Creating the trailer

This weekend I have created the trailer for our interactive video, which you can find on YouTube. This trailer has a couple of goals. Firstly, it has to make the viewer interested in the concept of our interactive video. Secondly, it should show a piece of the content we have filmed so far. Thirdly, it mustn't spoil too much of the story, because otherwise the viewer has no reason (or less reason) to watch/play the interactive video.

To accomplish these goals, I first had to select some content from the things we have filmed so far. I thought that the scene of the "Farmville-freak" playing Farmville like an addict was the most useful scene for showcasing our progress so far, as well as the scene that is most suited to present our concept, so I decided to use that. I edited the video in such a way, that the viewer notices that the freak is passing a lot of time playing Farmville - you see the camera zoom in on a clock indicating that the time is 12:43 at the start of the gaming session and zooming out from a clock showing that the time is 19:43 at the end of the gaming session - and that he is only interested in his game, therefore ignoring the mess in his room - the fact that he throws the cans on the floor is emphasised by the close-up and tracking of one falling can afterwards.

After I had edited the video, I complemented the action with a bit of text. I wanted a minimum amount of text before the video content, otherwise the viewer is confronted with a lot of words without any action and loses interest. So the only text you see before some action takes place is the name of our group, followed by the text "Thousands of people are addicted to video games..." After that, the scene of the freak follows. Hopefully, this will grab peoples attention and make them want to see more. Of course they won't see more in the trailer, but instead they will just see text highlighting the story of our interactive video: "What happens when they get in touch with Nature?", followed by some information about the video: the title, The Fairytale of the Farmville-freak in the Peculiar Park, and when it will be available (unfortunately we couldn't be more specific than "soon").

In the end I had to put some music behind the trailer. This proved to be the most difficult part, because on the one hand, I wanted the trailer to show a part of our actual interactive video, which meant I had to use the Farmville Theme Song during the gaming session of the freak, but on the other hand I wanted a very coherent video, which means only using one piece of music during the whole trailer. I uploaded both versions, so that the other members of the group could decide, and in the end we took the version with the Farmville music.