S02:E07 | Creative Chat with Suzanne Wallace: Taking Risks, Gamifying Creative Work, and Telling Small-Scale Stories

Welcome to another Creative Chat! This week, we're talking with Suzanne Wallace, the founder and creative director of IndieBard, a creative studio that specializes in small-scale storytelling: specifically, trailers for video games.

Just so you know, Suzanne has it all: she's warm, funny, fabulous, and so dang insightful about the world of video games — particularly indies — and how to tell an amazing distillate story in a visual format. (Plus, she's one of my favorite folks. <3)

And, as always, take care, keep creating, and stay divine!

Resources

• IndieBard | Suzanne's studio website
• @SuzIndieBard | Suzanne on Twitter
• Lakeburg Legacies | Steam page | Published by Ishtar Games / "A social-based village management sim where love is your favorite resource."
• Strange Horticulture | Game website | Developed by Bad Viking & published by Iceberg Interactive / "An occult puzzle game in which you play as the proprietor of a local plant store."
• Derek Lieu Creative | Studio website | Suzanne's recommended resource for game trailer tips and tricks
• The Wreck Thread | Suzanne's amazing Twitter thread in re: the making of the trailer for The Wreck video game
• The Wreck | Game website | Published by The Pixel Hunt / "A mature 3D visual novel about sisterhood, motherhood, grief, and survival."
• Dredge | Game website | Developed by Black Salt Games & published by Team 17 / "A single-player fishing adventure with a sinister undercurrent." 
• Fabledom | Game website | Developed by Grenaa Games & published by Dear Villagers, Doyoyo Games / "Set in a wholesome fairytale world, Fabledom is the ideal laid back City builder."
• Sherwood Smith | Author website

IG: @littleoracles

Transcript

[Intro music]

Allison Arth: Hey everybody, and welcome to the Little Oracles podcast, an oracle for the everyday creative, Allison Arth. I want to welcome you all to another Creative Chat and I'm really excited for today's episode, because the individual I have with me here today is someone who has scaffolded a very cool career out of storytelling, and synthesis, and scale. And we'll definitely, you know, unpack those things, uh, over the course of this chat, but I want to give a huge welcome to the founder and creative director of IndieBard, a creative studio that specializes in video game trailers, Suzanne Wallace. Suzanne, thank you so much for joining me today.

Suzanne Wallace: Hi, happy to be here. Halloo.

AA: Hello. [laughs]

SW: Got my radio voice on.

AA: [laughs] I am so glad that you're here today. Suzanne and I have known each other for a while; she's somebody who has always been such an incredible person to have conversations with about creative work. In my life, we've had so many dinners where we've sat down and talked about what it is to tell a story, and what it is to create synthesis between, uh, different media, and things like that. And I love that about you. So you've worked in– you've worked in book publishing; you've worked in community management; in brand management; you've done creative for indie video games; you've done a whole host of things. And I want to talk to you about if you've always wanted to, like, branch out into the visual storytelling aspect of it, specifically with this ludonarrative focus. So you make indie video game trailers.

SW: [chuckles] I can't help but like pleasantly chuckle at the casual use of ludonarrative. Like, yeah, I believe that's just in your repertoire. [laughs]

AA: [laughs] Well, actually, let's– let's just take a step back and define what ludonarrative is for people in case– because here on Little Oracles, we love talking about what things mean to people. So let's– let's go back a bit and rewind; so tell me about ludonarrative.

SW: So I have a canned answer for this, because a few years ago, I was working at Fellow Traveller, an indie games publisher, um, and they were starting a new event that was called LudoNarraCon. And so I got very used to explaining this not-very-common used word, uh, as part of a business pitch. But yes, “ludo” is the Latin for “of or pertaining to games,” and “narrative,” of course, means narrative related to story. So “ludonarrative” in simplest terms means where gameplay and storytelling intersect and how they work together.

AA: Right, right. So is that something that you kind of always knew you wanted to do, is work in that space of games and storytelling?

SW: I got into video work at least somewhat by accident. It came together over time. I actually started when I was working in tabletop, essentially. I was at Roll20, which is a digital tabletop, so living in that weird space between book publishing, in the sense that they're working with tabletop adventures, and video games, because of course it's not really a video game. But we were publishing digital tabletop versions of licensed D&D adventures, and I was in charge of the marketing campaigns, because I was their brand manager.

And so I was preparing the press kit, and I kept thinking, we really ought to have a visual asset that belongs solely to our product. So it's not just the cover art that belongs to the D&D modules, which have, you know, beautiful, uh, designed... cover art that's used on the physical book — and I had come to Roll20 from books, so book trailers were a thing, but they– yeah, they're a thing, but they're not always effective, [laughs] and sometimes they're, to be perfectly frank, sometimes they're really bad. [laughs]

AA: Wow; what is a book trailer? I've never seen one.

SW: Pretty much exactly what you think it is. It– like the ones that I was seeing– so this would have been in 2014-era, um, so not, like, the best video editing skills to begin with– at least not, like, super-creative. You get a voiceover artist say like, you know — I'm thinking of, like, a Stephen King-esque thing — and they're basically reading a chunk of the, um, blurb on the back of the book to get you into the premise, and then a series of vague images: so, like, they might be zooming in on a knife on a table, or, you know, something thematic. They're not gonna act anything out, they're not gonna do anything; and then eventually they'll show the book cover at the end, so you can see the physical product that you're supposed to look for in the store.

AA: Okay, I see.

