Square Enix and Airtight Games recruited Digital Domain along with directors Neil Huxley and Vernon Wilbert to produce a trailer for Murdered: Soul Suspect; running 90 seconds long, the project tells the brief origin story of a tough cop named Ronan who tries to solve his own grisly murder by navigating through a ‘Ghost World’.
“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,” stated Square Enix Executive Producer Naoto Sugiyama. “Few companies in the world have that capability. Digital Domain was our top choice.”
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“Square Enix and Airtight had a great concept for the teaser,” said Digital Domain’s Co-Director Neil Huxley. “What we set out to do was to create another experience of it; to take it into another realm entirely.” Film techniques were employed such as segmenting the script and shooting it in sections. “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.”
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“Digital Domain has worked with some of the biggest directors of the past 20 years and brings that film knowledge to every project,” noted 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 colour grading – into this piece because they were great metaphors for this story.”