Kameo: Elements of Power - Making Trailers

2002 to 2005 (Some videos in 2006) - Microsoft XBox 360 action/adventure game

Working for Rare in England - Position: Lead Animator

Over the years I edited together most of the trailers/adverts for Kameo. I even did a few short TVC pieces for G4 TV. This is a selection of the best of them and a few of the more prominent videos that I didn't edit but contained my cinematics anyway. You can also read an interview with me about Kameo here and here on the official Kameo website. There are also interviews with a number of the other Kameo team members.

DLC Pack Trailer

This short edit highlights the new demo and downloadable content for Kameo, including character skins and free online co-operative play. It presented an interesting challenge to feature so much content in only 30 seconds and print so much text onscreen in so many languages.

Cinema Trailer

This is an edit put together (not by me) for showing in the cinemas.

Kameo Preview and Attract Mode

Here it is, the last of my Kameo edits. I've effectively had several dry runs at this particular format as you can see from the other videos on this website, so it wasn't a stretch to know exactly what was needed. I put together a plan on paper that highlighted all the major themes, features and scenes we wanted to cover and when within the 90 seconds of screen time. I made a timed out video that pin pointed the exact edits for all those features. Steve then adapted one of his best pieces of music to fit and later recorded it with a full orchestra. I did some Final Cut Pro training for our HD edit suite and as the game neared completion I started capturing the material. The final orchestration varied a little from the timing of my plan so I broke down the soundtrack and re-worked the video, then I edited the footage along side it. This gave me very accurate timings to hit all the major musical cues. A week or so of capturing, editing, feedback and pick-up captures and I was almost there. However putting heavy action footage against music like this usually feels a little detached on it's own, so I added a few key sound effects alongside the sound captured with the footage where it was needed and the two felt much more grounded. The video did the rounds and seemed very popular. A few tweaks later and a surround mix of the audio and it was finally finished. Surprisingly smooth sailing judging by previous efforts! It features a number of scenes from my FMV work.

Tokyo Game Show Trailer 2005

This link will take you to a video of the game that was prepared for the Tokyo Game Show. It features a number of pre-rendered shots I did (although they've been speeded up for the purposes of this video). This isn't my edit but it shows off a number of scenes I worked on.

X04 Trailer

Not quite as powerful as the X03 teaser trailer, this version actually had an early version completely done before we looked at it and decided to completely re-plan it. There were certain points we wanted to get across that we needed to highlight. One of those elements was the ability to tackle any given situation in a number of different ways by choosing any one of a number of characters. So Kameo runs into an encounter with some trolls and begins to take them on with one character, then the scene freezes, the screen splits and we see her approach again with another character and another attack move. Then it splits again and again, ultimately showing four methods of dealing with these trolls before all four views continue to play on with four different results. The split screen works reasonably well, but some of the soft edged overlays (used later) get a little confusing and unfocused. I was quite pleased with the slow-mo tree boss as the camera swings around him then he goes back into normal speed and smashes down his roots just in time to hit a queue in the music. I did a mock-up of some cool text sweeping around the arena with the rotation of the camera and it looked really good, but I was out voted! I added a little movement to the Kameo logo at the end that gave it an interesting organic quality because you can't quite put your finger on how it's moving ... it just is.

X03 Trailer

This is my personal favourite Kameo trailer up to this point. I've done a number of these and this is the one where everything just came together to form something beautiful (well I think so, judge for yourself). I found myself with a one month deadline to pull something really special together. We worked on a plan and it started with an ambitious opening sequence that hinted at some of the key points in the game's story. Everyone else set off to make sure that the footage was going to be available to fill out the rest of the timeline, while I ploughed into the cloud sequence that constitutes the first thirty seconds. I had to learn some new tricks and pull a few seven day weeks, but I was very pleased with the results. The score was specially made to fit the editing plan which was all blocked in with temporary black and white timing cards, that were later replaced with the final in-game footage. As usual I spent a couple of days capturing the footage with the help of a professional player (I'm Ok, but no-one likes to watch someone that doesn't know what they're doing!). And I edited the whole thing together in the last weekend. Monday morning came and the response from the team and the rest of the company made it all worthwhile. It premiered at Microsoft's X03 show (2003), and did the rounds on the company websites for all the eager punters waiting to get their latest fix.

E3 2003 Trailer

This early 'feel good' trailer was one of two videos released at the time (May 2003) featuring the same footage and music. This one was edited by me and was made available on the Rare website. It features a number of scenes that I worked on as an animator, that I'm still relatively pleased with. Of course a lot has changed since then, and it's quite interesting for me to look back at this now. If you're really diligent there are even older videos of the game out there (from before my involvement with the team).