We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Yinwen “Wendy” Mu. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Yinwen “Wendy” below.
Yinwen “Wendy”, appreciate you joining us today. Can you talk to us about a project that’s meant a lot to you?
Being a trailer editor for AAA top video game companies around the world, such as Lost Ark (Amazon Games), Call of Duty: Warzone Mobile (Activision), EAFC Sports, and Fall Guys (Epic Games), is always a challenge and having a lot of fun. There are many projects which are very meaningful to me, so I have to talk about a few.
I worked on an indie video game trailer named SUPERVIVE | Bring the “ALL-IN SQUAD” for Open Beta: NOV 22. This trailer got 12k views on the Supervive YouTube official account, and 8.3k views on Theorycraft Games Instagram official account. This is an indie, squad-based shooter game and each character in the game has strong personalities, cool abilities, and cute emotes. As its trailer editor, I wanted to connect with my audiences and let them fall in love with this game and play it. I wanted my audience to feel my excitement when I received the game footage from my capture team. When I worked with my creative directors Noah Cooper and Mitch McCarthy, we collaborated and discussed the shot design, character blocking and staging, and the lighting in the game capture. This trailer is about 1 minute long, so I want my audience to pay attention to every shot in the video and not lose their interest when they are watching the trailer. I added some voice-over of each character when the video introduced them, and with my music edit and sound design, I conveyed the story and energy moving forward.
Rainbow 6 Battlepass Twin Shells Trailer is one of my projects I can’t forget to mention. This video got 204k views on the Rainbow 6 game Instagram official account. In this trailer, I wanted to emphasize colorful skins and cool weapons on each character, so I used a lot of speed ramping on some signature shots to give more time to present the skin and weapon moments. Within a short-length video, I chose the best part of the music and added sound effects of the gun to hook up my audience’s attention to make them feel “can’t wait to watch the next video!”
EA Sports FC MOBILE 25 | Gameplay Launch Trailer is one of my favorite projects that I worked on. This trailer had a straightforward structure in the script, so I focused on music choosing and game capture footage choosing. From the client’s request, I needed to reveal significant elements in the game’s latest update and highlight each character from the game. So, I discussed this with my creative director, Nate Araiza, and art director, Sean Kennedy, and worked closely with them. The in-game stadium and its light design were the first shining points in this trailer, and I wanted to catch my audience’s eyes in the first second of the trailer. So, I opened up with a big wide shot from a bird-eye angle of the stadium and cut to the first signature in-game player with a close-up shot to draw my audience’s attention. I collaborated with my video game capture team and communicated with my capture director to have capture footage fit in the timing of my edit to show off the game and signature gameplay moment. It’s a great challenge to have a good balance of storytelling the content marketing, to make the product available to the client. To present EA FC Mobile in a such way that my audiences will feel they are on the pitch taking part in an actual soccer match, with my music editing skills, I “direct” my audiences to different levels of emotion with the storytelling going forward. This trailer received 505k on EA Sports FC Mobile official YouTube channel and it’s presented on EA Sports FC Mobile official website.
Fall Guys – Ranked Knockout Trailer was a very fun project. I was always obsessed with my character – “bean” because they were always cute. This trailer needs to be shown more content than my previous Fall Guys trailer, such as to present ranking level-up icons, and gameplay moments on different new maps. It’s always exciting for me to show off various gameplay moments in a short-length of video with a strong theme, which is also a challenge for me. Through a strong collaboration with my creative director Tom Flynn, art director Adam Zucker, and my capture team, as well as my growing experiences, I took an initial concept to turn into the trailer. This game is always cute and colorful. I needed to make sure that my “beans” performed well in the footage, and I had to put them together in perfect timing to have their emotes and actions happen perfectly with my music beat. I discussed with my capture director about the color palette and light design in each shot. Tom and Adam liked my ideas and polished them together. This trailer was very important to the client, so from the music choice, I thought about how to make this video more playful and exciting. With my sound design, I came up with an idea to have a countdown moment at the beginning to hook up with my audiences. Then, I started with the gameplay picture to jump into the first level-up moment. Not only did I show the achievement leveled-up moment but also showed difficult gameplay moment in the trailer, I wanted my audiences to put themselves into this trailer, to let their emotion come along with my main character – “bean” in this video. Finally, this video got 497k views on the Fall Guys official X (Twitter) account, 42k views on the Fall Guys official YouTube channel, 61,900 views on the Fall Guys Game official Instagram account, and 33k views on the PlayStation official YouTube channel.
My latest trailer work LEGO Fortnite Star Wars Festival is a cheerful and exciting project. When I was a kid, I watched Star Wars movies with my grandpa all the time when I visited him. And after I grew up, I started spending my time playing with my Lego mini figures and building so many stuff. So, when I got the editing schedule that I needed to work on this project, I couldn’t wait to start editing this video. Balancing everything that the client wanted to show with the video length available while still making the game look fun and exciting was difficult. I chose the session of the music carefully to show the emotion of each gameplay moment and added a small surprise with Canita Band in the middle of the trailer to make my audience laugh. This trailer got 11k views on the Lego Fortnite YouTube official account and 22.8k views on the Legofortnite Instagram official account.
Yinwen “Wendy”, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
I graduated from Savannah College of Art and Design, majoring in Film and Television Production. I was fascinated by video making, from preproduction – writing a script or concept creating, to postproduction – editing, sound designing, or color grading. And, I always feel excited to see a project from zero to bring it to life.
Becoming an editor to work on video game trailers is an interesting journey. When I was a film student doing a video shoot, I was always struggling with some technique limits. Sometimes, when I was drawing a storyboard and creating a shot list, I was thinking of having some “cool” shots, such as having the camera down on the ground, flying through my characters and other objects; or having the camera flying in the air, chasing my characters freely. However, it was very difficult to have these ideas come true in student projects and not considering the budget situation.
I feel very grateful to be a trailer editor for video games. Not only I can use my film and television production knowledge for my work, but also have various shot designs from my imagination for my audiences. Usually, I get my footage from the video game capture team. When I work with my creative directors, art directors, and capture directors for my projects, we can have so much freedom to think about camera angles, and camera directions, with character staging and blocking in our shot design.
Editing trailers is always with music editing and sound designing. It’s not very easy to make trailer projects look good (from the picture visual side), and sound good (from the music and sound effects side). Whenever I start to work on my trailer, it’s always a challenge and it’s always an opportunity for me to learn more. Each of my clients has different music tastes and the music they choose has various styles. So, when I do music editing for my work, I want the music to become a hook, connecting with the footage. Sometimes, with some music stop-down moments, I want to surprise my audiences with the music beat and catch their eyes for the picture moment I want to show off or emphasize from the trailer. Adding sound design in my trailer is like to give my project texture. Sound effects I choose to connect with the picture and music are the elements in my trailer to help me build atmospheres and catch my audience’s attention.
What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?
Every editor has a style they have developed as they grow as an editor. And every video game has the best way that it could be shown in the trailer. I took my style and the way cut into the trailer to convey my concept and ideas. I wanted my audiences to focus more on the gameplay moments and the exciting vibe from the video.
Are there any resources you wish you knew about earlier in your creative journey?
In the beginning, when I just came into this industry after I graduated, I felt overwhelmed. But when I look back, I wish someone could tell me to “trust your talent, understand subject matters, play video games, and watch the trailer to research the latest trend”. I wish I could be more confident about myself and my skills, and been more prepared when I was in the earlier of my creative journey.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.yinwendymu.com
Image Credits
Yinwen “Wendy” Mu