Case Studies:

Awe Interactive – BPM

Awe, Yeah!

We've worked with the talented folks at Awe Interactive for a few years now. From branding, game UI design to filming and editing a range of trailers and teasers for their flagship game, BPM: Bullets Per Minute. Work with the Awe team always sees us collaborate with other brands too, including global gaming gods Nintendo.

To The Beat.

BPM: Bullets Per Minute is a roguelike shooter where the central premise is you can only shoot, reload, dodge and jump to the beat. If only a few words there made sense, all you need to know is in BPM, you can't do much unless you do it timed to the music.

The idea is pretty unique and a really interesting concept to explore when creating branding, teasers and trailers for BPM. The logo for the game, for instance, uses a crosshair that's made out of chevrons that, when in motion, will pulse to the beat. Within the trailers and teasers, cuts and 'moments' are framed around the music - either perfectly timing reloading and shooting SFX to the beat or highlight key information or titles on drops and massive percussive or guitar hits.

Invisible VFX

The best VFX shots are often the VFX you don't notice at all. For our Nintendo BPM trailer, we threw a bunch of invisible VFX into the mix to take our video to next level.

For instance, the shot where you see the hands fly in with the Nintendo Switch joy-cons is several shots composited together. The hands, the screen and the video playing on the TV are all separate elements that we captured individually to give us greater control in the edit. By doing this, we could re-time everything and create the perfect shot.

Other invisible VFX are subtle elements like lens flares, dust overlays for texture and reflections in glass in eyes to lift shots by giving them added subtle depth. Most of these will go unnoticed but without them, there'd be a clear lack of something. It's like cooking with bay leaf. When you use one, your dish will be elevated but no one on earth can tell what it actually adds. Without one, and your dish just won't be as tasty.