SW: And that was a thing. I think people still do it, I don't know; but at least it was a thing, so it was sort of in the back of my mind that book trailers were a thing. But to be honest, because they weren't always super effective — they were sort of a risk — what I really did is I looked at video games, because Roll20 lived in this space between physical products and video games — like, digital video games. And I was a gamer myself, and so I was always looking at game trailers anyway as a consumer. So, one day, I literally made a trailer in secret for either our first or second D&D module, I forget. And because I was not trained — I didn't have any professional experience making video content; I'd done some streaming and things like that, but only stuff just for fun. So I made this trailer, I think, over a weekend, purely as a proof of concept, and shared it internally with this little, “Hey, I made this. What if we used it, or something like it? Is this okay?” And luckily the team actually liked it enough to [chuckles]– or they were happy enough to give feedback, and encourage me to keep working on it, and end up using it as an official asset. And that sort of thing just kept happening. So that turned into me making trailers for all the Roll20 D&D modules from then on, at least. Like, up until I left the company, you know, two years later.

AA: You're self-taught then, completely?

SW: Completely self-taught. Video work just became another feather in my cap that, but from a marketing focus.

AA: Right.

SW: So, for the next few years, when I got into video games shortly after Roll20 — I've now been in video games for about five or six years — I was always working on small teams with limited resources. So it might be that we, really suddenly– we've got a trailer, but we need a different end slate because we need it for PlayStation instead of for Xbox.

And sometimes it was just laziness. [chuckles] I was like: I could just do this. And then I don't have to go email that guy and like wait a day–

AA: [laughs]

SW: –because they're in a different time zone. I can, you know, update this and change it from a T- to an M-rating on the age-rating slate. That's doable. But I also just immediately fell in love with it. I've never really been, or certainly never had been, much of a creator of any kind, in the sense that I've never been, like, very artistically gifted. I've never felt that. [chuckles]  I'm never gonna, like, pick up a paintbrush and be like, [self-important voice] “Yes, I can create something, and it will be worth being seen by the world!”

AA: [laughs]

SW: And I'm really not good with my hands. I'm very clumsy. And, like, not dexterous, and I hate getting dirty. But, like, that was my experience with artistic and creative things and making something out of nothing. But with video work, it just, like, tapped into this very magical creator feeling. And that was like an instant high. It gave me a total rush. So.

AA: Yeah. Well, and I love that you kind of took this upon yourself, even within the context of a larger company. You're saying: I have an idea. I'm not going to ask permission because that'll get me caught in a whole bunch of red tape. I'm going to make this thing and see if people think it would be valuable. And they obviously realized that it could be really valuable for them. Yeah. And that creator story is, I think, both very common, and also not very common, because I think people feel kind of scared to do that kind of thing.

SW: And I mean, I was scared. I did that thing where I made something in secret more than once. [laughs]

AA: [laughs]

SW: Where I was so certain that someone would tell me no. Like– where I was like, “I want to make video content. I want to make it for this game. I want to make this trailer.” But I sort of had an inferiority complex, and a feeling of, “Oh, well, they'll want to spend budget.” We often, you know– you're often like– I know we have allocated budget specifically to give to a professional trailer artist, and do I really feel like I'm a professional? Not at that stage. So, it would usually happen for, you know, lower tier projects that we weren't going to spend as much money on. So we had smaller budgets, and maybe a rush; like, for some reason the schedule got really tight, so I felt like I could get away with it.

AA: Right, right.

SW: And then, I like, raised my hand halfheartedly, like, [plaintively] “I– I could– I could do it? Is– is that okay?” [laughs] I'm like contorting myself, “Is that okay?” [laughs]

AA: [laughs]

SW: And that kind of stuff just absolutely kept happening. It wasn't until I lost my job that I started to think, “Can I do this, actually, full-time freelance?” So, luckily by that point, I felt relatively confident in my video editing skills, and I had already made a few in house trailers for my employer, so I thought, maybe I could do this. But I was very hesitant because freelance is scary.

AA: Yeah, it can be. [laughs]

SW: And now that I have gotten off the ground with freelancing and I've become more known in this space, I have a decent portfolio that I can show what I've done in the past. I– because I can show a portfolio, I don't feel like I need to sell myself.

AA: Yeah; yeah.

SW: And the other very nice thing about the indie game trailer space is that it is not a competitive space whatsoever, because there is too much work for all of us.

AA: Wow. I had no idea.

SW: And that's really nice. [chuckles] Yeah, if you're interested in becoming a video editor, think about getting into indie game trailers.

AA: [laughs] Heard it here first, folks.

SW: I mean, not too many of you, but. [laughs]

AA: Not too many. Just a couple though. [laughs]

SW: But a couple more. So, yeah. It's, uh, just grown from– from there. I eventually did get off the ground; uh, it definitely started off slow. But, this is the most positive and helpful community I've ever been a part of. Video editors, at least in the indie game space, are very helpful. There's a fair amount of collaboration that goes around. I see a lot of people talk about, “Oh, I made this, but this other person made the motion graphics for it.” And that's very common, and people get a get along well, and it's a nice space.

AA: That is good. And I– I recall we had kind of talked about — I think maybe on our last video meetup — uh, you had said something about that you have, kind of, a Discord or a– or a– a collaborative space where you talk with other video editors and get, kind of, tips and tricks and that kind of thing?

SW: Yeah, technically there's more than one of them, but there is one that I just happen to– it's small enough that it does feel like you're talking directly to people — uh, I find Discords with, you know, 200 people in there, I'm never going to say anything because I can't keep up with the conversation. But, this one, I actually, you know, keep my notifications on because someone might be sharing a trailer they just finished, or someone might be asking a question, which, maybe I can answer, who knows?

AA: [laughs]

SW: Um, or I might be asking a– it's more likely that I stay active so that when I have to ask a question, I'm not that jerk who just shows up, asks for help, and then dips. [laughs]

AA: Yeah. [laughs]

SW: Let it go both ways. But yeah, it's a– it's a really helpful community.

AA: Good! That's– that's wonderful that you have that, uh, that collaboration kind of built into the people that you're working around.

SW: Yeah.

AA: Maybe not necessarily directly with, but in the same space, especially if you're such a small– iIt would be kind of a bummer if, you know, everybody was at loggerheads with each other all the time. [laughs]

SW: Yes, it would. I mean, they helped me get into this space. When I was– when I realized I was without a job and was first thinking about freelance, I did three or four informational interviews, essentially, where I just reached out to people that I had hired on the publisher side. So I knew them from a very different working, um, setup, and I asked them all the same questions, like– and it was most– more about the business set up of it: How feasible is this? Do you think I've got the chops?

