So that was really, really cool.

So now that we have an idea, we have a concept for a trailer, we start going into the pre-production phase of things.

And this is sort of where we try to figure out like, how are we making this trailer?

So is it an in-house trailer as in like we're making this trailer or is it someone else making this trailer for us?

I think every single trailer we've made have been in-house and been created like by the team, so to speak.

There's been a couple of external partners that have helped us out with some scenes and they've been super helpful.

So for instance, the opening shots for the 1.0 trailer was made by an external studio, and that was really nice, like offboarding some of that work to them so that we can focus on like more of the nitty gritty things that only we at Coffee Stain and working on Satisfactory would know.

For the most part, Linus is the one who's making most of the trailers here at Coffee Stain, but sometimes I also jump in and create and make some of them.

So like the Update 6 trailer, for instance, and the announcement trailer.

So one thing that's really, really important for us for trailers is audio design.

Almost every trailer that we made have always been like audio and music comes first.

Usually what we do is we have, we set a tone or a vibe with our music and then we sort of build a trailer behind that and try to like

you know, make the trailer fit the music, so to speak.

sometimes we have composers like dennis who've made a lot of songs for from ghostwood empire write us custom songs and there's there's a bit of a trade-off there when you license a song you can usually take a song that people already know about so they already have like a connection to that but the issue with that usually is that they can be really expensive and you can also only use them in like the situation that you're you're licensing for

So if we license a song, we can only really use that song for uploading a video on our YouTube channel and that's it.

Whereas when we have composers that make something custom for us, we can sort of make a deal better and have it so that we have more lenience in terms of where we can use it and how we can use it and stuff like that.

So for the 1.0 trailer for instance, we originally was going to use a licensed song, but it was hella expensive.

And it really limited us in terms of how we could use it, and the terms of that license meant that we could only really use it on YouTube once, and that was it.

So it was a lot better to just have Ghostwood Empire write a track, and I'm glad we went with this route actually, because I think that song is a banger.

And the process there is usually that we send them, the composer, a couple of tracks or some references that we have just to get the vibe going and all that stuff, and they'll create something and then we'll iterate on that stuff.

And for the announcement trailer, because we were so tight on time making that trailer from when we came up with the concept versus when we actually needed to finish it, we decided to reuse the song that we had for the Update 3 trailer

But we did ask Dennis to tweak it a little bit so it would better fit the timing and all that stuff for the announcement trailer.

So it was a little bit tricky to make it work, but I think we got it done.

And it also ended up being that we had to reuse that trailer.

It was the same thing.

We wanted to make a trailer that's dumb and epic.

So we took the most epic song that we could find, and that was really that Update 3 trailer song.

So once we have the song, we start sitting down and making storyboards, which are basically one of our artists sitting down and drawing up the frames, showing sort of like what is going to be in each shot and which shots are going to be in the trailer.

So when we make storyboards, we usually sit and discuss first, like this is what we want to entail.

And then our artist sits down and draws it.

And then we go through all these shots and discuss like, you know, does it make sense in this order?

Or should this be in the shot?

Should we change this and this and this?

So the goal of this really is that at the end of pre-production, we need to know exactly how many shots we need and which shots we are making so that we can better estimate like how much time it takes for us to make this.

You know, if we need a lot of shots with a lot of big factories, that's going to take a long time versus, you know, just close ups of the Pioneer or something like that.

And also if the shots are very intricate, that also plays a big part in how much budget we need to spend to be able to make these trailers.

And there's also elements like, do we need custom animation and shit like that?

So storyboarding is such a powerful tool to be able to figure all this stuff out.

So for the announcement trailer, we knew which songs we needed.

And when we make storyboards, we also usually typically try and put them in the timeline in like Premiere or something where we can sort of have it rolling and like see and get timing and stuff like that.

And since we knew which song we were going to use for this trailer, we could just put that song in there and sort of play it out and see how it goes and like see how much, you know, each frame can be on screen at certain amounts of time.

So once we have that storyboard trailer, we usually try and do a pass where we do like a little bit of a block out in editor where we sort of try and like make a quick mock-up of all the shots that we need to make and just place some basic elements in there just to get a feel for what the framing will be like in editor, if there are any limitations in game that we need to take into consideration.

And we can also take the pioneer model if we have like characters doing stuff and place them in the world and, you know,

get some poses in here and there and you know see how things flows and then you play these animations in the engine unreal engine also has this tool called control rig so what controller does is it basically takes the rig that you created and it adds a rig on top of that so you can control the rig in engine

Control Rig makes sense, doesn't it?

This is a really, really, really powerful tool from my point of view, because I'm not an animator, but I am able to create animations in engine in the scenes and whatnot.

And this is really, really good for when we're making the block out because I can just take the pioneer and I can create the poses in the sequence

itself uh really really really quickly in fact i actually made the entire intro sequence in the update 6 trailer with control rig so it is totally possible to make the entire trailer using control rig but it does have some drawbacks and whatnot which makes it more suitable for like these kind of basic blockouts things but it is possible to to make a full thing in sequencer uh in a religion using control rig and

Yeah, I can't tell you how much I love that tool because it makes things so, so nice for me as like creating these kind of cinematics in engine.

And in the storyboard trailer, we can also use references to sort of indicate like what we're going for with certain scenes when it comes to emotions or, you know, movement and whatnot.

The running sequence in the announcement trailer, for instance, is heavily based on one scene from Sherlock Holmes where they're running through the woods.

We also had a lot of inspiration from Wes Anderson with like the zoom ins and all that stuff.

and how we compose the shots and whatnot.

So whatever information you can convey in these storyboard trailers and the block ad trailers from you as a director to the rest of the team, the better so that more people sort of understand your vision as to what you're creating.