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I made a trailer for the new Shadowkeep expansion!
Trailer here: https://youtu.be/qPYa8WJztJQ
After everything that went into creating it with the help of my friends, I felt like this little trailer deserved a write-up all about the making of it, so here it is! I hope you enjoy...
Inspiration
I've been hooked on Destiny, playing every expansion, ever since a friend got me into the game during The Dark Below, an expansion focused on the moon no less, and I loved watching the early promotional videos for the game.
The "Become Legend" live action trailer really felt like one of those iconic defining videos. A trio of Guardians arrive on the moon to kick ass and slay Hive to the sound of Led Zeppelin's Immigrant Song. Video link here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSWN-VP0lD8
With Shadowkeep returning to the moon, I wanted to pay homage to the original "Become Legend" trailer in a way. Heavy inspiration came from one of the early trailers for The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, that featured a super cool and powerful cover of the Immigrant Song by Trent Reznor and Karen O. Link here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fkP3urtYCkc The perfect, wicked vibe for Shadowkeep.
And so it felt like a real full circle kind of deal, and I was hyped to edit this together!
Production
This is the part that made me HAVE to do a write-up in a Reddit post because what it took to create some of these shots is absolutely mental haha.
For the most part, I used stock footage from promotional Shadowkeep trailers and official ViDocs from Bungie, because of course it had to capture the excitement of the new expansion and look like a Shadowkeep trailer. However there were some shots that just had to be home-made and newly recorded footage. So I went back to D1 with some friends and this is what we did...
I made a storyboard of the shots that we needed (Storyboard here: https://i.imgur.com/6ZD10sW.jpg
It was pretty crazy but eventually we managed to instance a bunch of us in the same Archer's Line landing zone (because of course, you can only have 3 Guardians in one Patrol fireteam), and the shots we needed to get would take a team larger than 3.
It was decided that having a Fallen Pike would really sell the shot (Image link here: https://i.imgur.com/AKL4yro.jpg
I took a Pike from the mission start, and drove it to Anchor of Light, the nearest public instancing area (because you see the game design makes Archer's Line an isolated space for The Dark Beyond mission).
I waited there until Klustxr managed to enter Anchor of Light and instance with me, deliver the Pike to him, and then he could deliver the Pike to our original instancing back in Archer's Line haha. We repeated this a couple times more, in between instancing with random blueberries in the Patrol zones who would understandably pass by, confused as to what was going on, so that we'd have some back-up Pikes in case anything went wrong. Thanks SINNERMAMBA and AJYoungGun for being our Pike shepards.
And now comes creating my favourite shot! (Image link here: https://i.imgur.com/302TT2y.png
It may look simple right? But in order to get that shot, I had to be closer than just next to the Pike. So I made a sketch for the guys. (Image link here: https://i.imgur.com/CVZtm5M.jpg
I had to be phased within my friend myelement's player model, which you can only get away with happening when you're not in the same fireteam, but possible due to sharing the instance together. Meanwhile Klustxr is on the Sparrow in the background behind, having to perform some precise movement. But... it's a also tracking shot. So as myelement moves forwards on the Pike, so does the camera move with him.
Well... we put the camera on wheels just like the studios haha. So myelement is moving forwards on the Pike, meanwhile I'm riding atop another Sparrow being driven by my friend Sloman-Component so that we can get that juicy camera movement. With enough trial and error, we got a take that made the cut.
So all that instancing, setup, crazy Sparrow techniques, all went into a one second shot hahaha. And I just found the novelty of that too funny not to share here on Reddit. There was a bit more phasing in some other shots, but that was the most complicated one hehe. And some single shots with AJYoungGun and Sloman-Component were nice and easy, despite AJYoungGun falling into a dark abyss enough times to warrant his own blooper reel hehe.
Your Legend
The words were one of the hardest parts to this trailer, thinking up something both impactful and relevant. I sampled a little of the good stuff from Eris, but for the final words I really struggled for a couple of days. After a lot of helpful suggestions from my clan, in particular thejamesbinmore, I came to "Embrace Your Legend's Darkest Fears" which would be the main tagline for the trailer. With the homage to "Become Legend" already there, it felt important to me to continue the "Legend" theme. So there you are.
Result
I hope I've made a trailer that you can enjoy and get mega hyped for Shadowkeep hehe. Who knows, maybe it could even make MOTW. I've made a number of submissions over the years, but none ever made the TWAB. I'd say the expansion trailers I've made for Shadowkeep and Forsaken (Video link here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EXtDRcvV4kU) have probably been my best shot, but I like the tradition that I've started now anyway and think I'll make a trailer for every expansion moving forward hehe. I like editing and it's been fun to make.
Can't wait for Shadowkeep myself. I'll be submitting this trailer to Bungie Creations today so I'll update this post with a link to "Light" it if hopefully it gets approved, and anybody wants to support getting that bread. If you made it this far, thanks for reading and going on the journey of what it took to make this hehe. 😁
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