MCV/DEVELOP News, events, research and jobs from the games industry
[To read our growing collection of Services Spotlight articles, click here]
The Trailer Farm is a creative agency specialising in trailers, promos, featurettes and ‘making of’ documentaries for the games industry.
Its USP is that its staff have a rich history in games development, making it well placed to sync with the developers and branding teams it works with in a streamlined way.
It has provided its production services to some top tier games since it was founded in June 2011 by Tony and Daniel Porter – brothers who’ve worked in the creative teams for Grand Theft Auto, Burnout, Split Second and Pure.
For clients, Trailer Farm handles all creative direction, scripting, game capture, video editing, audio design and localisation associated with them. The process starts with the game itself.
“We don’t feel the need to use full CG in our pipeline,” says creative director Tony Porter. “We have some very high-end game capture kit, courtesy of Digital Foundry, which we use for pristine capturing of game footage across all platforms.”
Next, a combination of Cinema 4D, Adobe After Effects, Photoshop, various 3D packages and Final Cut are used to create motion graphics and the wholesome visual goodness for the final edit. Porter adds that it “loves” to use lots of 2.5D in its work.
Recently, it has produced lots of the video content for Codemasters’s Dirt: Showdown, including the global TV spot campaign and all of the featurettes. Trailer Farm is working closely with Mind Candy, and is also putting its skills to use with Microsoft on the launch of Windows 8 and its accompanying apps. For examples, see the studio’s showreel on its website.
Porter says a combination of total passion and focus on games, coupled with a huge wealth of knowledge and experience in the areas of games development, promos and marketing, are what make Trailer Farm what it is.
“We make it very easy for our clients when it comes to the things that matter, capturing great-looking sequences and executing them within a great idea.
These factors put us in a unique position to create trailers and promos that resonate with developers, branding teams and gamers alike,” explains Porter.
“We know from experience that the games development cycle can be an extremely stressful time and, more often than not, the trailers themselves can sometimes be overlooked or pushed to the back of the list, or even worse, handed over to an external company that may not have the specialist games knowledge required to create something that truly resonates with gamers themselves.”
Which is why, Porter says, Trailer Farm is ready to step into the breach with a fresh perspective, delivering the goods for a quality campaign. The video production outfit recently formed a new branch, The Trailer Farm Mobile.
Its mobile arm has been born from massive demand for the kind of services it offers for console developers, but for iOS and Android developers, who may not have access to the budgets of larger console and PC publishers.
“We fully intend to bring all of the production values and techniques we use across to this new service, but at a fraction of the cost,” says Porter.
Trailer Farm is currently taking bookings, and can be contacted if you are interested in discussing this new side to its business.
“We know how to get under the hood of a build, we understand all the nuances of in-game cinematography and know how to show a game in its very best light,” says Porter.
