Bafta worked with agencies on cinema ad for the Bafta Games Awards
Ahead of the 21st Bafta Games Awards in April, Bafta, DCM (Digital Cinema Media) and Common People Films teamed up to produce a national cinema advertising campaign celebrating the art of storytelling in games.
Produced on a limited budget, the production turned to virtual production and AI to acheive a finish that may not have been possible with traditional methods. The ad starred award-winning actress Susan Wokoma, Baldur’s Gate 3 duo, Samantha Béart and Neil Newbon, Doug Cockle (Witcher 3), Jane Douglas (games presenter), and Sir Ian Livingstone, co-founder of Games Workshop.
Common People’s Jennifer Sheridan directed the trailer, which was filmed at the agency’s Future Creatives Studio, a post-production house in London. Jennifer used her experience directing post-heavy shoots to maintain the natural humour and authenticity found in a traditional shoot, highlighting the importance of storytelling.
The ad sees Wokoma travel through a series of CG-generated scenes to introduce the familiar industry faces. This includes a wooded mountain range, home to a large dragon which humorously faces off with Neil Newbon. Wokoma is then equipped with classic game sword as aliens invade an industrial town, all before witnessing an astronaut take off into space.
The filming was completed on a virtual production stage, allowing the team to choreograph camera movement, background changes and shifts in light states. Cube Studios helped build Unreal Engine environments that seamlessly tracked in-camera scene transitions, and the direction was assisted by Sam Meyer, DP.
The limited budget proved challenging for the production, with DCM’s creative arm, DCM Studios, alongside Common People Films, using resources creatively to deliver the greatest effect. The Future Creatives stage played a crucial role in solving these problems and allowed the studios team, led by creative director Jeremy Kolesar, to deliver a seamless hybrid approach. It was an approach that combined human creativity with tools set to speed up workflows.
For example, the bus stop scene was a last-minute addition, with the team utilising AI to aid in the design of a bus stop graphic and the street scene backdrop. A similar tactic was utilised for the astronaut scene, helping create a photo-real galaxy and nebula at a super-high resolution - an example of modern technology assisting the creative process without hampering human input. Both DCM Studios and Common People Films adhere to strict ethical practises, using internal systems to ensure that no intellectual property is infringed.
These techniques created a high-end finish despite the small budget, which you can watch below.
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