In order to achieve this we will be using mostly footage and sound from existing sources, combining them with effects and using advanced tools and features within Premiere™.
The sources.
The sources are quite extensive and come from a variety of locations, and in a number of formats. Some comes from TV recordings, downloaded from youtube.com.
Other videos are direct recordings of actual game footage. From running the game and capturing with ezvid a free ( free edition has limitation, but they do not impair this project in any way ) video capture program.
Speech comes from a handy free text to speech service on www.oddcast.com.
Sounds effects come from 2 very good websites that offer libraries of sounds for various purposes, www.soundbible.com and freesound.org
For music there is a very good website that allows you to search by theme and mood : www.incompetech.com
Which just leaves still images, such as logos etc.. They will be imported directly, as they are from the files used in the creation of the inlay and the label.
Therefore i will start by listing the source files ( some will be sliced into a few smaller sections later on ) used in this blog, by type :
Video clips :
- Stargate Atlantis™ wormhole travel footage.link
- Farscape™'s Moya exiting starburst.link
- Farscape™ Scarran command dreadnaught firing cluster missile.- Much much longer original clip. link
- Andromeda™ deploying planetary defense robots.link
Game footage :
- Sequence of tanks driving by.
- Building robots scene.
- Platoon of tanks firing.
- Squad of robots firing.
Speech :
- Recordings of speech saying the following text : "In the year 2456. With all current energy sources depleted. Factions scour the galaxy for new resources. Resulting in universal war."
Sounds :
- Gatling gun fire.link
- Laser cannon fire.link
- Tank driving by.link
- Rocket flying by.link
- Missile hitting brick wall.link
- Item spawning effect.link
Music :
- Dramatic suspense.link
- Epic adventure.link
Also a number of still pictures will be imported from the inlay and label creations, such as the title graphic and logos, more on these in their respective sections.
Creating the project in Adobe Premiere™
The first thing that needs to be done is to create a new video project, unlike the inlay and label sections, there are no complications from printing, and therefore no issues with colour formats or safety and bleed areas, foregoing the need for template and placeholded stages. All we need to create the project within Premiere™ is knowledge of the required resolution, refresh rate and sound quality.
For our purposes we are planning to create a trailer for the game, in PAL widescreen. Therefore simply select DV - PAL Widescreen 48KHz, we opt for 48K sound frequency because we have no specific requirements, thus simply chose the highest of the 2 presented to us, since neither were excessive. The only other setting of note is in the Tracks tab, which corresponds to the number of video clips and sound samples that can be played simultaneously, you will nearly always need more than one of each, since sound will often require a music track and sound effects at once, and video will often include overlaying things on top of one-another, such as text. The default in three of each, let's just stick with that, is doesn't really matter if you have too many, since it has no real impact on performance or space requirements, unless they actually get used. However it is still prudent not to go crazy and select hundreds, since it will clutter the workspace. If we end up requiring more than the three selected, more can easily be added at any stage.
Deciding what to include in the trailer.
Some readers may already possess a fair idea of what to expect in this section, based on the start of this article, where we listed the libraries of base footage we will be using, for your convenience. But looking in more detail, we need to determine the sequence the follow, and how to bring it to life with sounds. This is to get a broad idea, detailed analysis will take place as each part of the sequance is implemented.
If we think back to game trailers we have watched during our lifetime, many follow a similar flow.
Typically they will open up with any warnings, is would be rather futile to warn people after the viewing has already taken place.
Immediately following the above, would come logos, to provide the viewer with an association to other great products by the same studios.
At the end we need to let people know when the product is expected to be released, an appropriate time to include logos about the platforms in will work on also, as well as potentially certain acknowledgment ones.
Prior to this we need to provide them with the game's title, so that they are aware of what they just watched.
