Entertainment and design company Imaginary Forces (IF) was recently called upon by Walt Disney Pictures to create a teaser for its upcoming feature, NATIONAL TREASURE: BOOK OF SECRETS. The teaser breaks today (May 25, 2007) with the premiere of PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: AT WORLD'S END.
In the NATIONAL TREASURE sequel, treasure hunter Benjamin Franklin Gates (Nicolas Cage) looks to discover the truth behind the assassination of Abraham Lincoln by uncovering the 18 missing pages from assassin John Wilkes Booth's diary, and embarks on an adventure with many surprising twists.
The 1:40-minute teaser, art-directed by Sean Koriakin of Imaginary Forces, opens on a CG 19th century globe. The viewer is taken into the globe where script type -- from the 18 missing pages of Booth's diary -- is revealed. Gates (Cage) provides the voiceover, telling the story as though we are seeing the adventure in his head. Through his deductive thought process, we follow the type where highlighted clues and symbols lead to animated images of President Lincoln and his assassination, and to various landmarks in Paris, London and the U.S. where this global journey takes Gates and his team.
"What's nice about this teaser is that it stays true to the storyboards we pitched to the client," said Koriakin. "Everything from the color to script type to the globe to stylistic elements; we were able to execute our concept all the way through to the end. We didn't have much film footage to work with initially so we used as much animation and motion graphics as possible to tell the story -- to connect its action, extensive historical references and global perspective."
Within the body of the teaser are Masonic symbols, hidden and embedded by IF into the landmarks. The symbols also turn into the cast run at the end of the film. Fire and smoke elements were shot by the IF team, which were included in the animated portion when Booth's pages were incinerated, as well as all of the graphic cards in the teaser.
The animations were created in Autodesk Maya and Adobe After Effects, and composited in Autodesk Inferno. All of the type and symbols were designed and animated in Maxon Cinema 4D. The entire teaser, including film footage, was edited in Avid.
Koriakin concluded, "I never dreamt that I'd have to model a 3D Abraham Lincoln head!"
Imaginary Forces Credits:* Creative director: Peter Frankfurt* Art director: Sean Koriakin* Exec producer: Annabelle Richardson* Producer: Pascal Leister* Designers: Sean Koriakin, Ronnie Koff,* Animators: Sean Koriakin, Nate Homan, Andrew Soria, Dan Meehan, Hsaio-Fan Mo, Ryan Zunkley, Juan Monasterio, David Lewandowski, Freda Lau, Gary Hebert, Justin Nardone, Miguel Lee, Sal Rangel* Editors: Keith Roberts, Walter Louie* Inferno artists: Rod Basham, Matt Spencer* Production coordinators: Joe Denk, Courtney Graham
IMAGINARY FORCES (www.imaginaryforces.com) is an entertainment and design company based in Hollywood and New York. Its award-winning work spans the diverse industries of feature film production, entertainment marketing and promotion, corporate branding, architecture, advertising and interactive media. IF's recent work includes identity packages for Lifetime, USA Network, Animal Planet and MTV, as well as effective and compelling broadcast advertising for Nike, Toyota, Pontiac, Smirnoff and Lexus. In entertainment and media marketing, IF created campaigns for such films as NATIONAL TREASURE 2, TRANSFORMERS, THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA, THE STEPFORD WIVES, SIGNS and both MEN IN BLACK films. The company also designed and produced main title sequences for THE NUMBER 23, CHARLOTTE'S WEB, THE MESSENGERS, RAY, SPIDER-MAN and SEVEN, and produced the highly successful BLADE trilogy.
Bill Desowitz, former editor of VFXWorld, is currently the Crafts Editor of IndieWire.
