Inside Coinbase’s liberating ad recreating video game aesthetics in real life

Coinbase wanted to show the world an alternative to the traditional financial system, which often leaves people feeling powerless. Creative ideas company Isle of Any found an analogy in video games: “Life’s a game and it feels like someone else has the controller,” says Laurie Howell, who runs the agency with Toby Treyer-Evans.

To translate this message into a campaign film, the agency worked with director Oscar Hudson to create a world filled with NPCs (non-player characters) who are hard-coded to move automatically through the world with no autonomy. The big twist of Your Way Out? The digital aesthetics of early 2000s video games were actually painstakingly recreated almost entirely in-camera, using practical set builds, flattened 2D costumes and props, and real actors choreographed to behave like game characters; a video game remake like no other. As the film’s hero breaks free of the system and embraces greater financial control, the rigid game environment falls away and the real, 3D, colourful world gradually returns.

Howell and Treyer-Evans joined production designer Luke Moran-Morris to discuss how they meticulously created the props, lighting, costumes, angles, sets and choreography for the film, and why these efforts weren’t just indulging craft for craft’s sake – they truly served the narrative. As Treyer-Evans says, “If this is about you as a real human escaping the system, then in order for you to identify with this character, to feel the emotion, it’s kind of essential for it to be shot for real using a real human being.”

See Behind the Work for more behind-the-scenes insight into award-winning D&AD work, including conversations with this year's Black Pencil winners on how they made some of the year's most talked-about work.