Highlight Trailers

NBL Trailer| NEW YORK CITY
I finished making a highlight trailer to Kid Glyde's NBL event last night. It took about less than half a day to make this 5 minute clip. I could think back to last year, where it'd take me a week to do something with half the quality. I still find it funny how bad I was making such clips back then. Nowadays, I pay a lot more attention to color, dance motion, external sounds, and music quality. (I mixed up the songs a little for this clip) And of course, especially for a dance clip, the video needs to be on beat to the music. If dancers work so hard listening to the beat of the music, a dance clip needs to do the same.

Speaking of songs, the music is made by my friend Skrip from Chicago. I got a little inspired by the release of Final Fantasy XIII. Coincidentally, Skrip from the same dance crew (Floor Physics) as Erich from Strife.tv.





Here is an example of what color correction can do to a video. Posted above is a small "rough draft" clip of my video done hours before completion. Comparing that to the finished product I originally posted, it's almost no contest which one is better.


From my spectator's perspective, a good trailer needs to fulfill either one of these two categories:

1) make you jealous of not being there
2) encourages you to look into a product

It needs to be hype, or create suspense, or connect with viewers in such a way they go, "wow..." This goes for any highlight trailer, not just for dance clips. I mean, what's the best film trailer right now everyone is talking about? Iron Man 2? Did that fulfill either of the categories above? Hell yeah. Iron Man is epic! My ongoing goal is to get any highlight trailer I make to that level of hype, without revealing the full product, that is.




Koneerok
I grew up watching Koneerok from Chicago with his dance trailers. That guy, in my opinion, is the best editor for dance trailers. The first one I ever saw was his City vs City 3 highlight clip. It blew my mind. Even if you didn't know what City vs City was, you just wanted to be there from the trailer alone! I loved his style, which incorporated fast cuts, mixed in with raw crowd emotions, creating a really crazy "epic" feeling. Also, his music choices has always been on point.

In a way, you can say I am a little influenced by his style. However I still manage to mix in a little bit of my style, too, which is to keep a video still light-hearted and fun. At the moment, I am a little addicted to my slow motion-fast forward effects. I think I may have used too much of them in the previous video, oops!


Breakbeat of the Day:
from my NBL highlight trailer

Skrip Beats - One Winged Angel & Enemy Crush