Creating Impact Across Gaming Platforms with Alison Cannon

Winning is kind of crazy because of the backstory for the Among Us 3D Bean-lieve trailer. We started making trailers in-house at Schell Games, and our team was booked and busy with the sheer number of assets we needed to produce for the Among Us 3D launch and rebrand. I ended up being tasked with creating the launch day trailer. Typically, when reviewing the performance of Schell Games trailers, launch day trailers don’t get as many views as the announcement trailer, for example. 

Announcement trailers are big news, but on launch day, people are already playing the game and aren’t actively looking to watch your trailer. I felt like there was less pressure because people might not even watch this.

Now, I’ve never made a trailer before. How exactly does a graphic designer make a trailer? I studied how Halo’s “Believe” trailer did it, and reviewing that content so closely helped me understand what keeps someone interested in something and how to capture emotion. And so, it was a huge learning opportunity for me. Winning this award is insane because it means my first attempt was pretty good and maybe I should keep making trailers.

This trailer came about because I held a brainstorming session with the wider marketing team. This was my first trailer ever, so I didn’t even know what I wanted to do. I encouraged the team to give me any idea at all. Don’t think about cost, feasibility or anything like that. We’re not shooting anything down, write down every single thought you ever had. I ended up with 65 ideas at the end of that meeting.

From there, I went through every idea and figured out which ideas we could actually make happen, and narrowed it down to 10 trailers. The one idea that really stuck out to me was making a parody of Halo’s “Believe” trailer. I really like Halo’s advertising, and after looking it up, I saw other companies had done parodies of this trailer too. It seemed like such a good ode to the games industry, so ultimately it ended up being the winning idea. 

All credit goes to Mack, our Senior Web Operations Manager because the Halo trailer was his idea. 

As for representing in today’s games industry, a trailer like this reminds me that we’re all just gamers. Like most who work in this industry, we all love games. Referencing older work like this and doing a parody of it not only acknowledges the long and interesting history of the games industry, it’s also a celebration of this field.

In the original “Believe” trailer, Halo used miniatures — which was insane to have a full diorama filled with Halo miniatures. I didn’t have that kind of budget. Instead, I used a tool our dev team created, the Im-pose-tor, that allowed me to pose Beans in different ways and take screenshots of them. From there, I used all of my graphic design skills to create the rest of the trailer. I think all of these things set this trailer apart and made it shine.

I had to create emotion with Among Us 3D Crewmates (Beans) that have no faces. We also had to use still images. And that was really hard. Trying to capture emotion and humor with faceless beings was a little difficult, and is different from other trailers that can use facial expressions to convey emotion. The Im-pose-tor tool came in handy, and I had a massive spreadsheet breaking down each frame of the trailer. It was a lot of work, but it all came together in the end.

I hope winning the NYX Grand Award for this trailer allows the marketing team to keep acknowledging other games and the incredible things they produce. We got a lot of comments on the trailer with people saying things like, “Oh my gosh, I’m an older gamer. When my kid was watching this trailer, I got this reference, so this trailer was really for me!” It was special to see the community come together to support ideas we’ve never tried before. 

I think it also gave the marketing team and me a new mindset around taking risks and trying out new things. If you think the launch trailer isn’t going to get many views, why not try a risky thing or something you’ve never tried before? If anything, you’ll learn from it. For example, I learned how to put together my first big Premiere Pro timeline to make the trailer and export it to meet platform requirements. 

As for the company, I hope we continue moving some creative work in-house and trying new things with the talented and creative team we have at hand. Trust your team members, and trust them to make some incredible things if given the chance!

Halo actually responding on a social media post with, “sus”, was everything I ever wanted. If there was one way that I knew that I won with this, it's if they noticed it. If they were like, "Oh, that's cool." Then I knew that we were doing pretty well. 

The second that came through, I was just screaming. I was so happy.

I think the best advice I have ever gotten in my life was that in order to make art, you have to experience art. So, you can't just study a book and read how to do it. That's going to help you, but at some point, you have to put the books down. You have to put down the self-help books and the tutorials. You got to just look at art and admire it.

Honestly and truly, the “Believe” trailer is art. It’s crazy good. So at some point you have to admire the work and figure out how they made it. Why is this compelling? Why is this so popular? 

What was the response that they got? You have to look at every single aspect of a piece of artwork and really just sit in it and then think about how you could do something similar, or make someone feel the same thing, or use the same tools in a different way because all art is just sharing. We are all getting constantly inspired by each other. So I think if you want to make anything great, you have to look at stuff that's great and figure out how you can be that too.

Staying organized is also a really big one. I had an entire spreadsheet where I tagged if something was funny or shareable or focused on informational stuff. It was super, super organized and served as a space where I tried to figure out absolutely everything about this project, so I could understand it inside and out and not have to constantly remind myself of something.

Organization is huge for creativity because if you don't have things in the places where they need to be, then you can get a little scatterbrained. Next thing you know, you forgot about the things that you wanted to work on. So yeah, I think that the biggest strategy is just organization.

With the introduction of AI, we're now becoming extremely aware of very human experiences. Anything where emotion is heightened or anything that’s handmade and thoughtfully crafted, I think these things are hitting differently now. 

People are gravitating towards human experiences in ways they may not have before. I feel like even just 10 years ago, some people would look at contemporary art — a painting where it’s all just one big red canvas — and say something like “I could make that at home.” I hear that kind of feedback all the time. 

But now I feel like people are going into museums and they’re like, “Oh my gosh, this is so thoughtfully crafted…you can see the paint strokes, this is real.” 

In the digital realm, and especially with AI, you can make things very quickly and iterate on them very quickly. I think, hopefully, we’re moving back into a slower, more expressive time where people are admiring the smaller details that make it very human.

Your greatest critic is yourself, and you will never know your potential if you don't try. The worst thing that you could ever be told is no. It’s not like anything bad is going to happen to you. If your peers or company are telling you to submit it, obviously you did good enough work that others believe in what you created. 

You should be proud of yourself because honestly getting anything done is a big achievement. Be proud of yourself no matter if you receive an award or not.

Take risks. Trust your team. When you brainstorm, let people be creative with absolutely no guardrails. Just let any idea come out and separate the time spent on brainstorming from the time spent on logistics.

Brainstorming should be a time and place where people are allowed to share any idea and never feel like they’re being put down. You should do this with yourself, too. Let yourself brainstorm and don’t shoot down your own ideas. You are always going to be your biggest critic. Let yourself go and then figure it out, parse it out, later with your logical self. Let your creative self just be creative and play.

A million percent credit to Mack because it was his idea, and also a big shoutout to our Content Marketing Manager, Jared. I wouldn’t have had this opportunity if it wasn’t for him, and he gave me a ton of guidance and was a fantastic resource and cheerleader through it all. 

Celebrating the games industry with a parody trailer. Everyone likes parodies, but I think this one is really cute and speaks to the power of video games overall.

The Among Us 3D Bean-lieve trailer was a kicking off point for me taking on more video projects. Now I manage a monthly video essay series called “Lens of the Month” for the Schell Games YouTube channel that people should go watch. I also started doing employee spotlights and adding animations to other trailers. I hope this continues.