Ubisoft Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Wildlands

Ubisoft Paris and Borel Sigma Inc collaborated to produce the cinematic trailer of Ghost Recon Wildlands. This time the Ghosts are up against one of the worlds meanest drug cartel’s. Like a virus, the Santa Blanca Cartel has taken reign over the beautiful rich lands of Bolivia. Only the Ghosts can bring them down, but it is a long road to find and destroy Sueno, the cartel’s kingpin.

Ubisoft Paris approached Borel Sigma Inc in late 2015 to develop ideas for the cinematic trailer of their prestigious shoot’em up game, Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon : Wildlands. The trailer needed to communicate the epic open world in which players find themselves for the first time in the games history as well as the Mexican Cartel story line. Borel Sigma Design brought in director Alex Courtès to work with them to develop a story and direct the film.

After a short introduction to the Ghosts as they skydive into Bolivia, we are taken on an ever increasingly violent tour of the cartels operations. Starting in the peaceful coca fields, we follow the drug trail from its production, transportation and distribution. We see the cartels heavy hand over local communities and their manipulation over the country’s militia. We are introduced to Santa Blanca’s leading figures which lead us to our final goal and the real reason for all the pain and suffering, their illusive and sadistic leader Sueno. We end the film with the start of the fight, as the trail blazing Ghosts begin their mission by taking down one of the cartels drug transits.

After winning the project in early 2016, the 6 month long production was launched to create the 2 minute 30s long trailer. Supervisor @BS Design led his inexhaustible team of 3D and 2D artists at paris based Borel Sigma Inc.

With so many different environments, we started our work researching the different landscapes and the lighting designs.

We went through a month of work to develop the story for the film. It was necessary to get a clear grounding and make sure we were in brief for the client.

Once we received an ok for the storyboard, our next step was to develop a comprehensive animatic to base our linetests on. Not only to help work out the timing, but also the technique needed for each of the shots.

As we were creating the characters from scratch we needed to sculpt and shade the different characters. Not only the Ghosts but the Cartel members that appear in the story.

Each shot was treated to be specific, to be a very different lighting and setting design. The finishing process was essentially meticulous to bring about all the final touches, depth of field, skies and vfx. Houdini was used to create smoke or atmosphere passes.