“Big up Stuart, Will and their team, who were instrumental in helping us deliver this fiendishly complex live action/animation film on a tight budget within a crazily short deadline. The whole project ran incredibly smoothly – and nobody threw any tantrums”
Pat Doyle, Executive Producer Riot Games/1Up Productions

We were flattered when Executive Producer Pat Doyle and Creative Director Charlie Anderson came to us in need of help with an ambitious film as part of a global project for huge gaming company Riot Games (Tencent).

We worked directly with Riot Games to deliver on a highly creative brief that was open and fun but technically challenging. Our objective was to deliver at a cinema level of execution. Creative Director Charlie and our Director Bennett Johnson worked together to develop a script for filming that would combine live action with animated characters from the renowned League of Legends game ‘Wild Rift’. The film was shown as part of the Opening Ceremony for international gaming competition Wild Rift Icons held live in Singapore. The film would then live online.

We shot within 3 weeks of brief! The whole project including animation creation and compositing was completed in 12 weeks. The action was captured in 3 segments over a 1 day shoot. We executed a detailed pre-light and technical run through the day before filming meaning everyone was shoot ready!

The combination of filming on the George Lucas stage at Elstree Studios and delivering the film as if it were ‘one shot’ led to a result that everyone was proud of. The studio setting gave us the control required to introduce the animated characters on a fantastically real journey to the ‘control room’.

It was a huge challenge and great fun to plan – everything had to be 100% locked down for filming due to it’s technical nature. We enlisted the services of acclaimed steadicam operator Charlie Rizek (‘1917’, ‘Mission Impossible’) and a talented choreographer to guarantee perfect action and camera detail.

Post production saw us work with brilliant animation company Hydra and we were able to oversee the edit, grade, sound and online for our client supplying all the various deliverables to the correct specs as required.

It was a brilliant collaboration and we loved working direct with Riot Games on this project – more again soon please! .