For the assignment, we were required to make a trailer to advertise our game. As Tomas was busy trying to get our build to work, I agreed to take on the task of creating the 1 minute trailer.
Tomas had made some of the playable scenes for the game but they had limited functionality, owing largely to the limited time we have and our limited experience with scripting for gaming. However, he made some recordings of the game play and sent them to me so that I could use them in the trailer.
Tomas and I discussed some ideas as to how the trailer should look, as well as some inter titles that would be interspersed throughout the trailer. The inter titles we agreed upon were:
- ‘YOUR FOREST IS UNDER ATTACK!’
- ‘MOBILISE YOUR FELLOW WOODLAND CREATURES…’
- ‘AND BUILD THE RESISTANCE’
- ‘TO SAVE THE FOREST’
We agreed that these are strong inter titles as they round up and capture what the game is about.
To decide on how the trailer should look, I researched the best practices when making a trailer (Game Maker’s Toolkit, 2019). I also watched several examples of trailers from other indie games to get an idea of what works well (Lieu, D., 2021). I notice a lot of the trailers for indie games extensively feature content from the gameplay itself, whereas trailers for AAA games also include animation that is made specifically for the trailer to indicate what the game is about.
When I worked out how I wanted the trailer to flow, I started making it in Premiere Pro (Adobe Premiere Pro, 2022). I used several shots from the clips of gameplay that Tomas had created, including of the owl navigating and flying around the map as well as snippets of scenes with the owl interacting with the characters. As we have encountered a lot of technical issues in the last few weeks of our game and we did not have an opportunity to start working on our game in Unity until the new year, there was very little footage that could be used in the game.
I decided to remedy that by adding in some additional material to fill up the 1 minute we had. This included an establishing shot of the forest in the game, which I did not have any more time to create, so I sourced a royalty free piece of animation for this purpose, courtesy of Anton Mart (Mart, A., 2016). Towards the end, I included the drawing I did of the various woodland creatures wearing red scarves and mobilising to save the forest, as I thought this would be a great shot to establish the premise of the game, as well as the objective.
I also made an animated version of the Woodland Chaos logo in After Effects (Adobe After Effects, 2022), which would appear and zoom in slowly, complete with a flame effect around the word, CHAOS.
These pieces of video, as well as the inter titles that Tomas and I came up with have really helped not only to pad out the trailer, but also to establish what the game is about, despite the lack of usable in-game footage.
The game trailer needed some music to create a sense of atmosphere and excitement around the game. Although I play guitar, I do not have the music production skills to compose an original score and also we are chronically short on time, so we opted to find a royalty free soundtrack for our game. I searched on YouTube for royalty free music and I opted to use this piece from a YouTube channel called Music for Video Libary (Music for Video Library, 2022).
I decided on this piece as I wanted to emphasise that this will be an exciting game with a sense of urgency within the gameplay. I also wanted to establish that although this game has cartoony graphics, it is a serious and sophisticated game that will appeal to seasoned gamers, particularly those who enjoy point-and-click or strategy games.
I edited the trailer against this sound track and I ensured that they were timed against certain sections of the music.
Here is the final trailer.
This trailer was made in roughly 2 hours and given that we were in a rush to get this done, both Tomas and I are satisfied with how the trailer has come out. The only way this trailer would be better would be if we had more footage of the gameplay, preferably with the game mechanics functioning. However, I have managed to make the best out of what we do have.
References
Adobe. 2022. Adobe After Effects 2022 (2022). [Software]
Adobe. 2022. Adobe Premiere Pro 2022 (2022). [Software]
Game Maker’s Toolkit, 2019. How to Make an Indie Game Trailer.
Lieu, D., 2021. 2021 Game Trailer Favourites. [online] YouTube. Available at: <https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLIGLRMCk1Wi9f91QiZivE6-u2OuH5jcqY> [Accessed 18 January 2022].
Mart, A., 2016. Animated forest background.
Available at: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NuM99rROkvU> [Accessed 18 January 2022].Music for Video Library, 2022. ROYALTY FREE Cinematic Trailer Music | Cinematic Trailer Background Music by MUSIC4VIDEO.
Available at: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=knRAM6AHcKI> [Accessed 18 January 2022].