This leaves the central area, the bulk of the video sequence. It is usually comprised of a few different sections, often one containing actual game footage, so show how the game feels when playing it. But generally also a section portraying a similar setting, in full quality, not restricted to the game, and therefore not actual in-game footage. This will be positioned before the in-game footage, to grab the viewers attention. The final requirement is to set the scene before showing and footage, in-game or otherwise, to provide some context. This can take various forms, landscape fly-bys are quite common, but we will opt for the equally, if not more common, textual descriptors, with voice-overs.
Organizing the workspace.
The first order of business is to organize the work area, otherwise once we have imported a few dozen items, and cut them into sections to work with, it will very quickly become very confusing and chaotic, and that will only result in unwanted mistakes. So in the project space, one should create a number of folders to file their content. They are named Bins in Premiere™. You would be free to create them however suits you best, but we have opted for the following system :
- Sequences : Will contain the main sequence, this is actually mostly ignored, short of selecting it to export as a finished product, since it is always displayed to the right anyway, and we will only have the one, but handy all the same to keep it separated.
- Mattes : Mattes are simply plain colour overlays, they have a number of uses, such as covering up sections of clips, to applying transparency to multiple layers simultaneously.
- Titles : These are actually any text overlays.
- Video Sources : The raw footage as it is acquired will be imported here, this will be used to cut smaller sections from, and not used in the trailer as-is.
- Video Clips : Cuts from the source videos, ready to be inserted into the trailer.
- Music Sources : The music tracks as they were created, they will be cut to size before use.
- Music Clips : The sections of music cut out from the source, ready for use in the trailer.
- Sound Sources : Raw sound effects.
- Sound Clips : Sections from sound effects to be used.
- Stills : All the static images that will be used, such as logos.
If desired, one could at this point already import all the libraries into the ...Sources bins, using their context menus and the import option, alternatively one could wait and import just the required ones, as they progress through this guide.
Warning and logo.
The first port of call is coincidentally the beginning of the trailer, for this we will need to import the two following stills :
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| Warning | Logo |
By default it will place them for a duration of 5 seconds, this can be changed in the options within Premiere™, which you may prefer to do, personally i just kept it at that since I'll be using a number of different lengths for different stills. For these 2, i want them both about half that long, 2.5 seconds long enough to see them and include some transitions, but no so long as to waste too much of our short 60 seconds total. Premiere actually displays timings in the format hours:minutes:seconds:frames. Sometimes omitting the first ones on shorter items. We must remember this we settings the length, there are 2 ways to do this, the first is to put the cursor at the end of the item on the track, and the cursor will change to a red arrow, dragging that will change the length , although remember this will cut it from the source, maintaining the play speed, but losing data. Of course this makes no difference for a still. We opted for the second method, which is less fiddly, using the context ( right-click ). The Speed/Duration option let's you set the length, since our project runs and 25frames/second and we want 2.5 seconds, we next to chose 2sconds:12frames, the closest we can get.
The next step, is transitions, in the loose sense, to make the flow seem more natural. On the warning still, we will simply rely on changing it's opacity over time, so that it appears to materialise out of nowhere, display for a while, then de-materialise. This is an effect we will use a lot for introducing stills and text throughout this project. Once again there are a couple of methods of achieving this. The first is directly on the sequence window, with the video track expanded, it will display a yellow line, on video this represents the opacity. Dragging this will change it from anywhere between 0-100% opacity. Remembering that if there is no track below the track in question, it will display as if on a black background. You may have noticed however that this changes it for the entire duration of the clip/still. In order to remedy this issue, we need Keyframes, these are, as their name suggests, frames that represent key points on the clip. This means if we had a keyframe 1 second in at 100% opacity and another 2 seconds in at 0% opacity, Premiere™ would automatically transition evenly between those 2 points ( thus at 1.5 seconds it would be at 50% ). The first way of adding keyframes is to use the Pen tool directly on the sequence window. Clicking on the yellow line mentioned earlier will add a keyframe at that point. But this can be tricky if you want to be accurate, which isn't always necessary. There is a much more precise way to do this however, in the Effects Control window, expanding the required effect, here opacity. first we must click the clock to enable animation, and thus enable keyframes. Clicking the diamond will add one at the current point of play. One can use the main sequence render window, to move the play point by single frames, for optimum accuracy.
For our purposes, we placed a keyframe at the beginning and end of the warning clip, both set to 0% opacity, thus invisible. Judging that 1.5 seconds of full visibility display seems adequate, this leaves 1 second, of fade, we want to fade both in and out, so half a second, or 12 frames from either end, we require another keyframe. setting these two at 100% opacity. The result is a warning message that fades in over 12 frames ( 1/2 second) , stays in full view for 1.5 seconds, then fades out over 12 frames.
For the logo, we will also want this to fade away, and thus use exactly the same method, however let's try something a little fancier for it's appearance, like sliding it in from above the frame. This is actually very similar in execution, only rather than working with opacity in the effect controls, we utilise the Position field, We only require 2 keyframes, at the beginning where it's position will be off the top of the video, and thus not visible, and 12 frames in, for consistency, with this position set at it's final resting place, centered on the screen. The result is a logo that slides down into place.
We would like to point out that this logo represents the game studio, with some text. This brings us to creating titles, since titles actually represent any text overlay. File > New > Title will bring up a prompt asking for an appropriate name. And then follow up with a screen looking somewhat like a simple text editor, only with the background looking like the current position on the video. One should therefore ensure that they have the video in correct position, where the text will be used, to obtain the best previous of how it will look when complete. It won't actually be inserted at that point once created or any point for that matter, it will simply add it to the library, ready to be dragged wherever required, in will act just like a still image import from that point. Defaulting also to 5 seconds long. For this section we want the text to read "Game Studios" and positioned in the centre, underneath the Spider Leopard logo. The size should be as large of possible, to fill that gap, but maintain sufficient spacing, since it will be on a black background, let's opt for a simply white Arial font.
Once again we wish to have this section slide onto the screen also. But rather than be boring and make it follow the logo, let's keep the logo sliding in from the top, and make the text slide in from the right, and only start to appear, just as the logo has settled into place. To do this, once the title ( text ) has been dragged onto track 2, and made the same length and position as the logo still, in effect controls, we use the same process with positioning and keyframes. This time need a keyframe 12 frames in ( the point when the logo finished moving ) and another, for consistency, 24 frames in. The latter will have it's position set as required for the final placing of the text, the first, set it off the right side of the screen. One thing to remember is that we also need to repeat the opacity fade out effect on this title, just as we did with the logo, otherwise the text part will not fade out correctly, and look odd.
The result should be a logo that slides down, followed by a text that come in from the side. Stays for a while, then finally both fade out.
Textual descriptors with voice-overs.
This is the section where the scene will be set, to complete this we will use kind of slide-show of text, with a suitable voice reading it out on each slide.
The text we wish to display is "In the year 2456 with all current energy sources depleted factions scour the galaxy for new resources resulting in universal war."
A major thing to bear in mind when doing this type of work, is that we are very time limited, only 60 seconds total, and besides if it went on too long, viewers would get bored. Therefore it's beneficial to split it into as few slides as possible, however since we only wish to display each one fairly briefly, and also want a large font for maximum impact, increasing the case for more slides. Therefore a happy medium must be found. It's party a matter of taste and preference, but we have split it into 4 :
"In the year 2456."
"With all current energy sources depleted."
"Factions scour the galaxy for new resources."
"Resulting in universal war."
The process for each will be the same. The first step is to create a title for each of them, containing each of the above text snippets. For maximum impact and viewing aesthetics we shall omit the full stops, and likewise capitalise the word "war" to emphasise the nature of the game. It is recommended to start with the longest section, that way a suitable font size can more easily be selected, we want the longest section to fill most, but not all of the screen. Then for consistency repeat the font size and style onto the other 3. Which can be done by copy and pasting it, then editing the text. Once created titles can be edited by double clicking on them in the project library window.
When selecting the font, it is all about maintaining a theme, therefore we return to using white ( since it's on a black background ) Cooper Std font. Plain text is not good enough here though, it needs more impact. We will use both a Stroke and a Shadow.
