We were tasked with creating the trailer from concept to completion, handling everything from direction, gameplay capture, editing, and VFX, to sound design, original music, custom VO, audio mixing, and overall production polish.

We decided early on we wanted to create the feeling of being watched, and to create something that would make viewers feel uncomfortable and uneasy. We employed numerous techniques to create this atmosphere, including further developing our retro film vfx that allowed us to show in-game footage as if it had been recorded in the 50s, but this time we reworked it to match 1970s retro film cameras. We then employed our techniques for capture to make things feel grounded and in depth. A big rule of ours however was that the base of all of this footage had to be captured in-game in real time.

One of our key ideas was to reframe the player’s early journey as if an unseen presence had been recording them all along. We staged familiar environments, such as the moment the player discovers the car, in ways that suggested they were being observed from a distance, while showing the point of view of the observer lurking in the trees. We wanted this to feel like the player had been filmed with an old camera. We then had the observer track the player to their garage, the most common safe feeling area in the game, and then show them entering when the player was out on a run. We hoped this would create a degree of uncomfortable reality in players, knowing that while they were out doing their runs in the base game, something was in their safe space. In another sequence, we placed our camera work at an unnaturally tall height, forcing it to duck through a doorway, subtly hinting at the size of whatever was holding it. These choices were carefully choreographed so the camera movement itself felt natural, yet deeply unsettling. Every shot was done through a separate camera, and not the player camera. This meant we mimicked the walking movement to make it feel as if something was holding a camera, but in a way that gave us a lot more freedom.

This opening sequence continues until we’re inside of a dark pipe. We created and framed the shot in such a way that the outlet of the pipe and the red lighting looked like an eye, so the silhouette in the sequence would feel even more uneasy and would evoke the idea of the zone itself watching the viewer, something we had done in the Story Trailer for the base game. We then created a jump scare using the car to disrupt the flow of the trailer, where we then see the film burn up and move into the next sequence. 

We cast and recorded the VO in the second half of the trailer, which is the result of our first writing pass, followed by working with the narrative time at Ironwood and creating a combined approach.

Audio was one of the major pillars we knew we wanted to get right. The trailer features an original score, with original sound design and an original mix that we spent a long time perfecting. We wanted to create something that was both scary and uncomfortable while still being suspenseful.

All of this combined with our overall trailer process created a strong asset to help announce the next chapter in Pacific Drive.