Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1574
May 2009 15 Design was the only hardware provider that allowed me to digitally ingest footage straight from the Xbox 360, our target platform, and at uncompressed broadcast quality. We never knew if our publisher, THQ, would decide if the spots we were creating would go to YouTube or all the way up to broadcast HD TV, so quality had to be top-notch at all times. The workfl ow was fully integrated with Adobe's CS3 Produc- tion Suite. So moving from Premiere to Photoshop and After Effects was fully supported with external monitoring. This made reviews fast and painless. The result was a powerful system that could do three simul- taneous online streams of HD video for far less than any set of professional converter boxes. Our recent title, Saints Row 2 (produced by Greg Dono- van and Dan Sutton, and written by Steve Jarros and Drew Holmes), has special tools built into the game that enable me to capture imagery inside the game with a virtual camera. It's like being the director of photography on a big-budget action fi lm. We would have several players "act" out scenes via the multiplayer functions in the game, and I would "shoot" with the virtual camera, hooked up to a Blackmagic Multibridge Pro. We captured the uncompressed footage directly to a custom RAID box that our IT department assembled, and from there, we could shoot, edit, and fi nish our projects. This also enabled us to quickly reshoot any ads or promo- tions we received back from third-party outsourcers who just didn't have the resources to do cinematic-quality shots. We were able to do reshoots on deadlines in less than 24 hours. Being able to quickly conceptualize trailers and shoot high- quality media gives us an edge over video game companies that are outsourcing all their video media—we can save money and still deliver a higher-quality marketing presentation. Depending on how the market responds to trailers, we are able to produce extra media that is not on the advertising schedule. One thing I noticed when we were putting out game trailers that showed off gameplay aspects were the comments from the fans. "Where's the story? I don't see any story." Even though a story trailer wasn't in the plans for a few months, I was able to start cutting one. Having that kind of fl exibility within a game's development cycle was critical for us to have the successful marketing campaign that we had with Saints Row 2. The result is a broadcast-quality HD trailer that looks no differ- ent from gameplay the audience would experience at home. With native DVCProHD support in the Blackmagic Design Multibridge Pro, we plan on buying the inexpensive Panasonic HPX-170 P2 camera to add to our arsenal for shooting devel- oper diaries for our community. We also plan to start making Internet marketing materials earlier in the game development cycle since we have more control over the media that goes out. Blackmagic Design has empowered our company to be more than just a game developer. As the gaming industry continues to grow, the need for high-quality video media will grow, as well. More and more creative industries are starting to bring the video production in-house because of the low cost of editing and shooting hardware to produce broadcast-quality HD media without having to pay the Hollywood rates of a professional company in Los Angeles. ■ Unlike in broadcast, a video editor for games has to manipulate game footage that is still in progress, capturing imagery from the game platform for output to various media.