The Stroke will be an Outer Stroke in black, of size 8. Outer Stroke because we want an outline, on the exterior of the original text. You may be wondering why we have a black outline on a black background, it is because it we greatly enhance the effect of the shadow.
The Shadow will actually be used to simulate a foggy glow, this is what will produce by far the largest impact on the appearance of the text. Since we want it highly visible yet foggy, we will use a high but not full opacity of 80%. For the size, let's go for 16, with a spread of 40, this will produce a significant yet not oversized glow. In terms of coloration, it is a case of following the theme of the product, and we used a lot of greens for the other two parts - the label and inlay - so opting for a bright green here also is a judicious choice. At this point you should have something similar to below :
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| Glowing Text Effect |
The second transition effect to implement, is to vastly increase the dramatic effect, by having the text appear to drop in from a great height, before slamming onto the 'ground' - black background. This effect can be easily simulated with a zoom effect. Premiere™ actually includes a large number of transitions, that can be directly dragged where required. However for added flexibility we will instead go for creating it ourselves, since it isn't very difficult. In fact it follows more or less the same procedure as the fading in and out, only using scale instead of opacity. Two keyframes are required, one at the beginning, and a second a few frames in, the number of frames will dictate how quickly it drops in, and we want it to be fairly fast and placed it 10 frames in. On this second keyframe it needs to be at 100% scale, since this will be the final resting size. For the first keyframe, the scale needs vastly increasing to something that will make it drastically exceed the size of the video. We found 400% to be appropriate.
The final part you may have noticed we appear to be missing at this point, is audio. This is actually in 2 sections, sound and music.
Let's examine the sound first, this is actually just a case of inserting the speech recording and cutting it to length. To cut it, drag it into the source preview window, and place markers for In and Out either side of the visible soundwaves, which will cut off the excess blank sound.
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| In and Out Marker Buttons |
This only leaves the music to insert, this should begin a couple of frames before the text titles begin, only enough to cover the music build up, that way when the main tune kicks in it will be timed perfectly with the appearance of the first text title - "In the year 2456". Once again we simply cut off the beginning of the Dramatic suspense music track, at an appropriate point for the above timings, using the mark in point. No mark out point is required, maintaining the entire rest of the clip, since we want it to keep playing until wherever is happens to end within the music track, at the point the text titles end. So placing this into the sequence, beginning at the few frames before the first text, then for the end, one option is to use the razor tool, but that has no snap-to options, and is with loss, so if you were to change the length of clips, this could cause issues. Instead we will simply place the cursor at the end of the music track, a large red arrow should appear, then drag it.. it should snap-to the end of clips. The advantage here is that it doesn't remove the sound as such, it simply mutes it from that point, meaning it can easily be shortened or lengthened as required in future edits.
Release date and platform logos.
Let's jump directly to the end of the video now, because it is actually much simpler to place the still parts - the introduction and conclusion - and then fill the central part with animated clips thereafter.
Therefore we will now be operating on the final still, which will contain the release date, and some appropriate logos to inform the viewer of compatible platforms and such. This is initially done in the same way as the text intro, using precisely the same font effect. We have estimated the release fairly vaguely, at fall 2014 and as such spelt out "In stores fall 2014". This will be a little longer than the other text titles, partly for more insistence upon it, partly to allow time for a secondary effect for the logos, which we will get to shortly. We opted for 3.5 seconds ( 3 seconds 12 frames ) as opposed to only 2.5. For the transitioning, let's repeat the fade in and out trick used on the advisory warning, maintaining full opacity for approximately 1.5 seconds. Further to this let us make the text appear to lift away from the video, to far above us, essentially the inverse of what we did to transition in the announcements. This could be done using the same system, scale and keyframes, but instead we will explore the build in transition effects of Premiere™. Cross Zoom is designed to zoom one clip out and then the other in, but since it will be positioned at the end of the entire video clip, only the first part of this effect will play, resulting in precisely the correct effect. These are placed by dragging them directly on top of the clip to affect, they will snap to either end, or centered over a join. By default they are 1 second in length, which is about ideal for our purposes, but this can be easily altered by selecting the transition and looking through the effect controls window.
