F1 23 Reveal Trailer
Electronic Arts
Role: Principal / Senior Editor
Client: Codemasters
Production Company: Electronic Arts
As lead editor on the F1 23 campaign this this year this was the first asset to be released and we really wanted to to create something that stood out from previous assets and set up the whole campaign well. We focused on looking at the new audiences as well as stirring up interest in lapsed players. For this we decided to tap into the Drive to Survive fans that are really taking an interest in the sport as a whole. Focusing on the new story mode Braking Point 2 to drive that drama in our trailer we were able also able to use a mix of; live action footage (with F1 drivers Max Verstappen and Charles Leclerc), cinematic cutscenes and gameplay to get the fans excited.
This was my first time working with Codemasters which has been a dream of mine since working in the gaming industry as they are the games I grew up with when I was a kid. Obviously there was some learning there and winning over their trust but the project ended up working out really well. We were able to block out a previs / ripo very early on, using found footage and shots from broadcast, which we were then able to build on to what we delivered. RealtimeUK were building out the cinematic cutscenes for the Braking Point story mode and sent us early greybox versions of their scenes so we could figure out which sections we wanted to put in the trailer without giving anything away. With these section locked in early we were then able to figure out what gameplay section we wanted to build out to show the new features of the game between.
We also had 2 shoots that we arranged with our talent Max Verstappen and Charles Leclerc which we could lift from to connect the game to the real life sport. Together we built out some interview questions that we could lift quotes from and add a little star power to our edit. Partnering with RaceService we filmed with each athlete for a few hours and as well as getting extra content which could be used for other beats in the campaign.
With this multimedia approach, we had a lot of different footage at different specs. We used AI to up-res all the footage / cinematics to 4K @ 60fps so we could show the game off in it’s best light and show that the game would support these specs on release.
Once we had everything in place, we partnered with Niche VFX to bring up the visual fidelity of all the shots but specifically the in-game capture. As the game was still being built out, certain areas were under development so we asked Niche to bring it up to the level the team were aiming for. Also, with the cinematics being done externally they were a lot more polished than the game itself at that time, so Niche were able to help us level everything out so it didn’t feel like some footage was more final than others. They did an amazing job and we can’t wait to partner with them again on future projects! Thanks to the whole team for their work on this.
And finally, we partnered with Source Sound to bring an extra punch to the SFX and music track for the trailer. With their team working on the Drive to Survive series they where able to bring our trailer to that same level and really set our campaign off on the right foot.
This trailer ended up performing very well and once the numbers came back we saw that it had out performed Codemasters previous trailers by 80% making it their most successful reveal trailer yet. This was a huge honour to work on and I’m so so proud of the team that worked on this. There were quite a few hiccups along the way but by coming together and collaborating we were able to overcome those hurdles and create one of my favourite pieces of work to date!
As well as producing the hero trailer I also worked with another of our editors to create bespoke version for our ambassadors like this Charles Leclerc version:
and this edit for the 2 times World Champion Max Verstappen:
Lastly, I created a simpler template that another member of our editorial team used produce social versions for specific F1 teams to share on their social channels to help drive the hype in the F1 community:
