Director Nicolai Fuglsig of MJZ teamed with VFX house Method Studios on this 360-degree interactive promo for EA’s Battlefield Hardline for agency FCB West. Titled The Heist, the interactive live-action short enables viewers to enter into the world of Battlefield Hardline, which came out today.
The three-and-a-half minute interactive spot can be experienced online, taking the viewer through a bank heist filmed in downtown Los Angeles and the action-packed police chase that ensues. Method’s artists added several atmospheric visual effects including CG ammunition, CG smoke, muzzle flashes, tracer rounds, spark hits, explosions, debris, and fire, along with matte-painted environment damage. Viewers can simultaneously interact with, and navigate within the space using either a mouse or mobile device touchscreen. This unique spot more closely mimics the gameplay experience than traditional video game commercials.
The spot was captured using a single camera shooting straight up into a cone shaped mirror that captured a 360-degree reflection of the environment. This allowed the director to have the action and actors come extremely close to the camera and interact with it, which isn’t always possible with most multi-cam rigs used for immersive capture. Since the cone shape mirror created a unique lens that does not exist in reality, replicating it in CG posed a significant challenge for Method’s integration department. Shot-specific visual effects dictated the CG tracking approach usually resulting in multiple techniques for a single shot.
Shooting with the cone also resulted in some warping of the image that meant that even the most simple of paint tasks became difficult, but thanks to the breadth in project variation at Method, the artists and R&D teams were up to the task.
Above is an edited (non interactive) version of the spot.