AA: [chuckles]

SW: I literally asked all of them: Do you think I'm crazy for considering doing this? And they were all so– it was like an ego boost. They were all so encouraging; it wasn't even necessarily about me. They were like: yeah, you– you hit the base threshold. You're okay. You can, you can go up from here. So if it– if they hadn't been so encouraging, I might've gotten scared off.

AA: Wow. Wow. So, in the space of game trailer creation, I am curious to know, what is it about games specifically that makes you want to create for them and tell kind of the smaller story within the game with something like a trailer?

SW: I mean, I've always been a person who loves– who gets very invested and obsessed with stories and deep lore and characters. And that's always the thing for me. And that's usually why I fall in love with certain games. Which, the obvious throughline, there, is I like story -driven games. I've found, though, I'm maybe even more obsessed with management style games. And I think that’s my brain's reaction to stress; it’s that having a certain amount of control, and the ability to build something the way that you want to build it. And like setting, you know, setting out a huge, crazy goal for yourself — like, I'm thinking Rimworld — like, okay, I'm going to make an impenetrable mountain fortress. And knowing there is a long road between here and there, but I know I can achieve all of this. And then doing it: X, Y, Z; and of course you come up against hurdles, but you've manage to overcome them; the good feelings that I have from having enough food to last the winter– [laughs]

AA: [laughs]

SW: [laughs] –is so good and so powerful, um, and it– it just– it fixes my anxiety. [laughs] It doesn't fix it; but it hits, hits it in the good spots. It's like scratching a really good itch. [laughs]

AA: Yeah; yeah. [laughs]

SW: So yeah. But I mean, when it– that's not always what gets me going for when I'm going to make a trailer for a game; it's always the art style first.

AA: Yeah, tell me more about that. Why are you into making trailers for games?

SW: Yeah.

AA: Specifically; like, not movies, or books, for example. [laughs]

SW: I mean, it's always– it always starts with the art style. I'm really a sucker for cute and cozy things with a storybook vibe. So, if someone reaches out to me and that's the art style for their game, I'm like, “Well, yes; first– first question is yes, I will do this.” [chuckles]

AA: [laughs]

SW: I don't care if I have time. [laughs] And if someone reaches out to me and it happens to be a game that I am eager and looking forward to play, on a personal level, it can be a curse because I'm gonna say yes. [chuckles]

AA: [laughs]

SW: And I might not actually have time in my schedule. But I'm taking that! That has happened! [laughs]

AA: [laughs]

SW: When, actually, I did do the most recent trailer for Lakeburg Legacies — which, if you go and look up that game and you know that I like cozy and cute art styles and management games, you're like, “Oh, obviously!” Because that's Storybook Village meets Dating Sim meets Colony Management. It's exactly– all of the boxes are ticked. And that's not usually what happens, but when it happens, it's very nice. [chuckles]

AA: [laughs]

SW: But honestly, the other thing, completely in a different direction, is the team behind the game.

AA: Okay.

SW: I recently took, uh, a gig for a game that I can't tell you what it is because it's– the trailer hasn't gone public yet. But it was the type of game I probably– it's not my immediate go-to. It's not the sort of thing that I know a whole lot about. So it's not an instant, obvious yes. And you show different kinds of games in different ways as well in trailers. So that was part of it, was a professional concern: Do I really know how to show off this game? But the dev team came really highly recommended by another trailer person that I knew who had worked with them before and vouched for them as being really chill and lovely, just pleasant to work with. And a good client is worth its weight in gold. So that was an instant yes, then, for me. ‘Cause I was like: I have some time in my schedule, and I always want to help out a positive team. And it's a benefit for me because they'll be nice to work with.

AA: Mm-hmm; mm-hmm. You bring up a couple of things that, kind of, send me in a couple of different directions. One being this idea that you're making a trailer, kind of, for the game. So it's almost like this meta, mini, ludonarrative within the larger ludonarrative. Like, you want to have– you don't want to have dissonance between the trailer that you're making and what the actual experience of the game is going to be like.

SW: No, that's like the worst thing you can do, honestly. It usually only happens with AAAs, in my opinion. [chuckles]

AA: No shade on AAAs! [laughs]

SW: It's rare that it happens at all, but it does happen. And it's usually because maybe, you know, you sort of have had to think about it like: when a movie trailer comes out, and it's so obvious that they didn't have much to show because they're, like, using on-set footage or whatever.

AA: Uh-huh.

SW: Um, most movie trailers are made after the film is in post-production. So, like, the film is mostly done, and they've got all the footage. And then usually the biggest issue that happens is they include a scene that gets cut later down the line. So you're like, “Where's that funny joke? It's not in the film.” But then, like, for big budget Star Wars things, sometimes you see a trailer and it's like: [intense movie-trailer voiceover voice] These famous people are in a thing! And they might be in space? but maybe it's underwater? We don't really know, but come see these famous people!”

AA: [laughs]

SW: That does sometimes happen on the game side, because it's usually an issue with bigger budget, because the reason I say that is, if you've got that much money and that much manpower behind it, that's the only way that you can, kind of, validate showing something before it's ready to be shown. And at that stage, maybe you haven't quite hammered out all the marketing and positioning ways of it. Like, how are we communicating this product? So you might not exactly get it wrong, but you might change course later on in a really significant way. And it does come up sometimes even with indie games, but on a much smaller scale because indie games have limited budgets, so they're forced to use it more wisely.

AA: Yeah. So that actually dovetails into that other direction that I– that I just mentioned, and that is in reference to that incredibly insightful thread that you wrote on Twitter about the process of making the trailer for The Wreck.

SW: Yeah. Yeah.

