John Burnett's DESIGN PORTFOLIO
DEAD SPACE 4
Teasers & Trailers in record Time
DEAD SPACE 4
Absolute Cinema in Seconds
Client / Brand: Electronic Arts
Role: Creative Director, Art Director, Audio Director, Screenwriter, Voice Acting
Timeline: 14 Days
Tech Stack: Midjourney, Nano Banana, ComfyUI, Wan 2.2, Veo 3, Suno, Photoshop, DaVinci
Teasers & Trailers in Record Time
Making a teaser trailer requires time, resources, and oh so many meetings to secure buy-in with stakeholders. But what if you could provide a sense of certainty for that vision with the actual finished deliverable? For that matter, what if it was completed within days – not a calendar year?
ONE PEOPLE. ONE MIND.
For Dead Space 4, the marching orders were to make the Teaser feel like a fresh take on the franchise with a clear appreciation for the source’s deep lore. That meant the message had to be simple, effective and referential without being obnoxious. To achieve that perfect balance, I broke production into core components, then assembled them into a kind of micro A/B testing workflow for maximum speed and quality.
THE START OF A MOVEMENT
Ai or not, we start with the bread & butter basics: concepts, direction and a script. Traditionally, the inter-departmental crosschatter for this simple foundation would’ve been extreme. With a team of one, however, the consensus is instant – and much of what you see here was intuited, allowing me to jump into production immediately.
AESTHETIC VIRTUES
With only 60 seconds to work with, The storytelling had to be tight, focused but also arresting. I had a clear vision of the Teaser in my mind… yet working with Ai is rarely as simple as going from point A to B. Numerous ideas that worked so well in my head simply didn’t pan out, even after dozens of generations and hours wasted. This reinforced the idea that Ai design is more about being flexible in your end-product than adamant about your Vision.
MAKE US WHOLE
Anyone can make a disparate collection of Ai pieces, but putting them all together in a compelling package is quite a bit of work. Between my local Wan 2.2 setup in ComfyUI and a healthy amount of time editing my voice (yes, I do VO) in DaVinci, my tech stack had quite the workout.
Make no mistake: Gen Ai still requires vast amounts of human polish through multiple programs to make it shine.
AFTERLIFE
Making the Dead Space 4 Teaser revealed a stunning reality of Gen Ai: the complete obliteration of red tape. When I think about all the equipment, time, cast & crew – the food to feed them, the legal counsel to shield them, the random illnesses that stricken them… it’s incredible anything gets done at all in the real world.
Clearly, the speed and fidelity of Gen Ai is stunning, but the absence of reality may be the single greatest benefit ever created by a manmade tool.
HEAVENSENT
From making Hollywood-quality Teaser trailers to game assets themselves, let’s see what I can add to your workflow.
JOHN BURNETT
Designer . Mentor . Innovator