First and foremost, kudos to Justin for running this amazing website and acting as the provider to all of us in the motion world, no one kills our time better then Justin Cone and certainly no one invests themselves as much as Justin does into the happenings, insights and broad views of this industry. Motionographer is his baby, starting as an infant in Tween, learning its ways with 1.0, and now blossoming into the glossed up leader in our industry’s news with 2.0….simply put, she’s out of your league. Anyways, enough praise, onto the post…..the first post!
Two new video game trailers have come to my attention in the last week. Both games aren’t new; Tomb Raider’s Lara Croft is probably 50 by now, and Gears of War is in its second installment, but that doesn’t mean their uber-masculine trailers still cant thrill.
Gears of War 2 is on its way onto the shelves and with that comes the mandatory kick ass game trailer. Following up on last years beauty “Mad World”, Kosinski is back as director, this year utilizing a poem as his narrative for a story he entitles “Rendezvous”. I would say that the first one is still the best, but that he continues to create these trailers straight out of the game engine is a testament to how far video games have progressed and how good of a director he is. Props to Digital Domain for developing the process in close collaboration with Epic Games.
It seems that this trailer was more along the standards of game trailers; showing off the cool features offered in the game, the crazy characters to expect, and of course, blood. This is still great, but doesn’t reach the bar that Kosinski has raised for himself.
As for Tomb Raider, this is a wonderful concept that probably could have been executed a little better. I’m sure that there are budget limitations or the game developers may not want the trailer to divulge too far from the game, but the look of it still feels a bit “video game” to me. As compared to Gears of War, this is certainly more polished, but the fact that it doesn’t pull far enough away from in-game graphics makes it feel a tad awkward.
These still leave me with excitement with where trailers are going. As an old gamer (my loving brother used to tell me I was playing nofriendo when we were kids) I get over excited at the creative possibilities that video game trailers hold for us.
I’m sorry I have no production companies for this..hopefully this post will flush em out!
Thanks to David Lessel for the tip
Gears of War “Rendezvous”
Agency: T.A.G. SF
Client: Microsoft Xbox
Creative Director(s): Scott Duchon / Geoff Edwards / John Patroulis
Art Director: Nate Able
Copywriter: Mat Bunnell
Producer: Vince Genovese
Production Company: Anonymous Content, Los Angeles
Director: Joe Kosinski
Executive Producer: Jeff Baron
EP/Head of Commercials: Dave Morrison
Head of Production: Sue Ellen Clair
Producer: Julien Lemaitre
Editing/VFX Company: Digital Domain
President, Commercial Division: Ed Ulbrich
Executive Producer: Karen Anderson
Producer: Melanie LaRue
Visual FX Supervisor: Vernon Wilbert
CG Supervisor: Peter Plevritis
Digital Production Manager: Chris House
Music: Trans Am “Diabolical Cracker”
Audio: Mixed at LIME / LA
Engineer: Rohan Young
Assistant Engineer: Joel Walters
Executive Producer: Jessica Locke