AA: And you talked about this experience of: I played this game; I loved this game; I started making this trailer, and I worked collaboratively with the team, and we had to, like, cut the stuff that I thought was important; and there was, like, plot stuff; and how do we tell this story effectively without giving too much away? So I would love if you could just, kind of, unpack that thread here and tell us a little bit about that process of making that game trailer, and pulling out those story elements, and not having that dissonance between what the game is like to play, and what it is telling me it's like to play in this trailer.

SW: So, yeah, that's a really core element to the main challenge of making a trailer, and I should mention up front that it does differ per game genre, because I'm going to be talking about a narrative game which is in some ways almost similar to making a trailer for a film. But even broader than that You know, you almost can't answer the question of that challenge without first acknowledging? what do I even have to work with? What tools do I have at my disposal? Because it's not a given; a lot of the time, the first question that you're asking when you start a game trailer project is: where actually is the game at in its development stage? I mentioned before: a movie, you have the pieces; you have the film. It's probably not fully edited; it's probably not cut down. That is not true for video game trailers. You might have very, very little to go on. I mean, a big thing that happens is, uh, development builds are often using placeholder UI — menu screens and buttons and stuff — that you have to avoid showing by turning off the UI, which is a very common debug tool; it's really basic. And that might not seem like a big deal, but as you can imagine, putting something out there that shows this is, you know, big ugly brown button that the devs are really not happy with, and they feel like it's a big eyesore. And a game is very much their child; it's the thing that they're making.

AA: Right.

SW: If the trailer does well — performs well — and then for the next year, they're haunted by this outdated look. So, I always start a project by asking developers for the main things that they want to communicate in a trailer. Basically, you know, when you're out there making a game, hopefully, you have some kind of big goals that you're setting. Which is that, “This is gonna be a game that has like a story that's gonna make you cry.” And that can be a game pillar. Like, it's a resonant, uh, evocative, emotional story. So the, the main big things that are your game. You had– I said before, games are the children essentially of the dev team, but they are forced, boiling them down into their core strengths and weaknesses– [laughs]

AA: [laughs]

SW: –which is kind of weird when you extend this metaphor farther than it's meant to go. But those core things might be what you choose to focus a trailer on. However, it depends on the situation, because that game might already have that trailer out there that introduces it to the world. And now, they need a second trailer that just focuses on the gameplay. That's like: cool; we've established there's a big, beautiful world, and deep lore, and wonderful characters; now we have to show that it's fun.

AA: Right.

SW: So that's all we care about for this trailer, is showing it's fun. Or it might be that, “Hey, you know, we don't think that people are understanding that the main protagonist is really great and they have a cool backstory,” so actually it is going to be story-driven, but focused in on this one character and their story. So that's always where it's really important to start with what you're trying to say. Like, what the end-goal is of the trailer. What do you want people to walk away with? And then work backwards from there to figure out how you might communicate that information. So I do a lot of lists. [chuckles] And I feel like I change it with every project; that I might do a table of: okay, I'm trying to– in these five seconds, I'm going to be trying to communicate this: which is that, like, whatever, there's a hub world that you keep going back to, and there's a cool engineer. (I'm making this up.) Um, how do I communicate that? Do I do a zoom in on that character? Do I do, like, a panning thing? Whatever, like, there are a lot of ways to visually show something. So because there are infinite ways of visually showing something, you really have to figure out what is it that you're trying to say, and then think of the most effective way to achieve that.

AA: Right. Right. That makes total sense.

SW: No big deal. [laughs] No, it’s easy!

AA: [laughs] No big deal.

SW: No, it’s easy! [laughs]

AA: That's the easy part, right? Yeah, you just slap the, slap the creative together. So do you play every game that you make a trailer for before you make the trailer?

SW: Yes. But how much I play it definitely varies. There are trailers where I'm not even going to think about it until I've basically played through the whole thing. I know that there have been projects, though, where I haven't really played the game. [chuckles] Sometimes the dev build is so early that you can't really play the game. You can just get the vibe.

AA: [chuckles] Yeah.

SW: But the short answer is yes. I always at least get in there and poke around a little bit. But I usually am pitching concepts, or at least giving feedback on their initial concept of: what are we trying to achieve with this trailer? And to do that, I have to play the game. You need to know the thing before you know how to market the thing.

AA: Yeah, and I feel like that is specific to your conversation about The Wreck also.

SW: Mm.

AA: Where you had played through the game and, you know, you had all these ideas about what it should be and then you talked with the team and things kind of–

SW: That was a little different.

AA: Yeah, tell me about that.

SW: I couldn't, I couldn't stop playing that game.

AA: [laughs]

SW: It was a problem. [chuckles] It's not a crazy long game; it’s about a, maybe, six-hour game. I didn't want to stop. Part of why I love that project so much is because I just fell in love with that game. It's a beautiful story. It's told in a beautiful way. And I wanted to have the experience for myself, selfishly, like, I wanted to have it just for me. [laughs]

AA: [laughs] Yeah!

SW: Those are always my favorite projects, when I'm so deeply emotionally invested. I also made the trailer for Strange Horticulture, which I was working in-house at Iceberg Interactive, who published the game. And I literally asked my boss, “I know we have budget, but can I just make it, please?”

AA: [laughs]

SW: I remember I literally said to him, “You can say no. But I'm asking. Can I, can I, can I have it? Can you just give it to me? Give me this project.” [laughs] Because I just ended up spending an evening playing through the game at a much earlier than, uh, a much earlier stage than what actually launched, but it, the core gameplay loop was there. And I just fell in love with it. So those are my favorite projects for obvious reasons.

AA: Yeah; yeah. So it starts with the art style, it's something that you love, and potentially gameplay comes into that. And where is it that you suddenly get inspired and you're like, oh my god, here is—

SW: Oh, music.

AA: Oh! Oh, okay!

SW: It's always music.

AA: Yeah?

SW: And something about the music. I start to, like, see it in my mind–

AA: Uh-huh.

