My text document of potential dialogue (redacted) When going through a script I highlight dialogue with short self contained thoughts, and usually pass over dialogue that’s too specific to a moment in the story I boiled it all down to a few pages of potentially usable dialogue, and started on a paper edit to pitch to the team. The high level direction for this trailer was to show the audience in no uncertain terms that SHIT HAPPENS IN THIS GAME.įirst thing I did was read the whole script, and select expositional dialogue or character moments. Most of what had previously been shown was dialogue, some gameplay systems, and very small hints at the plot. I had a lot of creative freedom, the only hard guideline was that the trailer had to be a minute long. Doing it themselves would’ve cost precious development time, so I was glad to help! He basically said they had no mental bandwidth to concept, capture and edit a trailer so they needed someone to take over the project. Editing trailers for games is my day job, but I also freelance and occasionally just for fun I cut trailers for games that I like!įirewatch was already on my list of games I wanted to edit a fan trailer for, so you can imagine how ecstatic I was when six weeks before E3 Sean contacted me with the gig. Hello there! I’m Derek, and I put together the Firewatch trailer for the Sony E3 Press Conference.
We should have known better: the first image he included is a cat photo, which cements this as a Great Post. MAKING THE FIREWATCH E3 TRAILERįirewatch had a trailer in Sony’s E3 2015 keynote ( read more about that process here), and though everyone at Campo contributed to putting the trailer together, it wouldn’t have been more than a pile of clips without the help of the trailer’s editor and producer, Derek Lieu.ĭerek put together a blog chronicling his creative process when he finished editing, including a bunch of behind-the-scenes process imagery, and then we accidentally sat on it for months. Here’s a post that was almost lost to the ages, fallen between the cracks during the rush this Summer.