The next item, is to insert a still that will contain the supported platforms and such, as logos.
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| Supported Platforms and Logos |
Title graphic.
Directly preceding the end section, it would be prudent to let the viewer know the title of the product they just watched an advertisement for. To ensure that they are able to immediately associate it with the product on the shelves, it should match the style on the DVD inlay, as such we will directly be importing the title graphic from that section of this project. Before doing so it would be preferable to remove the sparks, that way we can add them back in and animate them.
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| Title Without Sparks |
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| Sparkles |
Which brings us to the black Matte mentioned previously, this needs to be positioned on the highest layer. So at this point it will cover up the sparks and title graphic entirely, resulting in plain black playback. The reason we do this, is that we want to fade in and out, as we have done before. But it would be very time consuming to do so on each of the 7 layers, especially considering 6 of them now already contain varying opacities over time, which would all need to be calculated and adjusted accordingly. Instead, we place a black Matte - which is just a plain colour overlay - since this matches the background colour setting the opacity of this, in inverse, will produce the same effect, but also apply it to all 7 layers below it simultaneously.
Actually though, we are going to go even further, and try to give the impression that the sparks result from heated molten metal creating the graphic. The procedure isn't affected, it simply requires altering the Blend Mode - blend modes alter how the layer, when not 100% opaque, is combined with the lower layers, you can for instance add the RGB values, or divide them, or whatever, this was covered in more detail in the PhotoShop™ sections covering the DVD inlay - Linear Light will noticeably provide a suitable effect. It should look somewhat similar to this in the sequence timeline :
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| Sparkles and Title Section |
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| Final Result @ 50% Fade-In |
Full quality footage.
This brings us to the central area of the trailer, the main area if you will. Comprised of 2 parts, the in-game footage showing what it's like to play the game itself, but first let's insert some footage from video sources, that are higher quality than the game graphics, to provide a large impact, before easing the viewer into the product itself. It is important that this section contains the correct flow of events, it needs to demonstrate the link between the textual introduction, and the game footage, whilst appearing to seamlessly transition between each of them. Also one should ensure that each stage of this footage fits the theme of the game.
Having ended the first sections by announcing intergalactic battles, we need to provide some space setting, yet the game itself takes place on planet surfaces, with all robotic units, so they also need to feature. The logical flow of events then is :
- transition.
- space scene(s).
- transition.
- land based robots.
- transition.
In this entire section of the trailer, we shall forgo and music track, ending the first track just prior to beginning these clips. The reasoning behind this is that that are all taken from TV footage or other similar sources, and already contain complex soundtracks. Also it will add dramatic effect when we later transition to game footage, and insert a music track at that point.
For the space scene we will be opting for the spaceship Moya from Farscape™ exiting Starburst - a form of faster than light travel, this is a excellent way to introduce a galactic context by it's sudden appearance from subspace. But we also want something more, something which suggests we are being transported from our seats, reading the text, to a far away galaxy. For this we will employ another faster than light transport system, this time from Stargate Atlantis™, the effect of traveling through a wormhole between Stargates. The great thing about both these choices is that when exiting a Stargate, the image will normally flash away and then show the people/ships exiting into space/onto a planet. by substituting this exit sequence with that of Moya exiting faster than light starburst travel, which also typically follows a flash, the transition is smooth, seamless and appropriate with no further editing.
Having said this, it must be remembered that we only want these very specific sections of the sources clips, and therefore must cut them out of the original, this is done in the same way as we cut sound earlier, by dragging the source into the preview window, and placing In and Out markers, then right-clicking and Make Subclip. For instance the second one take a very long time for the spaceship to come to a full stop, it might by wise to cut off the end, and just have it arriving, that way it will not occupy too much of our 60 second limit. The wormhole source clip is a collection of all the ones existing in the Stargate™ franchise, thus we select only the best one and cut it out.