SW: –of what we're gonna do. And it's usually like, “Oh, well that's where we're gonna show this.” Like, “Oh, all of a sudden the music goes, like, kablam!” Like, there's this big chorus; this big moment. “Oh, that's where we're gonna, like, reveal the antagonist,” or like, you know, “That's where Mufasa dies” or whatever. [laughs]

AA: Spoiler alert! [chuckles] Spoiler alert for The Lion King, everybody!

SW: I know. Can you imagine? I want to go back now: do The Lion King movie trailers, like, reveal that Mufasa dies?

AA: That is a really good question. I have no idea.

SW: I have no idea. But, yeah: it starts with the music for me. That's where it starts to click. [snaps] I start to be like: this is gonna be the vibe. And it's also a lot of the time where the outline comes together as well, because, whenever possible, I let the music drive it.

AA: Oh!

SW: It's easy. [laughs] It's easier that way. [laughs]

AA: Yeah, tell me a little bit about that; tell me about what you mean by using the music to drive the outline of the trailer.

SW: So, when I kick off a project, I ask for a bunch of assets. I need– I want all the art that they have. Um, I want the cover art; I want the fonts from the game; and the soundtrack. And they might already have a music track. They're like, “Well, this is our main theme, so we– we have to use that.” This is the theme for The Fellowship of the Ring, so obviously we're gonna use that. Um, but they also might say, “Here's six tracks; pick the one that you like.” And that does happen all the time. So I obviously listen to them and usually, like, I'm like, “Oh, well no; not that one, because this is a funny game and that's, like, from the one sad scene, so that's not the right tone.” And it– it's– what you're looking for is kind of hard to explain. No it's not. [laughs]

AA: That was a 180. [laughs]

SW: I know. [laughs] It has to be a bop!

AA: Okay!

SW: To some extent. I mean, if we're talking about a quiet, cozy game, on the one hand– you don't want to use ambient music for trailers.

AA: Right.

SW: Because that can get kind of boring for 60 seconds. So you might need to find a way to– you need a big swell in there somewhere to amp up the intensity. But more often than not, it's gotta be some kind of bop. It's gotta have a solid beat that, uh, you can make cuts to. So an audible beat that you notice, um, something with a decent pace so it's not too, kind of, boring. And yeah, again, like, preferably something that– with a big intense moment. And that sounds like a lot to ask from one music track. And it is. And a lot of the time I end up chopping up the music so I can Frankenstein together, “Okay, well, I like this quiet opening moment, but I need this to fit 60 seconds, and I need to get this kablam-shocker moment in there somewhere.” So I'll often start with my own rough music pass. Which will then be redone by a professional because I am not a musician, and I do not know the best possible way to do balancing. But I will do my own, and I make it very clear it is temporary. But that's my recommendation for, I think it should, you know, start slow, and then have, like, a hard cut to black, where we go: [gasps]. And then it comes in and, like, pepper in a bunch of stuff, and we get a bunch of information in there, [dramatically] and then we end in a big moment! And that's usually how I kick projects off, is find the music, craft it to fit what we need to express in the limited amount of time, and then I usually– the first thing, I sometimes do concepting, so I'm literally just sending them a paragraph or a bulleted list of what I think we need to express. But besides that, the first thing I send to a development team is usually– I call it a skeleton edit sometimes, or a video outline. And it is a video file. But it's just white text on a black background. [chuckles]

AA: Oh!

SW: Where I'm saying, “Okay, here's where we're going to introduce our main protagonist. Here's when I'm going to do this, and here's when I'm going to do this, and here's when I'm going to do this.” With the music.

AA: So it's like a storyboard in a sense.

SW: It's a storyboard, yeah, without any illustrations–

AA: Yeah! Like a moving and– and– and aural storyboard.

SW: It's a very plain storyboard. [laughs]

AA: Well, it's not, though, because it has the music, right?

SW: It has the music.
AA: It shows me tempo.

SW: Yes.

AA: And it shows me the beats that we're going to hit, storytelling-wise. I think that's a really interesting process. I've never seen that before in my career.

SW: I did not invent this. I think it was Derek Lieu, who is a very awesome, prolific trailer editor, who is very public about all kinds of things related to the trailer making process. If you're interested in getting into video editing, his website is a fabulous resource; um, it has a lot of both high-level advanced stuff, but also very entry-level stuff. And he, I remember– he's done blog posts that explain how we got from point A to point B on a trailer, um, from concept to creation. But he does these, and it works really well for me, so I often do them with clients as well. So I kind of stole it from him.

AA: That's a– it's wonderful, though. I can imagine how valuable that is for a client to see how things are paced in the format of a trailer, you know? ‘Cause I feel like, a lot of times when you have just a static storyboard, even, that's just visual, when you're trying to explain video content, it's– it's kind of difficult–

SW: Yeah.

AA: –without any kind of direction, other than, “Here's a still-frame of a piece of art that isn't actually final, but it's going to look something like this–”

SW: Yes.

AA: “–and then at some point, this next frame will happen.” And I feel like a lot of times clients can get really bogged down in, “Oh, well, I think that laser should be green and not blue.” And you have to step back and say, “No, that's not what this is for.”

SW: Yes.

AA: “We want to show you a pace,” and having that pace through video and through something even if it doesn't have visuals; even if it's just words. And honestly, I think that's better.

SW: I agree.

AA: Because It's not telling me– it's not giving me any visual input to make me react to.

SW: “Oh, there's a– there's a– you can see a bug! It's clipping; you can't use that footage.”

AA: Yes. [laughs]

SW: [beleaguered voice] The footage is placeholder. I was always going to recapture the footage.

AA: Yeah. [laughs] There's just a– there's a moment of getting into the weeds, I think, with the development teams, and the creators, and the clients who are so– they're so invested in, and they've spent so much time with, whatever it is that they're making that they can't really see the forest for the trees, as it were.

