We had the opportunity to collaborate with Platige, Bunker VFX and Activision on the The Pacific trailer ahead of its release in Warzone. While we are well-versed in creating cinematic-quality content and were very excited to play in the Call of Duty sandbox, the timeline for delivery required us to optimize our approach.
The Race Against Time
The Pacific cinematic needed to be ready for release about 7 weeks’ time.
Quickly diving into the engagement, we began by doing a feasibility study on the existing storyboards and the associated content backlog to understand the established workflows. The mandate demanded a high-level of fidelity so finding the balance between the director’s vision and what we could predictably deliver with that fixed time became paramount.
Establishing our Hero (Assets)
Working shoulder-to-shoulder with Platige we quickly iterated and locked down previz that met the goals of the product, thus allowing our team to prioritize and work more effectively. We identified the key hero elements (examples below) that would need to be produced from scratch versus what we could re-use from the franchise, which allowed us more time to focus on the larger sets for each scene.
Regimented communication with the game team was critical to us delivering at quality with as little iteration as possible.
Hitting Our Target
The result was an atmospheric story tease that was able to get turned around in just over six weeks.
The trailer launched to great success, logging over 500K views on just the Call of Duty Youtube channel alone, with many more across other press and news outlets.
