Game Trailer Editor
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A guide through all my posts about game trailer making from conception, to capture, editing, polishing, and finishing!

 

I'm so happy you're interested in making trailers! This page will guide you through my trailer making process. If you don’t even have any editing software yet, start here to get some of your most basic tools!

If you’ve never edited any video for games before, this guide will get you up to speed.

For the quickest summary of game trailer structure, watch this excellent Game Maker’s Toolkit video; it uses a lot of my material and trailers.

If you need some quick tips, first read my 10 Most Common Indie Game Trailer Mistakes.

If scrolling through this page feels like too much time and effort to put together, my online course is the quickest way to get through my pre-production process!

Otherwise, here’s an overview of my site:

TRAILER EDITING includes the most easily applicable trailer editing lessons.

TRAILER ESSAYS are ways to make you think analytically about trailers.

TRAILER REVIEWS are shot by shot analyses of my favorites.

CASE STUDIES are how I make my trailers; these might help you learn how to make a trailer for a game similar to yours.

TRAILER RESOURCES are posts with technical information like recommended software and hardware, trailer specifications, the best debug tools, etc.

If you need a chat to fix up your trailer, book a consultation.

The Easiest Game Trailer Templates

To start making a trailer NOW, here are my templates tiered from easiest to most difficult.

- The Simplest Trailer to Make For Your Steam Page - For the devs who need to get a bare bones trailer on their Steam page only (not for posting on social media, YouTube, etc.)

- The 2nd Easiest Trailer to Make: Tell, Show, Repeat - A simple and versatile template for structuring a game trailer by using title cards and matching gameplay

Pre-production

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First, some quick resources: My trailer making checklist walks you through my process with a brief explanation of each step. If you’re a trailer editor starting work with a developer, here’s a list of what assets to request, and here's how to build your trailer sound effects library.

If you're making remixes or fan videos, here’s a tutorial for getting footage from movies and games without music.

Concept

Making a trailer starts with knowing whether or not you have enough game to make a trailer! If you do, then it’s time to have a conversation about the game’s message or elevator pitch. I did this talk about messaging with my PR & Marketing expert friend Dana Trebella. You need to find the heart of your game and differentiate it from all your inspirations and games in similar genres. Show the dream, not the job.

You need to know who your audience is, and a good place to start is the marketing funnel which is expertly exemplified by Snow Runner’s amazing trailer campaign.

A trailer is a way to communicate with an audience, you need to do research so you know how to cater to them. Sometimes it’s good to literally speak to your audience through the trailer if your game’s concept is difficult to understand, otherwise you need to know how to write effective title cards.

Where you are in your game’s marketing timeline affects the type of trailer you should make. If you’re not sure whether or not you need to hire a trailer editor, here are some things to consider. If you’re not sure what trailer editors really do, here’s a rundown.

Capture

Game capture is the filmmaking of game trailers. Here’s my philosophy for how to capture footage. As you capture you need to inventory the things in the game so you know what you’re working with. After that you need to evaluate your game capture. Then you have to break down the visuals and dialogue!

Editing

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Editing and creative direction are the biggest part of the process. First thing to know is this overview of the workflow for editing a game trailer.

Start with my simple game trailer templates, and my post about creating a video outline to fill in that intimidating blank timeline, and here’s step two once you’ve made an outline.

If you want to start with trailer editing 101 here are the basics of trailer story structure (and here’s a more detailed one). Next, my post about trailer music teaches how to structure a trailer based on the music. If you want to get serious about music editing here’s how I prepare music for editing.

How to Hook an Audience

Hooking the audience as soon as possible is essential in the age of auto-playing videos and social media, so I wrote an entire post about cold opens.This topic is so big I wrote another post on it. Related, here’s a post about optimizing a trailer for social media.

Editing - Tutorial Structure

If you're making a game trailer, you have to both excite and educate the audience. Here’s a three part series on how to treat the trailer like a video tutorial. Part one explains the most basic way to create a progression of shots to show how the game works. Part two uses the lore of the game to add some flavor, and more literal instruction for how the game works. Part three is about literally saying how the game works, when it might be advantageous to do. To round this out, I have a post about depicting player verbs in games, and making them clear.

Editing - Story Structure

If you're making a story trailer, you need to take a ton of dialogue, pick out the right bits, and use them to tell a story that makes sense. My critique of a trailer for Red Dead Redemption 2 explains paper edits, explains how to do this. This essay about La Boheme will help you understand how much is too much detail to put into a trailer.

I also wrote about trailer dialogue, and cutting together story beats in my post about a trailer for Star Trek: Discovery. It’s helpful to think of the story in chunks. The really tricky part of making a story trailer is to weave the narrative threads you’re using like mixing narration with dialogue. If you’re having trouble integrating dialogue into the music, here’s a post with some tips!

If you’re worried about spoilers, here’s my advice.

If you want to structure the trailers around review quotes, here’s how to do it!

Editing Finesse

Don’t forget music! This post will help you understand how best to collaborate with a composer for the trailer’s music or to conduct a music search.

A big part of making a good trailer is cutting in clear, and readable shots. the opening montages for Terrace House, provides a great example. Once you have the good and clear shots, picking out the shots for each moment is a critical skill to have. You also need to make sure the trailer isn’t overloading the audience. If you’re saddled with a game which doesn’t present well, a last resort might be to jazz up the editing.

When making a trailer, it's not uncommon to have a lot of sections, but no connective tissue between them. This is when it's good to think about how to transition between the sections. Whether it's a music transition, a visual transition, a story transition, a music stop down, or a combination of them all; this post should help bridge the gaps between the trailer. Pacing appropriate to your game is also essential.

Oh and btw, here’s why to keep those sound effects ON, some basics for sound editing, and another post if you want get more fancy.

Polish

For some extra special sauce, consider the eye trace of your trailer to make things look extra smooth and clear for the audience. For some extra extra special sauce read this article about trailer accents. For some extra extra extra special sauce, play around with holding and release of tension in the cut to create anticipation. A trailer’s pacing can also say a lot about its source material.

In this post I boil down what I’m thinking during any given moment of the editing process.

Inspiration

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If you’re watching trailers for inspiration here's how to watch trailers analytically. And here’s a two part post about watching trailers after seeing the finished film.

Editing Philosophy

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I've also written a lot about my trailer editing philosophy. My post about how stand-up comedy relates to trailer making is about knowing your audience. This post is about showing, not telling, and what makes it effective. By the same token, sometimes a trailer is significantly improved by making it shorter. There are also some things which just don't belong in a story trailer. Try to avoid these things which make a trailer feel very generic. And the ever important question of how to avoid making a trailer feel spoilery is addressed in this post.

Finishing

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Lastly, take a look at my quick tips for relatively easily fixable pitfalls.

When you’re finishing up the trailer, you might need to know best practices for captions and subtitles. Before you make the trailer live, consider what to call it; that will affect how it’s received!

Also, go through this checklist when doing quality checking/control for your trailer!

If you're making a game trailer for console release, check this page to make sure it’s up to the proper specifications. If you actually want the trailer to be seen, here are some suggestions for how to market it.

Boost Your Views

If you want to shoot for a show like E3 or Wholesome Games, here’s advice from Nick Verge of popagenda on how to get a trailer into a show.

There are still many more posts, but hopefully this gets you started!