Digital Domain and directors Neil Huxley and Vernon Wilbert of sister shop Mothership teamed with Square Enix and Airtight Games to create this :90 trailer to launch the game Murdered: Soul Suspect, which is slated for release later this year. The trailer was unveiled during E3, piquing viewers’ imaginations with a brief origin story of the game’s protagonist, Ronan, and building to a climactic reveal, designed to drive viewers to a website to learn more.
Square Enix exec producer Naoto Sugiyama said of the decision to go with Digital Domain, “We needed a team that could pull off production quality of the highest degree, tell our story in CG in a way that felt emotive and powerful–more like a film than a game, and do it all within a games marketing schedule and budget.”
To realize the stylized, movie-like piece, Huxley and co-director Vernon Wilbert used the tools and techniques of filmmaking. They began by developing a story for Ronan, which then defined the structure and limitations of his environments. For the shoot, they segmented the script and shot it in sections, like a typical feature film, instead of shot-by-shot, the more common approach for games marketing.
“By working this way we were able to help the actor stay in the moment during the shoot and capture several different camera angles, which helped us avoid re-shoots,” said Huxley.
“Digital Domain has worked with some of the biggest directors of the past 20 years and brings that film knowledge to every project,” said Wilbert. “We took things like lens flares created for the game environment and re-created them so they could work in a real world. We adapted some of the visual rules of films that inspired us, and brought their style of lighting, cameras, shooting – even the contrast ratio from color grading – into this piece because they were great metaphors for this story.”
Huxley and Wilbert also leveraged Digital Domain’s virtual production studio and team, conducting a live action stage shoot to capture the mood, tone, lighting and body/face/voice performance that drove the digital characters and assets. They tapped the studio’s advanced facial capture and animation process and pipeline used on the Academy-Award-winning movie The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, on TRON: Legacy, Jack the Giant Slayer and many other top features and commercials.
Netflix Series “The Leopard” Spots Classic Italian Novel, Remakes It As A Sumptuous Period Drama
"The Leopard," a new Netflix series, takes the classic Italian novel by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa and transforms it into a sumptuous period piece showing the struggles of the aristocracy in 19th-century Sicily, during tumultuous social upheavals as their way of life is crumbling around them.
Tom Shankland, who directs four of the eight episodes, had the courage to attempt his own version of what is one of the most popular films in Italian history. The 1963 movie "The Leopard," directed by Luchino Visconti, starring Burt Lancaster, Alain Delon and Claudia Cardinale, won the Palme d'Or in Cannes.
One Italian critic said that it would be the equivalent of a director in the United States taking "Gone with the Wind" and turning it into a series, but Shankland wasn't the least bit intimidated.
He said that he didn't think of anything other than his own passion for the project, which grew out of his love of the book. His father was a university professor of Italian literature in England, and as a child, he loved the book and traveling to Sicily with his family.
The book tells the story of Don Fabrizio Corbera, the Prince of Salina, a tall, handsome, wealthy aristocrat who owns palaces and land across Sicily.
His comfortable world is shaken with the invasion of Sicily in 1860 by Giuseppe Garibaldi, who was to overthrow the Bourbon king in Naples and bring about the Unification of Italy.
The prince's family leads an opulent life in their magnificent palaces with servants and peasants kowtowing to their every need. They spend their time at opulent banquets and lavish balls with their fellow aristocrats.
Shankland has made the series into a visual feast with tables heaped with food, elaborate gardens and sensuous costumes.... Read More