Alessandro Pacciani Sets The Mood For 'Dark Souls II'

Touting the sequel to what's regarded as one of the hardest games ever made is a tough sell. Dark Souls 2 is a game which sets the player in a hostile fantasy world where their progress in finding a cure for their curse finds them battling a host of terrifying creatures and, more often than not, dying. A lot. Think Groundhog Day with more monsters and fewer laughs.

For the launch trailer, From Software (developers of Dark Souls II) enlisted the help of Filmmaster Milan director Alessandro Pacciani and set him to work creating a dark and moody cinematic representation of the virtual world. Utilising a staggeringly well-realised level of computer imagery (no live-action photography here), the spot both sets the scene for the game universe and intrigues the viewer with its dazzling visuals.

We were thrilled by what we saw, so spoke to Pacciani about the detailed CG, alongside managing the expectations of gamers.



How did you get involved in the Dark Souls project?

It came completely unexpected, I was on a holiday in Italy when I received a call from my Japanese producer telling me that the managing director of From Software was trying to get a hold of me for discussion about a game project.

I then booked the first available flight to Tokyo and arranged a meeting with them to investigate what it was all about.

Do you worry when taking on a property like this – one with a clear aesthetic and a vocal fan-base? What's the pressure to get it 'right'?

At the beginning I was a bit reluctant to take over the job since I wasn't very familiar with the genre and the idea of working on an established franchise that had such a strong fan-base was potentially too risky for me and might compromise the image of the game.

I thought it would take a lot of effort for me to step into that world, absorb myself into that atmosphere and give my take on it; but then after sitting down together with the main guys at From Software we started talking and they showed me early drawings, concepts and artworks - I then established a very natural connection with that world that sparked my interest.

No one ever pressured me, even if the expectations were really high. They totally relied on my lead and gave me a lot of freedom. But still, the biggest challenge was to come up with something "right" that would equally reach out to the hard-core fans of the game and the broad audiences that are not familiar with the genre.



How much of the design/narrative content comes from you in a project like this, and how much comes from the game developer/publisher? Do you have a strict rulebook you have to abide by?

Most of the R&D, character design and some of the assets were already there before I stepped in to the project, because most of those elements were developed to be used in the game. By the time I started working on it there was no story or concept for the cinematics, they gave me total freedom to write my own ideas, they just want it to be "very dark".

I had a great collaboration with the cinematic department. They have amazingly talented artists working there and it was very helpful for me because they understand the essence of the game more than anyone else.

There was no strict rulebook, except for the pg-16 rating. Some of the scenes I originally did in the 1st version was a bit too "intense" so we had to dim them down to meet the ESRB rating.

How did you shoot the film? How much was live-action and how much animation?

I take that as a compliment (laugh) actually there's no live action or photographed elements, everything is genuinely computer generated from scratch.

We recorded the actors' choreography inside the largest performance capture studio in Asia and after that employed virtual cinematography and digital production design to cut together a pre-visualization that we used as a canvas to start working on the fine details.



To get geeky, what software/hardware did you use to create the film?

For the performance capture we used about 100 VICON T160 cameras recording the motions at 16 megapixels and 120 frames per second, then we used Motion builder to clean the data.

Most of the CG takes place inside 3D Studio Max. We used Vray for rendering and After Effects for compositing.

Has the evolution of technology made your job easier or harder? Do you think audiences expect more nowadays in terms of 'photo-real' images?

Surely nowadays audiences are becoming smarter and more demanding in terms of photorealism. It's always very difficult to cheat and make them believe that what they're seeing is real and physically accurate - if what you're showing is something that we're all very familiar with, such a human hand or the rain drops hitting the leaves in the forest it's gonna require a meticulous sense of observation and a lot of technical work to get it right and accurate.

Have you worked on projects like this before? Is it an experience that you've enjoyed?

Yes I did, but this one had a much bigger scope.

I've been using the same technology & workflow I used for Dark Souls II for the past 10 years and every time I'm in virtual production - I'm still in love with the idea that we're creating these crazy worlds out of nothing.



Are you a gamer yourself? Does that inform your decisions when making a film like this?

Even if now I don't have much free time to play games, yes I'm a gamer.

I find games very attractive because they are good research material and not too distant from the other projects I work on.

The piece is longer than a standard TV spot. Did you get given a strict timeframe, or was the brief more open in order to tell the story you envisioned?

I didn't get a strict time frame, since it wasn't a TV spot it was up to me to decide how long to make it.

You've lived and worked in Japan for the past 5 years. Do you have to think differently to cater for Japanese audiences? Would you say your work was specifically influenced by Eastern or Western production standards?

Japan is an island, its culture and the way of thinking is very different from the western world and from the rest of Asia. Thinking differently from the way I see things would automatically defeat the primary purpose of my job, so I refrain from doing that. Most definitely my works are heavily influenced by western production standards.

What's up next for you?

At the moment I'm working on a project that I can't really talk about.


Alessandro Pacciani works in Italy and Spain exclusively for Filmmaster Productions.