Do the write thing

The games trailer is proving to be a difficult beast to pin down. I've had to go back to the drawing board writing page quite a few times now. Our original brief was to create an opening cinematic which led into a playable part of the game. The brief has since evolved then. 

The problem with the opening cinematic is that it doesn't give enough of an indication of what the game is about. The concept we have has quite a complex set of character and world elements in play and the cinematic would only have touched on a couple of them - e.g. we have a morally gray protagonist whose back-story is important to understand in order to be relatable, but we also need to explain what their 'hero's journey' will encompass. We had plotted out a three act structure for the game, but when I sat down to write the opening sequence, I found I was only writing the very beginning, the setup to the first act. On one hand, it's possible to say interesting things about plot and character in three minutes, but you're also balancing out the fact that you don't really want to hit the first turning point that early on in the game. It feels too rushed and you miss a lot of important character development. You could cram a lot of exposition into the opening but it wouldn't make for a good cinematic and you don't want to overload your audience. Games are all about exploring and finding things out for yourself during the game, so it would be a waste to do too much with the opening cinematic - and as I said earlier, this game's particular complexities don't make it easy to convey what needs to be conveyed within one opening scene.

So, we've had to change tack and aim for a different format. I'm no longer writing an opening cinematic, I'm writing something closer to an actual trailer - more of a mashup, highlight of some the key story elements and  a showcase of the visual elements. This approach comes with it's own problems and complications. Writing a trailer sounds easy in theory - we've seen thousands of trailers in our time, we know exactly what they look like, surely it should be easier than writing a short film or feature? Those were my thoughts - how wrong I was! The big problem I've encountered here is that I'm trying to completely reverse-engineer everything. In a normal environment for film or games, you already have a product (a game or film), so the trailer is really the editor's job of taking some key moments and using them to give an impression of what that film or game is about. However, we don't actually have a final product, nor do we even have a full script of the game, so we've had to try to imagine the full game, those key moments, key pieces of dialogue and try to figure out how they might arise. The difficulty in this is trying to maintain the sense of authenticity while manufacturing those moments. For example, having  a soundbite of dialogue that sounds like a natural product of the script is not easy without knowing the circumstances to how that dialogue would arise - who is speaking, who are they speaking to, where are they, what is their context? All of those questions are important when dealing with authenticity. It's hard to manufacture those moments without it sounding too 'on the nose'.

The other big issue I've had to contend with is that the world we've created has a lot of complexities that we haven't been able to fully pin down yet. We just don't have time to write a full script. A project of this complexity would take a lot of writing and re-writing to fully pin down. Without even a first draft we're jumping into the deep end in a big way. Imagine trying to create a trailer for 'Inception' without knowing exactly know how that world operates (and not even having the first draft as a guide!).  

The other danger of this is that once the trailer is made, there may be the feeling we'll be locked into the story in certain ways which would be difficult to change without making the trailer an obsolete relic. But, I'm trying not to think of it that way, I've had to come to accept that this is a pioneering venture and that a certain amount of malleability needs to be expected. 

However, now that I know what the problems are, I can start fixing them. I had a few eureka moments this morning actually. I think the way to I'm going to have to approach this is by anchoring on to (believable) key dialogue and things that just hint at turning points and character dilemmas. Hint is the key word there - I still think that "show, don't tell" applies. I'll also need to build the trailer through tiny snippets and try to get ideas across in extremely concise fragments, in unison with overlapping dialogue. In essence, I'm going to have to channel my writing and editing skills simultaneously. That will make up about two thirds of the trailer, leaving the last third to focus on the visual aspects - this will be where we get to bring out the inner Michael Bay and just throw our most explosive shots out there, remembering the fact that the point of trailers are to sell.

I've highlighted a lot of problems and difficulties in this post, not to complain or make excuses, but to show how much it has challenged my expectations. These were all problems I hadn't actually anticipated - it sounded much easier than it has been! I've very much had to learn through trial and error because no one else has done this before, and any advice/guidance I receive has to be taken with a pinch of salt as I know those people haven't been through this process either. Those are the joys of being a pioneer. Hopefully, with any luck, we'll survive and we can pass our knowledge along to all those who follow us.