was time to capture!

This year I went to my first ever GDC, and I feel like I spent most of my time there gushing to other devs about the debug tools I had for Ooblets. Becky added in some great features that made the capture process smooth as butter. The best features by FAR were that I was able to offset the camera either by zooming, panning, rotating etc. but have it still be attached to the player! This meant I could do "steadicam" shots from any angle. Also there was an option to detach the camera from the player, so I could move her independently while the camera stayed static. There was also a toggle for camera speed, and lots of tools for managing ooblets. Becky quickly updated the build for me as I came up with new requests. All in all, it was the best capture experience I've had next to Quadrilateral Cowboy.

The in-game camera is never at this zoom/height, but with the offset camera it was dirt simple to do!

For the structure of the trailer it was important for me that we get the "cool" part as soon as possible. Kind of like how James Bond and Peter Jackson films have an action packed cold open. Same idea applied here, except for cute stuff! This meant showing Ooblets, and plants growing before showing the farming which is less visually interesting.

In film, there's the idea of a "line of rising action", but for trailers I think it's good to have a line that starts high, then comes back down, and then rises from there. Especially in this day and age, we can't afford to not grab attention as soon as possible! So the trailer goes from a quick intro, to plants growing, ooblets, and then back to the "how" part of the trailer which eventually ends in a TON of Ooblets. Then of course dancing for the grand finale, because the dancing in the game is some of the best/cutest I've seen in any game. I also really like the denoument, because it's a nice way to bookend the trailer. It wasn't my intention, but the trailer functions rather like an example of what might happen in one day of playing Ooblets.

Overall, one of my favorite game trailer making experiences so far, and the reaction to it made it all the better!

Thimbleweed Park - Ransome Trailer

Another Thimbleweed Park trailer! This one was another pretty quick turnaround. Ron had written the script, but otherwise had no direction for me. This one was fun because I got to use some different music, and really shape some discreet sections for the trailer.

While every good trailer does have some sort of beginning, middle, and end, I don't always feel like I'm editing a story trailer. It's an arbitrary distinction, but I feel much more like I'm editing a trailer when I get to play with the timing via stop downs, rises and transitions. I got to do a lot of that for this trailer, so I had a lot of fun!

As with the previous trailers, Ron did all the final capture. This trailer was the first to have on-screen lip sync, which from what I understand involved some new code that was added to the game.

While I did end up reusing a lot of music from previous trailers, the circus music, and montage sequence gave some nice energy. Fun fact: before I had the official *beeps* for Ransome's cursing I used the beeps from the swearing telekinetic character from the LucasArts game "Sam & Max Hit the Road." I knew almost no one would ever see that version, but it was just a little fun thing I did while I was working.

Another bonus to this trailer was that when the game composer saw my music edit, he said he thought it was good enough that he didn't have to do any work on it. Whoo!

Pit People - Early Access Launch Trailer

At this point I've already made a number of trailers for Pit People, but this was the first big launch of the game.

This was a somewhat difficult project because of some big creative decisions that were out of my control. Initially we were making this trailer using some old narration that Stamper found in his archives. It wasn't explicitly to describe the game, but it allowed for some tenuous visual connections that worked well enough simply because of Stamper's amazing execution.

For most of the process I was using the music track for the character Sofia, which is a Spanish guitar cue with a lot of energy, and a nice arc to it. My thinking was that by virtue of the Sofia track being so different, it would expand the breadth of the game. It was decided that track was too different from music used in previous trailers, so we changed it to something more quirky. Then late in the process we realized the narration was so old that Stamper's voice for the narrator had changed enough that it wouldn't match the game. This meant the narration I was cutting around had to be removed entirely. Without the narration I had to recut the entire trailer so that music and sound effects were front and center.

For the graphics I really wanted them to look like they fit into the universe more. In retrospect I wasn't happy with the scroll graphics I made for the previous trailer because of how flat they looked. This time Dan Paladin was able to hand letter the words. I added some bouncy animation, and combined them with hexes from the in-game UI. I think these titles have much more personality, and I'm pretty pleased with how they came out.