Bunker VFX, studio from Belgrade, is for many years creating Cinematic trailers for games. In studio’s portfolio you can find many trailers for, well known, AAA games: Doom Eternal, Evil within 2, Rage 2, H1Z1, Angry birds etc. Kosta Mihailovski and Ana Uzelac, co-founders and CG supervisors, will talk about their experience, working on Cinematic trailer for Outlast III Trials, workflow and challenges in production during quarantine (state of emergency) due to Covid-19 virus.
We think that gaming trailers are perfect compound of the art of movies, and video games. Challenge is to tell the story of the game, working in full CG environment usually, but using classical film techniques and language, in limited space and time form, less than couple of minutes.
In a manner of speaking, actually this is the beautiful challenge of gaming trailers. From the first draft of scenario, to the final picture at the end, with all the emotions and storytelling that trailer has to bring to viewers, for the game it is presenting for the first time.
We started, and finished, production o cinematic trailer for AAA game, Outlast III trials, during quarantine. And for this project, we can honestly say that we truly enjoyed working on it. The online premiere was couple of weeks ago, and it brought fantastic results and huge pleasure for us, since it was produced during pandemic circumstances, completely remote. Also, since it was new client for us from Canada, Red Barrels game developer, and the visual request from their side was at really high level, project it self was great challenge with lot of obstacles needed to outcome. Script was provided by creative agency, storyboard, and draft concepts for 3 hero characters – Doctors who are illegally operating on patients. For the rest of work, it was decided to let Bunker do the magic.
We had to build two environments where everything is happening, Surgery room and spooky corridor. There were no concepts for them, so all the creative was on our side, but it was important to have visual connection with the game-play from new sequel, and to stay connected with the Cold-war period, like in game. When speaking of certain period of time from history, we had to build dozen of specific assets, based on used In-game assets from engine. These assets, provided by client, were not usable for us in terms of High-end production, but were very useful as a 3d reference for us when building new asset from scratch.
Another great challenge on this project was Motion capture shooting – How to organize it, having not more than 1 person in studio in the same time, during the worst period of quarantine.
We will kindly use this opportunity, to thank our friends from Laboratory of interactive arts FDU, Branko Sujic and Pavle Dinulovic. They took everything on their side, huge responsibility, they took technical stuff and acting for different characters in the same video. They provided wi-fi Mocap suit, cameras in studio so we can remotely participate in shooting from our homes, and with detailed preparations before shooting, everybody actually enjoyed it. Considering circumstances at that moment, we organized and prepared very detailed and precised preparations for shooting, actor new at each moment exactly how to orient in space, where to move and what to do in exact time intervals. Results of this way of Mocap shooting were fantastic.
Next potential challenge was assembly od 3d scene for light and render, where we expected a lot of minor issues during importing animations on our character rigs, importing final assets, cloth and hair simulations and render itself. Also, atmosphere, light, look and feel were very challenging, above all, it is a horror game, for older and experienced players, with high expectations. Atmosphere is muffled, mystic, creepy a little but, the only source of light is Surgical Lamp fro ’50s. How to follow trough this type of visual request, and not lose details? In the second part of video, there was request for specific Night vision effect we developed later, everything together was rendered and comped in Ultra HD 4K resolution.
Switching to Remote work during ongoing project was a challenge, considering that production for this project was full CG, and it is strictly dependent with system infrastructure in Bunker studio, servers and workflow pipeline. We really have to praise all the artist and project organization, it took only a week or so to fell, the team was well connected, with over 20 artist working on the same project, in same time, from home. Communication was good and clear, we were tracking artists and their tasks on daily basis, and all issues or dilemmas during project were quickly solved.
This project, during early WIP stages already brought huge delight to creative agency as well as to client, and beautiful feedback to us as a final result. After official release, video quickly had more than 3 million views, and comments on video from players were incredible.”