THE DARK PICTURES ANTHOLOGY: LITTLE HOPE - LAUNCH TRAILER

Role
Lead Creative and Editor

Brief
Deliver the global launch trailer for The Dark Pictures: Little Hope for a major Halloween release. Bandai Namco wanted to highlight the co-op nature of the game, showing how player choices: or the lack of them: lead to different outcomes.

Approach
I was the Lead Creative and Editor on this project, seeing the whole production through from start to finish. The brief was a bit of a challenge: the Creative Director wanted to use live-action segments showing two friends playing together. In the trailer, one friend is essentially succumbed to the evil within the game and doesn't help the other when they need it most.

I had to find the right balance between that live-action story and the cinematic gameplay to make sure the "Don't Play Alone" message worked. The music was a big part of building that tension. I used the score from the game, including the spooky children singing "Ring-a-ring-o-roses," which is a recurring theme in the story. In the second half of the trailer, I used the licensed track "A Conversation With Death" by Khemmis to amp up the excitement and the darker tones of the game. I handled the cinematic edit, the motion graphics, and the sound design to make sure the jump-scares landed without clearly showing any of the monsters.

Results
The trailer served as the primary asset for the global launch and was featured as a hero video on the official PlayStation and Bandai Namco YouTube channels.

• It successfully communicated the "Don't Play Alone" marketing message.

• It met all the technical requirements for the game's high-profile Halloween release window.

• The campaign helped position the title as a core part of the Dark Pictures Anthology for the 2020 holiday season.

Evaluation
To be honest, the creative direction was an odd one to work with, especially when it came to a planned 3D sequence. We had an external animator working on a shot where the female character succumbed to the evil, but the final result didn't land well and the client hated it. I had to find a technical workaround: I pivoted the edit, cutting between a small portion of the CG shot and a jump-scare from the game footage to make the moment work. That jump-scare fix actually ended up being much more effective than the original 3D plan. It was a tough one to get over the line, but I’m proud that I managed to deliver a clean, high-impact trailer that did exactly what the client needed for the Halloween release.