Should game trailers start with logos? No, in most cases no. Just don’t do it, the odds are people won’t recognize it.
Read on for a more in-depth explanation of logo use in trailers!
Here’s a quick and easy way to roughly sound mix music with dialogue without the use of keyframes and rubber bands. This method is fast and easy to use with keyboard shortcuts, and also very easy to adjust later on!
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Most trailers try to open big, fast, and bombastic, but is it possible to start slow? Yes, of course it is! Here are some examples of trailers which pull us in with their slow intros, and why they work.
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People always ask me how long a game trailer should be. There’s no one answer, but there is a bigger question of how video length and label affects the audience expectations. Calibrate expectations properly, and the necessary length of video will become clearer.
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“Show, don’t tell” is the age old mantra of filmmaking, and it’s even more important for trailers, because advertising is literally trying to get the audience to buy something, not just “buy in” to a story. Here’s why showing works better than telling, and why telling is so dangerous.
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It’s very easy to make a video game trailer look generic. What are the common pitfalls trailers which cause this to happen?
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Trailers don’t need to tell everything about a story, and there are many cases in which providing more information makes a less effective trailer. Here’s why character names and other minutiae are at the top of the list for things to leave out.
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The trailer for the missing-person thriller Searching is a film told entirely through screens. Not only is it a great trailer, but the storytelling hurdles it faces are very similar to those for game trailers!
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What can a 4 second Vine with only two shots in it teach you about trailer editing? It turns out, a whole lot.
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Trailers are best when they’re a means of telling a story, but sometimes you barely need any plot details to make something entertaining to watch. How do you do more with less?
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People often have the impulse to put as much into their trailers as physically possible, but this is frequently the exact wrong approach to take. Why does showing less work better?
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The burden of depicting player verbs is something unique to the art of making game trailers. What is the best way to show them visually without resorting to a voiceover explaining the game point by point?
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The trailer for “Emily is Away Too” is a clever, 4th wall breaking trailer that is not only stylistically interesting, but it succeeds in showing the audience exactly what the game is all about!
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A list of the different video specifications, and age rating guidelines necessary to get your video game trailers approved by the major consoles and ratings.
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This is a multi part series of posts about the different “acts” of a trailer. In the age of scrolling feeds of auto-playing video, the Cold Open is more relevant than ever. Here is how it can hook the audience’s attention
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