written in week 6
I have realized in the last weeks of my project that making an 8 minuet composition would be very unlikely to complete in this short space of time in college. This is because it would take weeks to finish the instrumentation for the composition meaning that I would have almost no time left for mixing. This would mean I would have a low quality piece of music to showcase which I would not be happy with, this is why decided to make an amendment on my project. Instead of making an 8 Minuit composition I decided to make a 2-3 Minuit one out of the music I had already made. I wanted to however still incorporate moving image into my project so I eventually decided I wanted to make a trailer to compose over. My initial Idea was to get a trailer straight from you tube with no music for the Icon Of Sin boss fight, I quickly discovered the trailer I was asking for was too specific. This would mean I would have to make my own trailer.
Before jumping head on into making a trailer I thought it was important to have a plan for what I would want to show in my trailer and what story I would want it to tell. Because the music I had written was for the fight between DOOM Guy and the Icon Of Sin I though it would be important for the trailer to tell the story of the progression of this fight. The trailer I made still has audible music from the original game, I will remove this audio in the mixing stage of my composition.
Before I sat down to make my trailer I came up with a plan on how I wanted it to be structured so that I may effectively tell the audience a story through the trailer. The structure I came up with was: Game Opening/ Introducing DOOM Guy/ DOOM Guy meets Icon Of Sin/ Icon Of Sin Awakens/ Icon Of Sin destroys city/ The fight between DOOM Guy and the Icon Of Sin and finally the triumph of DOOM Guys victory. To follow my plan I opened the trailer with the video game’s opening dialogue, this is because it gives the audience that don’t know what DOOM is a small introduction to who DOOM Guy is and what the focal point of the game is about. Which is that earth is being taken over and DOOM Guy is the only hope for salvation.
Once the dialogue was finished I decided it was best for the trailer to cut to a shot of the fortress of DOOM, this is because it would shift the attention to DOOM Guy and start introducing his main purpose in the game. There is also dialogue that suggests that DOOM Guy is perceived as a god among the people, this also gives the audience a better understanding of who DOOM Guy is. Once that dialogue finishes the trailer goes inside of the fortress and that’s when we see DOOM Guy for the first time. The scene it shows is DOOM Guy getting armored up for battle, I though it was very important to show this in the trailer to show the audience that he is getting ready for battle, the trailer runs this scene through to the end until DOOM Guy pumps his shot-gun. This is because at this point DOOM Guy is ready for battle and now the trailer is also ready to move on to show DOOM Guys next step in his journey.
The scene that comes next also acts as an introduction to the Icon Of Sin, the scene displayed in the trailer is the ritual where the Icon Of Sin is resurrected. I though it was important for this scene to be next in the trailer because it continues the story arch of the battle between the Icon Of Sin and DOOM Guy, this means the audience seeing only what I want to see which is the rivalry between DOOM Guy and the Icon Of Sin. This scene is also quite long so I believed it was important to cut out all non -essential parts of this scene. In the end I cut out the the part where the heart of the Icon Of Sin is stabbed, this meant it only showed the Icon Of Sin awaken after the dialogue ‘You cannot stop the procession’. After that I show the whole clip of the Icon Of Sin waking up and walking into the portal, this is because I believed it was important for the audience to see how huge and terrifying the Icon Of Sin really is, this is why I thought it was essential for the titan to own the screen time at this moment.
After the Icon Of Sin goes through the portal the trailer cut’s to some game play footage of the final level in the campaign of DOOM Eternal. This game play displays the Icon Of Sin wreaking havoc among a huge city, this shows the audience how dangerous the Icon Of Sin is to the earth. The footage also shows it from the perspective of DOOM Guy himself in first person, this really put’s the size of the Icon Of Sin into scale and shows the audience how intimidating and terrifying he is.
After showing a few clips of the Icon Of Sin from the game play I decided it was time to show the audience the main fight between the two characters. To Show this fight I thought it would be important to show the opening of the fight where the Icon Of Sin slams his fist on the building because this shows how intimidating it is as well as how insignificant DOOM Guy is in comparison to it. After that cut scene was shown I wanted to cut to some more game play of the Icon Of Sin but during the boss fight, I decided to show a clip from the second half of the boss fight because this is where I believe in my personal opinion this is where the beast looks more terrifying. The clip shows the titan summoning meteors from the sky, I also believed it was important to show this through the game-play to let the audience so it’s full power. The appearance of the Icon Of Sin at this point is also beaten up and missing chunks of flesh, this visually works well with the victory over the titan because showing the Icon Of Sin with a fully armored body to one missing all it’s skin would leave a lot of grey area in the story telling. This could lead to more confusion in the story than there may already be, what I made it a trailer so I of course cannot describe the full story to an audience through visuals. But I can however try to capture the essence of the story I am trying to tell, in this case it is the battle between the Icon Of Sin and DOOM Guy.
For the ending of my trailer I decided to show the audience the Icon Of Sin letting out a monster roar as it plummets to the ground. This clearly shows the audience that the threat of the titan has been eliminated and the battle is over, that was the main story I wanted to tell. After the Titan lets out it’s roar the trailer cuts to DOOM Eternals end screen title sequence which is where I end my trailer. I think I did a good job in telling a story through my trailer, however there are some flaws in my trailer. One of which is that the transitions are very jumpy and flashy at times, the most obvious moment in the trailer is after DOOM Guy cocks his shot gun an it then shows a shot of 2 doors opening. At this moment the screen flashes to black for a millisecond and then the image goes back to normal. Overall I think I did a good job making a trailer and telling a story through it in this short space of time, but if I knew I was going to make a trailer earlier on in the project my trailer would be of higher quality.
Reading List
AllLuck_NoSkill, 2020. DOOM Eternal intro, but with no music. Available at: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_S2vXjQAbNk&t=17s> [Accessed 26 May 2021].
Ikiga, 2020. ALL ICON OF SIN MOMENTS COMPILATION | DOOM ETERNAL. [image] Available at: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UuyKNFG6ub0> [Accessed 26 May 2021].
At this point in my project I had no time to re-play Doom Eternal to record all the footage I needed for my trailer, the solution to the this problem was to download videos from you tube that had the content I needed and cut them up and re-arrange the scenes for them to fit the form of a trailer. Listed down below this text are the two videos I used a source for the footage that I used in my trailer.