Author: Rachel Kaser / Source: The Next Web
Games and movies, despite being two separate kinds of media, have a lot in common, and the point where they intersect the most is in their trailers.
Recently I wrote an article about the trend of dark, confusing cinematic trailers, and where they sit in the hype cycle that constitutes a game’s pre-release marketing campaign.
But cinematic trailers themselves are a conundrum. They’re both filmed and edited to resemble mini-movies, and frequently can be short films themselves.Why do game trailers and movie trailers look so similar? Surprisingly, it’s because it’s the point where people from both industries seem to find the most common ground.
Why game trailers look like film trailers
If I had to trace the origins of the fast-paced style of editing in trailers I criticized in the case of Shadow of the Tomb Raider, I’d begin with film. Wired surveyed over 150 movie trailers going back as far as the 1950s and concluded that the amount of cuts per minute has dramatically increased in the last twenty years. Specifically, the trend of frenetic editing coincides with the use of software over physical film cutting. After all, would you want to make dozens of physical cuts to celluloid when you need only make two or three?
The fact these commercials look exactly like similar ones for movies, more often than not, isn’t an accident. In fact, several of them have been made by none other than film directors.
Dead Space‘s E3 trailer was directed by Saw director James Wan.
This animated Dark Souls 3 trailer was directed by Eli Roth:
And Michael Bay lent his explosive talents to this Need for Speed trailer:
But why do film directors get involved with these projects in the first place?
Where film directors get involved
These trailers can sometimes be the result of interest in movie adaptations of video games. At several points in the last … I don’t know, forever, we’ve been…
The post How game trailers are inspired by the world of film appeared first on FeedBox.