Even after selecting only the precise section required, they remained quite long, thankfully they speed up really well so we went ahead and increased their speeds to 145% and 135% respectively - reducing the combined length to a respectable 10 seconds, rather than the original excessive combined length of approximately 14 seconds.
The next part to focus upon is the land based robots, we will concern ourselves with the center transitioning clips afterwards, it is easier to operate this way since we will have more idea of the exact requirements with complete footage either side.
The flow of events for the land based robots is straight forward enough, we want them to follow the natural sequence of events in such a scenario ; walk into position, locate targets, open fire, power down. All of these tiny clips actually originate from the same source footage from the Andromeda™ Prince scene. We use the same techniques as before for cutting out clips, only this time we repeat the process on the same source footage multiple times, for each part of our final robot scene. This source footage actually follow a similar flow already, so it's a straightforward process of removing lots of footage for a suitably shortened abridged version. We cut out all the character dialogues sections, and only keep the very best robot sections. The final clips may not be of the correct resolution to match our sequence frame, the easiest way to resolve this is to once again fall back on the context menu on the desired clip to alter, this time selecting Scale to Frame Size - this will stretch it to fit the sequence frame, of course one could do this themselves using the Scale field in the Effect Controls, but selecting the context option will avoid the need to calculate the percentage required, with the program doing all that itself.
Once these parts have been positioned one should obtain a sequence section similar to below :
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| Robots : Arriving Walk, Target Acquisition, Open Fire, Power down |
Which brings us to the middle transition between the space scene and the land robot scene. There are a few possible approaches, one could for example give the impression of jumping to another space and time, with a bright flash of the screen, but we will use this effect later on elsewhere, so instead we will assume that the robots are actually deployed orbitally from the space craft. To complete with impression we require a few ingredients ; the craft launching a device, the device heading to a planet, and the robots entering the atmosphere.
The latter part of this is actually obtainable from the Andromeda™ Prince source footage, where we can see the robots flying through the air over the alien city. For the other two, we will use another clip, this time we return to popular TV show Farscape™ and take the clip where a Scarran Dreadnought fires a huge cluster missile at an alien planet. This is a good clip because it launches it straight past the Moya spaceship used earlier, so close it almost collides. By timing the cut perfectly on the firing sequence we can make the missile conceal the dreadnought, the combination of this and the fact the remaining clip will only be a very brief couple of frames long, will make it appear as if the Moya spacecraft launched the device instead. At this point we switch to the point the cluster missile arrives on the planet and breaks into individual clusters. We are very time restrained, so we have opted to keep this part rather short also, beginning a mere couple of frames before separation is visible, and ending at maximum cluster spread. The immediate switch to the atmospheric entry of robots should provide the impression that these originally mismatched items are actually all part of the same sequence of events ; launch device, device splits into a number or robots in atmosphere, said robots come down to the surface.
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| Launch, Cluster Deploy, Atmosphere Entry |
In-game footage.
Finally we reach to last major section of the trailer, some might call it the crucial section, since it shows footage from actual gameplay. As always we are time limited by the 60 second total trailer length as such we need to make decisions as to what footage to play. Therefore it was decided to concentrate on only 2 items within the game, the first being land robots, an absolute must considering the previous sequence of clips. For the second item we will resort to the well known and immediately identifiable feature of many future based science fiction battles - the hover tank.
Examining the library of footage captured, at the top of this blog post, you will notice we will be using robot creation, robots firing, tanks driving and tanks firing. Obviously the firing clips should take place after the others. One other thing to note, is that the driving tanks, although very dramatic, can rapidly become tiring, but we want it to remain a reasonable length to portray significant mobilisation. This dilemma can be overcome by splitting it into 2, and inserting one of the other clips between both sections, thus jumping back and forth between 2 game scenes. Our total clips are now 2 robot ones and 3 tank ones, as such, to maintain the scene switching introduced by the tank split, we should use the following flow : tank, robot, tank, robot, tank.
