The story behind Starr Park’s wild and world-building production design
Wieden+Kennedy, Biscuit Filmworks LA and Revolver collaborated to create an elaborate and mysterious aesthetic for the origin story of the enormously popular mobile game Brawl Stars. Starr Park is a pastiche of promotional and instructional films of the 1960s and 70s. It sees a spokesman introducing viewers (addressed as potential investors) to a utopian Disney Epcot-style theme park. As the Japanese-language film unfolds, the park unravels – catastrophically – in almost real time, indirectly invoking the dog-eat-dog world of the game. There are nods and allusions to Brawl Stars throughout the film, not least in the form of two hundred blink-and-you’ll-miss-them Easter eggs.
Gamers are interested in the origin stories of the games they love – that is, how this particular game’s world and gaming narrative came to exist. The origins of the Brawl Stars universe have always been hazy and the Starr Park film can be viewed as one particularly ‘out there’ theory about the genesis of the game. Starr Park is a triumph on various levels but the richness of the film’s production design is simply startling. Here, Starr Park’s Production Designer Steven Jones-Evans talks us through some learnings about that dimension of the film, which won the campaign one of its two Yellow Pencils.
Starr Park, Biscuit Filmworks / Revolver
Giving audiences more than they expected
The visual feel of Starr Park could hardly be further away from the Brawl Stars game. The game’s polished, cutely cartoonish graphics are an explosion of vibrant eye-popping colours. The film, on the other hand, looks retro, its colours a little fuzzy and faded, its visual effects elaborate but DIY. “Where practical we wanted all our special effects to be achieved in camera with minimal VFX,” says Jones-Evans. “The film was shot and framed using the 4:3 TV ratio and was heavily treated to look somewhere between early video and standard 16mm.”
He adds, “We knew the film’s target audience would comb through its images in detail by pausing and rewinding the film to search for all the clues, Easter eggs and other references to various characters in the game. In that sense, we designed it as a museum piece so you could stop the film and analyse each frame. Each frame is dense with information, which can't be absorbed when viewing at the usual 24 frames a second.”
Breaking the fourth wall
Starr Park breaks down the fourth wall between the fiction of the game world and the viewer. “Usually, you'd never hold on an image or set for too long before moving onto the following image or set piece,” notes Jones-Evans. But that’s exactly what they did here. Starr Park is a ‘promotional film’ presented as if it has been shot in (almost) real time, with a series of calamities befalling the park and the presenter. This approach is especially effective because it toys with a fourth-wall element: “Film relies upon time passing to tell stories.” In Starr Park, time passing “is an inherent factor in working through the production design.” Starr Park also shows some of the filming of the promotional film, adding a meta layer.
Starr Park, Biscuit Filmworks / Revolver
Designing the Starr Park gift shop
“By far, the biggest challenge was designing all the detail – in particular the graphics and model-makes,” says Jones-Evans. “The Starr Park gift shop was one of our sets where virtually every item on the shelves we designed and manufactured, from the Starr Park hats and snow domes to the soft penguins and lunch boxes. We had six weeks to prepare for the six-day shoot, which would generally be more than adequate. We shot the whole film on stage in six sets. As it was one of the first productions post the first Covid lockdown, many crew, construction companies and model workshops were available to jump on board. We ended up using three model workshops, three construction companies, special effects, greens and a core crew of around 15 people to complete all the production design.”
Taking inspiration from the narrative to create custom designs
“One of the insights I gained from the whole experience was the very testing experience of pushing beyond your usual creative boundaries to solve some of the design issues,” says Jones-Evans. “For instance, in one scene, a family of four get on a suitcase ride, but only the two kids make it back in one piece. My first thought was to design a big dipper-style ride with suitcases swapping out the usual ride carriages, but this was too conventional.”
Jones-Evans looked for inspiration from the film’s narrative to take this scene to the next level. “A nuclear explosion irradiates all the theme park workers in the story, which corrupts all their thinking. We had to imagine how a corrupted theme park designer’s logic would build a suitcase ride. Instead of having a flat conveyor belt moving the suitcase carriages around for people to get into, we decided on an angled design you find at some airports, which would make it difficult and uncomfortable. Some of the trackwork was unfinished or ended abruptly, causing carriages to fall off the tracks.”
Boosting authenticity with in-camera shooting
“It’s now very common for directors to want to do as much in-camera as possible,” notes Jones-Evans. “There is an authenticity and immediacy about it that can very easily get lost with VFX. It’s more relatable and not as predictable as what VFX has become in recent years.” And in the case of Starr Park, which stands out due to the physical design of the dreamlike, old-school sets, “it also plays homage to the vintage nature of the piece.”