Inside the visual effects that created a dystopian near-future London
Watch Dogs: Legion, the third instalment in French game developer Ubisoft’s Watch Dogs series, is an exhilarating, punkish adventure game set in a near-future, dystopian London amid political upheaval. In turns dreamlike and nightmarish, the story follows a hacker syndicate, DedSec, as they fight to clear their name after being framed for a terrorist attack, while also attempting to liberate the city from the oppressive private military force, Albion.
For the game’s much-anticipated trailer, Ubisoft commissioned DDB Paris to create the film Tipping Point. Under the leadership of Chief Creative Officer Alexander Kalchev, they created an animated short film that carefully introduces viewers to the Watch Dogs: Legion universe.
Instead of sci-fi-like visuals like cyborgs and robots, DDB Paris relied on animator Alberto Mielgo’s skills to unmistakably anchor the story in near-future London, weaving Easter eggs, such as black cabs and London streets, across the trailer. The work was awarded a Yellow Pencil for Computer Generated Visual Effects, a Graphite Pencil for Film Direction and a Wood Pencil for Sound Design and Use of Music. Below, Alexander Kalchev shares insights into how the film was made.
Tipping Point, DDB Paris
Aim for artistic excellence before technical innovation
The team approached director and animator Alberto Mielgo, the creator of Netflix’s Love, Death & Robots. “We were immediately drawn to Alberto’s incredible style and fluidity of animation,” says Kalchev. “Today’s VFX world is really exciting; from using machine learning in animation to Unreal Engine, the possibilities for incredible technological leaps seem endless. But too often we stop at how impressive or life-like a render looks. And yet nothing is more inspiring or life-like than art. Beyond the technical specs, you need to ask yourself: what choices are you willing to make to create a film that doesn’t feel like everything else out there, but has its own world, its own stylistic choices and its own visual language?”
“We didn’t set out to achieve technical innovation – we set out to create a film that looked and felt unique. Alberto Mielgo’s incredible artistic style gave us the possibility to push what the visual world of a video game trailer looks like. Watchdogs: Legion has a universe that is truly singular. It’s a neon-lit, post-Brexit punk dystopia that feels exciting and scary in equal measure,” says Kalchev. “To create a commercial for such a unique game, we wanted to go beyond the traditional ultra-realistic video game cutscenes or live-action ads. What we needed was a film with a look and feel as unique as the game itself, which eliminated a lot of CG processes.”
Tipping Point, DDB Paris
The visuals have to match the pace of the game – while being immaculate in every frame
From the first animated storyboard, the team focused on matching the video game’s signature fast pace (“like the energy of a great punk song”), without compromising on the quality of the visual effects. “We wanted the film to feel like a 200BPM manic race through London,” Kalchev says. “It had to feel relentless and yet so elaborate in detail that you’d want to freeze frame and study the individual frames, read the graffiti and the propaganda posters on the walls and study the outfits of the private militia chasing our character.”
Creating the film was a craft-led process, relying on Mielgo’s animation skills rather than live action shots. “Very little motion capture was involved,” Kalchev adds. “Everything was closely supervised or drawn by Alberto himself. Each frame feels like a painting, which required a painstaking level of commitment and attention to detail.”
Tipping Point, DDB Paris
To create a dystopian setting, take inspiration from the present day
Instead of the standard visual language of sci-fi, the team wanted to encapsulate Watch Dogs: Legion’s dystopian universe by incorporating visual clues that locate the trailer in the near future. Black cabs, high street billboards, political messaging, and even the London Underground are peppered throughout the film. “The inspiration was the city of London itself, mixed with the dystopian messaging we are being bombarded with in the post-Brexit moment,” Kalchev explains. Beginning with an adaptation of German theologist Martin Niemöller’s widely-known Holocaust-era quote, the film makes clear that it’s fighting man-made evil, rather than fantasy.
“The game’s story is the eternal story of choice: when they come for the others, do you take a stand or do you stay with the silent majority? The idea of a street artist trying to raise awareness against a totalitarian state felt contemporary and futuristic at the same time – if we look at the murals in Gaza or Banksy’s work, street art has the power to send a deeply political message and spark change. If you watch the film closely, you can spot a lot of Easter eggs; little references to the game, such as the Albion private militia’s Orwellian messaging that felt very much like it was taken out of real life. The homage to Martin Niemöller’s poem was a reminder that evil is never too far away. After all, for evil to prevail good people have to do nothing.”