Only one exact order is now possible from the above requirements ; tanks driving, robot creation, tanks driving some more, robots firing, tanks firing.
Thus at this point one just needs to cut them all to suitable lengths and insert them in the remaining gap to fill all the unused section of the 60 second trailer. This may take a little while, to get it all just right, since the raw footage is of significant length and we have a very specific number of remaining seconds, and we want the best sections on suitable lengths.
One should remember that clips can be sped up or slowed down also, in fact we ourselves speed them all up significantly, with the exception of the final one, between 200 and 250%. This was dual purpose, partly to fit enough footage in the limited time available, partly to allow us to get everything right when recording play, without having to rush, the urgency added at this point in Premiere™.
One problem at this point is that the raw footage is actually not of matching resolution, and also includes unwanted area around the edge, since the recording software required recording the game in a windowed mode for best results.
In order to correct these issues, the first thing we need, is a Garbage Matte. It can be found in the Keying section of the Video Effects within Premiere™. The number of points represents the corners of the Matte, we only want to display a rectangle, thus 4 points is best suited. The Garbage Matte works but selecting an area of video to display, cutting out the rest and 'throwing it away' hence the name. The layer below will show through the removed sections, or simply plain black if no layers exist, such is the case here. Drag this onto the required clip, and it will then show up in the Effect Controls when that clip is selected. Here one can set the coordinates of the 4 points. The other effect controls we need to use are scale and position, to make the clip fill the frame, with most of the unwanted windows parts hidden, we then use the garbage matte to create a letterbox effect hiding the remainder.
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| Garbage Matte |
This subtitle still looks a little dull though, so let us add a small effect to it, we have decided to make it flash very subtlety. We will resort to opacity changes over time for this, using the same methods explored already with keyframe, since it wants to be subtle we will have it cycle relatively slowly, such as a 2 second cycle time between minimum and maximum opacities and back again. As such we will require a keyframe every second, the high points should remain 100% since we want the text to be nicely visible, the low points are more open to subjective decisions. But keeping it subtle we set them at 50%.
Those with a keen ear would have realised that all the footage was recorded without any sound therefore giving need to add it in ourselves. Examining the list of sounds at the top of this blog post, you will find some suitable ones, Gatling gun fire is perfect for when the robots fire their machine guns. Of course the tank driving by effects will be used for the tanks mobilising. This leaves the other 2 clips, these require a little more work. We will be using the item spawning effect sound for the robot creation scene, it is a case or working through the clip frame by frame - clicking the advance 1 frame button.
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| Advance 1 Frame |
We repeat the same process on the tanks firing clip, using the laser cannon fire sound effect whenever a new muzzle flash appears.
It should be noted that the sound effect length may exceed the gap between 2 points when such an effect is required, overcoming simply requires putting one onto a different audio track, illustrated below :
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| Overlapping Sound Effects |
The next major item to place into this section is a background music track, the as of yet unused epic adventure track. Actually this track will go beyond the game footage, at both ends since we want it to continue to the very end of the trailer to maintain the feel, we will also have it start slightly before to ensure a smoother transition into the in-game footage. Also the beginning of the track provides a relatively low build up, before suddenly climaxing. As such it's judicious to place the music track so the the sudden climax coincides perfectly with the beginning of this section of footage.
The final parts requirements within this section, are to transition it with the previous one and then following one, for the first of these, we want to project the idea that the viewer is being transported from the 'real' footage right into the equivalent game. The typical technique used to portray this in film and television is a bright white flash. We will resort to a built in transition effect from Premiere™ for this, called Dip to White. Dragging it over the cut joint will make the the first clip fade away to white, and then the white fade away into the second. We do however want to edit this somewhat, in the effect controls, firstly it is linking 2 very short clips, so 1 second just doesn't look right, much too long, as such we reduce it to 12 frames ( approximately 0.5 seconds ). We also want to increase the brightness, of course it is going to white already, which is about as bright as one can get, but nonetheless it can still be enhanced, but making it fade it directly from 50% white rather than no white at all, and do the same on the fade out, having it end 50% white. This is done using the start and end controls. One may expect us to need to put 50 into each of the boxes, but actually that is not the way this tool operates, the numbers in the boxes represent the percentage of the entire effect at which to begin and end, as such 0 represents seeing the first clip entirely, and 50 would be entirely white, as that is the center of the effect in question. As such we need to enter 25 and 75 respectively into the start and end points. One other thing to tweak, since no doubt you would have noticed the actual game footage text showing during the transition looks odd. Correct this my making that fade in from invisible over the length of the transition effect.
