The trailer that just won't shut up.
The trailer for Techland's upcoming video game Dead Island has caused quite a sensation, with millions of views on YouTube alone. Props go to Glasgow-based animation house Axis for creating the original trailer, and to The LA Times for speaking to Axis producer Andrew Pearce, managing director Richard Scott, publisher Deep Silver cinematic designer Anton Borkel and senior brand manager Malte Wagener, about the trailer. Asked about the trailer's skewed chronology, Borkel said:
It’s difficult to tell where that idea first came from. But one of the ideas from the beginning was to move a little bit away from the feeling of gore, but still keep some violent images because that’s what the game will show. We wanted to have an aesthetic ballet of death being portrayed in the trailer. One of the ways we got away from violence is that when you reverse stuff, it becomes more real.
Scott revealed that actors were used to create the animation.
Another thing really interesting is that the mother, father and daughter are not based on game models. They’re real actors we cast for the parts. We scanned their heads and did facial scanning for facial animation. That’s one thing that allowed us to deliver the performances people connect directly with. We also did motion capture to get movements. We used the original actors for the family and mo-cap performers for the zombies.
Wagener was quick to point out that the trailer uses no gameplay for the trailer, just in case anyone who watched it is a complete idiot.
A lot of games, when they do their “announcement” trailer, the game is much further along in development and has a bigger budget. We don’t have either of those things, so we set out to create a mood piece that would not represent gameplay, but would represent the atmosphere and the intense drama that will be in the game.
There are several "remix" trailers for Dead Island out there. IGN found one titled "Backwards Forward", which sees the trailer in reverse order.
Another trailer has added lyrics to somber song that accompanies it. Titled "Literal", the words were written by comedian Toby Turner. [Gamerant]