SW: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

AA: And that's where you come in and you say, “But look! Look at this beautiful forest!” [laughs]

SW: Yeah! Exactly.

AA: “And listen to the music wafting through the branches!”

SW: That's why I always do have to set parameters for each draft that I send over.

AA: Oh!

SW: Or I try to. Especially early in the project. Like that skeleton edit. I always make it clear: All I want to hear about — no that they're not going to tell me whatever they want–

AA: [chuckles] Yeah. [laughs]

SW: What I really want to hear is: Does this pacing work? Are you okay with how I've destroyed this music track and Frankensteined it a bit?

AA: Uh-huh.

SW: And are we missing– because again, they can't see any assets being used, but they have the text of what I'm going to use, so they know what content will be shown. Is there any major content that I haven't factored into this that's really important to be shown? Like, is there an amazing scene that we have to get in there somewhere? Because then I'll be sure to include that later.

AA: Yeah.

SW: So, at least early on, I try to be kind of directive for their feedback. Of, I– of course I'm open to all feedback, but I really at least want to hear feedback on, you know, these three things. Because that's what I need to figure out to move on to the next stage.

AA: Right, right. It's a great process. You're– you're doing well.

SW: [chuckles] I am making it up as I go, but I am really enjoying it. [laughs]

AA: [laughs] So have you developed any strategies for communicating with clients in that way?

SW: I learned– I learned something from you, Allison!

AA: [chuckles] Oh really? Me? [laughs]

SW: I remember last time– last time we had a call — I think– I think I probably was complaining. [laughs]

AA: [laughs]

SW: And– and you gave some examples, and I made little mental– little mental note. And then I went and did it, and it worked! And I've– I've– I keep meaning to do this. I need to send it in that Discord: “Hey, everybody. Here's, like, two new terms that I wasn't using before and now I'm using them.” One was: consolidated feedback.

AA: Oh! Critical. [laughs]

SW: I really liked that! So whenever you're making a trailer, you always are asking for feedback every stage of the way, and a common thing that happens is you might end up communicating with, like, five people on the team. And sometimes they haven't thought about that fact: that maybe one person should be driving this bus. And going off, having a meeting, coming out with consolidated feedback that takes into account what everyone wants to do, and making a final decision. That, because otherwise you end up with a camel; with, you know, decision by committee, and you end up with a mess. Um, there are temporal and financial costs to all of these many different directions that a creative project can go to. So it's in everyone's best interest. If we find a relatively straight-moving path towards the goal. So, yeah, I did have a client who was going kind of in a bunch of different directions and there were a lot of people sharing feedback. And I was just like: I don't know who's making the decision here. So, I did have to– I did go to them and I said, “Hey, consolidated feedback! Maybe I don't need to know what Bob from marketing, and Jill from the art team, and Barry in QA all feel about the trailer. I'm glad to have their feedback, but I don't know if you really want me to take all their feedback.” Consolidate it. Let's come up with the things that definitely should get addressed in the next draft.

[Music break]

AA: Let's– let's zoom out a little bit. Let's go 30,000 feet. As a creative individual, what inspires you? What do you get excited about? What's hitting for you right now? Games or movies or music or TV or whatever. Like, what is making you say, “Ooh, I want to make art and I want to do creative stuff.”

SW: It's a little unfair, because I just got obsessed with it last night, but I am obsessed with Dredge.

AA: [laughs]

SW: Imagine a game where all you have to do is go fishing. And there's nothing lurking in the deeps. No, it's fine! There's no Lovecraftian monsters that might make you go insane! No, It's fine! [laughs]

AA: [laughs]
SW: But, uh, it's very, very enjoyable and is, you know, hitting. Just the right spot for me right now.

AA: Yeah.

SW: So that's wonderful.

SW: I mentioned before, I am deeply obsessed with Lakeburg Legacies–

AA: Uh-huh.

SW: –and I also very much appreciate everyone on that team behind the game. It's their first self-published game, which is a major milestone. And I'm so. like, happy for them. They had a demo live recently and I played it twice. [giggles]

AA: [laughs]

SW: Even though I'd already worked on the trailer. [chuckles] Um, it's very good. And another game, actually, that I have been obsessively– and I think they– yeah, they announced an upcoming release date. It's called Fabledom, like “fable” and then “kingdom” mushed together. So city builders are having this lovely little renaissance right now, you know, the last few years. And that's great. I own most of them. And they all do a lot of the same things, and then usually one or two things that are kind of unique. And– and Fabledom's shtick that sets it apart, a little bit different — first of all, all of them have slightly different art styles, and I think Fabledom's is the best. It is the cutest possible version. Like, imagine your little villagers who, like, run around and live their lives. Imagine they were, like, they're like little fat moogles, basically.

AA: Aw!

SW: They're very cutesy. And everything just looks sort of like squishy and cute and sparkly.

AA: Aw!

SW: And I'm very excited about that. And also you can apparently interact with neighboring nations and trade with them.

AA: Oh!

SW: Which adds like a whole ‘nother level of management that I'm all here for. So I think that's coming out soon. And this is– I hadn't heard of this game at all until it was in a Steam event a couple of months ago, and now I am deeply obsessed.

AA: Nice.

SW: I'm usually anticipating my next game because video games tend to be my stress release. I work a lot. [laughs]

AA: [laughs]

SW: And upon occasion, I actually stop working, and then I usually go play a video game, which– I probably should get out of my house more.

AA: [laughs]

SW: One other thing that I'll say–

AA: Yeah, yeah, yeah!

SW: –that has been inspiring me well, for years, but also lately, which is this book series, sort of; I'll explain why I'm sort of, I'm waffling on that term. This author never got famous, and it's driving me crazy. This author is Sherwood Smith. I may have tried to sell you on her books before because I am obsessed and I just tend to do this. [laughs]

AA: [laughs]

SW: I have tried to hand-sell copies, essentially, of one of two good entry-level books for her. Because she's been writing fantasy books set in this world. She's in her 60s now, and she started writing when she was. like. 12. And she's been developing the lore of this world since then.