Which brings us to the final transition, between footage and the game title graphic section. Since this last section operates entirely on a black background, we will simply place a Dip to Black transition effect, but place it to end at the end of the footage clip, rather than overlap the 2. That way it only fades to black, rather than fade to black and back again. We want it to happen very quickly, since it's only to soften the switch between clips. As such we have shortened it to a tiny 8 frames ( about 1/3 second ).
Final touches.
The trailer is now mostly complete, but if you play it you might realise that the combination of many different source materials has had a major side affect. All the sounds are all at different volumes causing everything to seem out of place. Thankfully Premiere™ makes it really easy to change audio levels, in fact each audio clip has a yellow line, just like the one on the video clips that alters opacity, only on audio clips it affects the volume of the clip. The is no sure fire way of quickly change all the volumes to match, since each source is recorded differently, and as such they all need to be set to different levels. One must therefore play through the sequence repeatedly, dragging the audio volume of each clip up and down until it all sounds correct. Also minute tweaks can be make if clips don't quite join correctly, by either extremely fast opacity based transitions or even changing the in out positions by a single frame. it really is these tiny alterations that make a massive difference to the end product, rendering it much more believable and better flowing.
And there we have it, one complete 60 second game trailer in Adobe Premiere™.
The final sequence is displayed below for reference :
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| Seconds 0-15 |
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| Seconds 15-30 |
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| Seconds 30-45 |
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| Seconds 45-60 |
Ensure the Source Range is set to Entire Sequence. Then select Quicktime as the format, and PAL widescreen as the preset. Chose the save location. At this point i would recommend checking the following boxes : Use Maximum Render Quality, Use Frame Blending, Render At Maximum Depth. All 3 of these will increase the quality of the output, to the maximum level possible using the Quicktime codec. Admittedly it will prolong the time to render and save the final file, but on a short standard definition video such as this trailer, it shouldn't take more than a couple of minutes to process, so this is not really an issue. Then hit Export, and it will start processing, providing you with a progress bar and estimated time, once that goes away it is complete.
Evaluation.
But although the project artworks are now all complete, it does not end here, since such a project would be disappointingly unrewarding in terms of knowledge gains, if one did not assess what they had learned, done correctly, but also the mistakes.
As you have perhaps noticed by now, from the inlay and label evaluations, overall I am very pleased with the results, and that continues onto the trailer. But this does not mean it's perfect, there are a few minor flaws. One area in particular I am not entirely happy with is the title graphic, despite having spent disproportionate amounts of time on this tiny part of the video, combining lots of different techniques. The sparks still don't look quite right. Maybe i should have had them much much smaller and draw out the entire outline of the words, like a plasma torch? Something I had considered but wasn't convinced it would end up fitting the few large sparks theme on the existing title graphic. The other issue with this section of the trailer is that the blend mode that makes the metallic text appear to be molten and burning as it's fading in and out of the frame, albeit looking excellent, is not necessarily the right kind of metallic feel for futuristic high tech robots, that would be more elextrical and smooth surfaced.
The only other real issue was the limitations on source material for game footage, having used an existing abandoned project of mine as a starting point, which contained very few art assets, my choices were very limited when the time came to capture scenes for the video. However I can't help but feel that had I spent time expanding the game libraries to increase the available materials here, that would have been beyond the scope of this project, especially considering within a real would scenario one would likely be given access to all the raw footage they require in these respects.