PostPanic Goes Mysterious for McDonald’s

Watch The Lost Ring Trailer 1 | Trailer 2 | Trailer 3

Okay, wait. It’s not what you think. I promise you won’t see a single Quarter Pounder or McNugget in these new trailers directed by PostPanic’s Mischa Rozema for McDonald’s and agency AKQA.

What you will see is a whole lot of tasty compositing, some beautiful typographic work and a visual tone that’s a cross between Lost and The Matrix. The trailers are for The Lost Ring, a game that takes place both online and off, encouraging players to investigate the mysteries of the Olympic Games. The experience, which has been dubbed—prepare yourself—a “global alternate reality adventure,” was created in cooperation with the International Olympic Committee, McDonald’s, AKQA and game designer/theorist Jane McGonigal.

I smell a conspiracy.

Which, I guess, is appropriate, given PostPanic’s trailers. While I’m not a fan of the acting (it feels a little stiff and Star Wars-ish), the visuals are seductive and hint at an experience that might be fun to at least casually check out. You know, the same way I casually checked out Katamari Damacy so many years ago and kissed days of my life goodbye.

I’ve compiled some of the production stills from PostPanic’s shoot into a PDF here.

Joost Korngold (a.k.a. Renascent) nailed the opening titles and supers. I love the oscillation between the serif clockwork animations, and the glitchy sans serif supers, which feel like a high-speed microfiche tour through top-secret CIA files. Joost’s typographic work acts as an anchor to the trailers, creating breathing spaces and adding fragmentary data that lodges in your subconscious.

Full credits

Linkage

If you want to get into the game, start clicking on this action. I value my social life, so I shall abstain. Have fun.

The Lost Ring (Trailer site)
The Lost Ring
The Lost Olympic Sport (Eli Hunt, Olympic Historian)
The Lost Ring Wiki (User generated wiki, tracks clues and the progress of the game)