AA: Whoa!

SW: She’s always returned to it. She has done a few other series, like she has a, um, a couple other series that I haven't read [chuckles]–

AA: [laughs]

SW: –because I'm obsessed with this world and there's easily 20 books, maybe 30, that literally span thousands of years in this world.

AA: Wow!

SW: And there is an overarching plot, and that's what more recently, uh, has been getting me obsessed. Usually the books, you know, they pop in and out of moments in history and then they follow a set of characters who, of course, live normal human lives; [they] follow their story for maybe a trio of books, sometimes standalone books, and then, you know, the next publication might be at a different time in history. But more recently, she has come back to the overarching plot, which is there's some big bads that exist outside of time–

AA: Mm-hmm; mm-hmm.

SW: –and you know that they're there, you know [ominous voice] they'll come back someday, kind of thing.

AA: [laughs]

SW: And recently she's been tying, uh — well, I was going to say tying the knot, but maybe it's the untying of the knot — of that overarching plot. So it all comes to a head, there's a big war; it spans, like, six books; and it's– this woman has never gotten popular, to the point where all of her books are self-published now. But she just has them; she's just been writing for years!

AA: Wow.

SW: So she was publishing one every two months for a while there. [chuckles] Because I think she probably got tired of waiting for publishing deals that never came through.

AA: [laughs] Yeah, yeah.

SW: And I do get annoyed when, sometimes, I'm watching Shadow and Bone, which I enjoyed very much, or looking back at Game of Thrones, and I'm like: nothing against these authors, but they're not the first, and they're not the only ones to come up with these great world-building ideas. Sherwood Smith's over here coming up with fabulous ideas, and I'm furious that no one's reading them! [laughs]

AA: [laughs]

SW: So, that has gotten me through the whole– the whole half– second half of last year, and she just published a new one that takes place in the aftermath of that big plot coming together, and magic has come back into the world in a big way.

AA: Uh-huh.

SW: So the new generation's being born with abilities that haven't existed in this world for 2,000 years, and what's that going to look like? And I cannot wait to get into it.

AA: Yeah, that sounds amazing!

SW: Yeah, so if you want to read Sherwood Smith, you should. Please.

AA: [laughs]

SW: And you should either read the excellent young adult romance called Court Duel, which is very tasty and very easy to dig your teeth into, or you could read the, uh, Quartet. The first book is called Inda, which is the name of the main character, which is more of a heavy, like, not, not high fantasy, but it's just a much more chonky book. It's sort of like historical fantasy fiction, and it's very good.

AA: Okay, good recommendations. Thank you! [laughs] You know, you said something about world-building, and I'm wondering: when you're making a trailer for a game, do you feel like you're doing world-building in that, kind of, minuscule, tiny space? Would you ever call it that?

SW: [questioning voice] That's an interesting quest– No. No. [chuckles]

AA: [laughs]

SW: No. I don't think so. I am– I– this comes back to me feeling so boring about the way that I look at things: I have a list of things that I need to communicate, and I am communicating them in the appropriate order. [laughs]

AA: [laughs]

SW: That can't possibly be world-building; world-building is cool! [laughs]

AA: [laughs] I would argue that what you do is pretty dang cool, though.

SW: I mean, I like it.

AA: Yeah. You think like an editor. You think in story with everything that you do with making a game trailer, right? You take one piece of art and you make another piece of art. It's smaller, but you make another piece of art; a distillation that is– it exists specifically to draw other people into the original piece of art.

SW: Yeah.

AA: Have you ever thought about it that way? Have you ever thought about it as a, like, a little mini version of the art? I'm just wondering because the overall game is this art experience that you've had, and you've liked.

SW: Yes.

AA: And then you distill it into something that is designed to draw people in to have that experience that you've just had.

SW: Mm.

AA: And, I don't know, I just, I'm just curious about how you, what is it about storytelling in that, kind of, distillate way that excites you? Like, why do you do this? You know, every day you get up and you're like, “I'm gonna make game trailers and I love it.” Have you ever thought about why that is?

SW: It is the editing process itself. That it's very fun. Like, the actual creation I find ridiculously fun. And it's one of the few things — it's maybe the only thing — in my entire life where I've enjoyed learning how to do something. [laughs]

AA: Like the physical editing, learning how to use the tools to do it?

SW: Exactly.

AA: Okay.

SW: Actually using the tools. I use Adobe After Effects and Premiere. I actually use After Effects almost more than Premiere, which I don't– I think is a little unusual. Not– not crazy uncommon, but I think Premiere tends to be the primary tool, and for whatever reason I learned After Effects first, and I prefer it. It's a little bit more techie; it lives in that space between video editing and graphic design. But I really enjoy figuring out, like: how do I do this? Like, I have an idea that I've never done before and I'm not sure if I can even achieve it. And so I probably end up looking at a YouTube tutorial [chuckles] because that's the best resource in the whole wide world.

AA: It is. It absolutely is!

SW: And then I say, “Okay, that has 2000 steps. So that might be out of my reach.” But that rarely happens, because more often than not, the ability to learn something in 10 minutes that you might have to do 20 times to, like, get it right, but then you've learned a new skill, and I absolutely love that. I hate learning things.

AA: [laughs]

SW: I don't know why I enjoy this. I hate learning! I've never been a good student because, I don't know; it's never been something that I enjoy the process of learning. I enjoy knowing things, but the process of learning has never been the part I enjoy. But for some reason with video creation, uh, I do enjoy it very, very much.

AA: Wow. That is so fascinating to me, because I think you and I are very simpatico in the things that we like when we talk about storytelling and especially distillate storytelling.

SW: Mm-hmm.

