Definitely Not Fried Chicken — Game Trailer

Briefing

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Working with the team at Merge Games, we created a trailer that had the slapstick humor and shock value that the Definitely Not Fried Chicken game served to its players regularly. Keeping the music light hearted and almost 'apple picking old timey business' themes, we created contrast between the front-serving happy style customer service that the fried chicken gameplay would offer, against the criminal and outrageous night time illegal drug trafficking moments.

Getting humor right in a trailer can be very tricky. The cute voxel graphics of a chicken exploding and wacky, white teethed grinning voice over allowed us to push into almost unnecessary levels of copywriting and visual aesthetics that helped push the game trailer towards a style of open ended humor, which doesn't really need much explanation. It's very 'on the nose' style of gratuitous footage and stylistic editing flairs such as punching in and whirling out allowed this to play very much like a local business TV advert, which was one of the reference points.

When working with humor on a game trailer, I always like to make sure I don't go for laughs for the sake of it. The game has this cheeky feeling to it, and it plays well in the animations and gameplay elements. You hire men in chicken outfits with AK-47's. So it's clear to make sure that if you want to get a joke in a trailer, that it suits the purpose of the game, and you're not over extending in the voice over or gameplay visuals and editing style just to make someone laugh, when it's not part of the game experience.