Behind the Scenes of the 'Dead Island' Trailer!
In 188 seconds, the trailer for Dead Island elevated its subject matter from a long-forgotten vaporware title to an outright phenomenon that drew 1 million views in 24 hours on YouTube and got the attention of the mainstream media. Just who was behind this brilliant bit of marketing? Find out after the break.
Our friends at G4 got the scoop on the flesh-chewing phenomenon (lucky stiffs) when they sat down with the twisted minds at Deep Silver and Axis Animation that brought us the sensational slice of monstrous mayhem. The discussion is rather fascinating, especially since we’re dealing with a brief 3-minute trailer, but they cover everything from balancing the level of gore (“We didn’t want the violence to be the focus of the entire trailer.”) to defining the role of the daughter in the grand scheme of things (“…an interesting inversion you couldn’t achieve with other characters.”)
When discussing the decision to include the young family as the focal point of the trailer, director Stu Aitken explains, “You have a little over two minutes to tell a story and within that time we wanted the audience to develop a strong emotional connection to the characters. This was the key goal for the trailer. This isn’t a bunch of stereotypical game superheroes that you’re watching. These are real people. The audience could very easily put themselves into their position…in order to convey that quickly, we focused on the strong relationship between a parent and their child.”
It’s a rather enlightening read, so click on through to G4’s interview to get the full skinny.