AA: Because, you know, I do so much work with brand messaging and with helping companies and individuals kind of tell their story, but that's a distillate of “Here's the 25,000 things that we do and that we think are important,” and that's very similar to “Here's an entire game experience, and here's an entire experience of this story, and it's taking it down to its kind of key and component parts.” But I don't know if it's the use of the tools, necessarily, for me, as it is for you. And so I think– that's so– I don't– yeah, I haven't really thought about that as a– as a way in for myself in synthesis and editing and pulling the threads together. Like it's actually exciting to use that tool. I love that.

SW: It turns it into almost a game in itself. So to be honest, I kind of have bad habits in that it has a similar feeling to when you're obsessed with a game and time just [snaps] whooshes right by.

AA: Uh-huh.

SW: You look up, it's been three hours. It has a similar feeling to it. It's still– it is more tiring than pure entertainment is.

AA: Yeah; yeah.

SW: So I do get drained after it. That's why I say it's kind of a bad habit, because the work happens to be very enjoyable and honestly fun.

AA: Mm-hmm.

SW: But I do have to be aware of that so I don't die. [laughs]

AA: [chuckles] They do say if you love what you do, you'll never work a day in your life, right?

SW: Yeah, that's not true though, because you will, and you will burn out. [chuckles]

AA: [laughs]

SW: And I– so many nights, I've, I've edited all day. I've edited for like 16 hours straight.

AA: Oh, that's a lot. That's a lot!

SW: That's a lot! And I mean, there's breaks in there, but I'm like, basically, I've worked for at least 12 hours. And I'm like: [sluggish voice] I'm so physically tired.

AA: Uh-huh.

SW: I don't realize until I hit a wall and then I'm like, Oh no! Oh, I had to go straight to bed. [laughs]

AA: Yeah! I mean, it engages a part of your brain, especially in the editing function, right? Where you're taking something and you're not– you're not only, like, doing the actual physical act of moving the parts and the pieces around–

SW: Yeah.

AA: –and like, aligning things, but you're also having to think creatively, right?

SW: Mm-hmm.

AA: You're having to think: How does this transition into this? How does this part tie back to this part? How do we pay this off at the end, for example?

SW: Yeah.

AA: And that's very tiring to kind of do all the roles in that way.

SW: Yeah, it feels great when you put two of those puzzle pieces together and it works.

AA: [chuckles] Yeah!

SW: You're like, uh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah! It works!

AA: I’m invincible! [laughs]
SW: That’s best feeling! But yeah, that might happen after like 20 minutes of like: uggghh.

AA: Uh-huh. [chuckles]

SW: Like, your face is up against the monitor and you're: How do I? Oh, that looks like shit!

AA: [laughs]

SW: A lot of the time, it's me putting two pieces of the puzzle together realizing: Oh, that doesn't really work.

AA: Yeah.

SW: And then the– you know, my creative thought comes up and says, “Well, you know, it would look really good if I could do this and I'll see something in my head that I want to do and I'll have no idea how to do it.

AA: Yeah.

SW: So I'll be like: Can I even do that? Probably, but I probably have to, like, build it in After Effects. Which probably means I have to throw out all my work that I've just done in Premiere because I'm going to build it in this other program instead and then bring it into Premiere to put it together. So, okay. [sighs] Let's open that program up again.

AA: [laughs]

SW: Like, then I’m sort of like– I'm resigning myself to another hour at least of work, where I have to build a, you know, then we're talking about five-second sequences that I'm going to build in another program.

AA: Right.

SW: But just to have a nice transition from one scene to another.

AA: Yeah. The amount of time it takes when you're editing something is, I think, a thing that a lot of people who don't do that work themselves don't understand the amount of time it takes to make a one-minute trailer for something.

SW: Yeah. And it's dangerous. It's an exponential thing that can change constantly, because you can always make something more complicated. [laughs]

AA: [laughs] Yeah.

SW: ‘Cause yeah, you can do a 60 second trailer that's just, you know, ten little clips of footage. More or less timed to one uncut track, and chuck some logos in at the end, and you're done! It's fine!

AA: [laughs] Uh-huh; uh-huh.

SW: You can do that. Absolutely. But what if it was great? What if it was amazing? What if it was fabulous? What if we did this cool thing? And then you're like, I do want to do that cool thing because it would look really cool.

AA: Yeah. [laughs]

SW: Okay, I will go back to the mines and figure out how to do that thing. It is an extremely rewarding thing to make something creative. And again, like this is the only thing that I do that's creative and I can show the end result and people go, Oh yes, that is creative.

AA: Yeah. [laughs] So do you have anything that you want to hype, or any collabs coming up? And also where can we find you on the Internet?

SW: As it happens, I have recently launched my personal, uh, full-time freelance trailer making label, which is called IndieBard. That's Indie and then Bard, as if you were a musician in a D&D game. To be honest, I came up with the name, uh, mostly based off of this quick moment in The Road to Eldorado where Kenneth Branaugh's character is very aggressively strumming a lute.

AA: [laughs]

SW: And yes, I make trailers full time for mostly indie games, but all kinds of video games, uh, with probably a special emphasis on story-driven games to some extent, and cute and cozy content, since that happens to be my personal interest. You can see some of my past work on Indie Bard dot co. You can also follow me on Twitter at SuzIndieBard, that's S-U-Z, Indie Bard. And if you're ever interested in having me make a trailer for you, you can email me at Suzanne at Indie Bard dot co. So if you're interested in that, check it out.

AA: Amazing. Amazing! Suzanne, thanks so much for joining me today; this has been great. If you're in the market for more Big Book Energy and creativity content, you can follow us on Instagram at Little Oracles and check out the blog at littleoracles.com. And as always, take care, keep creating and stay divine.

[Outro music]

[Secret outtake]

SW: What's inspiring you? Allison. 

AA: [laughs] This– this is a good question. 

SW: And why is it Outlander? [laughs] 

AA: Yeah! [laughs] 

SW: I usually know what's going on because you tell me! [laughs]

AA: Oh, that's right. I'm the only person in the friend group that watches Outlander still; that, like, continues to hate every minute of it. [laughs]

SW: [laughs]