The key incarnation of our trailer concept for “The Wall” is seen in the decision to not have the Hero take the expected “heroic” action (exerting control or influence on a situation, normally assisted by a great big gun). Like all great cinematic action heroes, from Bond to Dirty Harry, the moments before the Hero takes action are arguably more important for audience understanding and empathy with the character or story.
While we knew Crysis fans would be expecting to see the Nanosuited Hero leaping around blowing apart aliens we weren't going to show that – least not in this trailer. Instead the Hero watches on as Marines fly into an Alien ambush, almost as if he knows what is about to happen. We wanted a moment for the audience to understand our Hero before all the shooting starts – because once it does start, it is very difficult to go back and try to reclaim or revisit these ideas – and there would be plenty of opportunities for that type of action in future trailers. But with less actually happening on screen in terms of “big action” on screen we needed to work even harder to give the trailer pace and drama.
The New York location is a major element in Crysis 2. Of course, it's not a new idea to have a large metropolis as the setting for an apocalyptic showdown, but it is a very new idea to use it in the way that Crytek are intending. Their idea of “catastrophic beauty”, executed with such artistic and technical virtuosity, gives the New York location a striking, cinematic atmosphere. We knew that New York City itself had to be a “star” of the trailer - as much of a talking point as the marines, aliens, or Nanosuited hero - and we wanted to reflect this in the music as well.
There were numerous conversations around between Maverick and EA about the possibility of New York, New York as a sound track. We agreed with it's value in terms of the strength of the message from a marketing perspective but we were quite attached to the Poly Scattergood track Breathe In Breath Out and had been working with Polly and her Manager Neil Ferris for some weeks on an original arrangement of BIBO to picture. The way ahead was to ask Polly if she would be willing to record a version of the NYNY in a style close to BIBO - of course were delighted when she agreed. In fact Polly and Neil were hugely flexible and accommodating throughout the project and though we set about trying to mix together musical elements of BIBO with NYNY but it got to February and we were getting close to delivering the project but hadn't yet got the music quite right. It was almost by chance that Polly played us a recording she had made while simply learning to play NYNY. She had done this in her flat with her keyboard and Mac and though she was a little reticent when we heard it sounded simple, raw, emotional and perfect for what we needed.
To give the music a cinematic feel without taking out the essential Polly quality we mad a extra special effort to record it the best we could and worked with composer/arranger James Brett, who has his name on films including 2012, Alien v Predator and Transformers among others. The final music mix of the trailer is still very close to the arrangement as Polly's initial track though with the richness and depth you get when you get Polly, a lovely grand piano and 20 violins and violas in Studio 1, Abbey Road Studios (you can see us doing this in a little film Making Of Film that can be seen in Part 4). It's also worth listening to a version of the trailer with music only and no SFX...
Polly fans are so set on the record company releasing a single of this track there's a petition set up to lobby the record company.
Of course while the music plays a huge part in the trailer the images and animation itself are really where we were going to create a true engagement in gamers minds around what the Crysis 2 game play would promise. More than in any other trailer projects Maverick have worked on in recent years, this trailer was going to do more to align the trailer experience with the game experience. Next week we'll write about how and why we produced this trailer within the Crysis 2 game engine; CryEngine3.
09:58:24
