Call of Duty

For the launch of the new Call of Duty game, Black Ops 6, we were invited to direct and film the campaign with real life talent using an in-camera approach. The game is set in the 90s and we loved the idea of bringing these game characters into the world with live action techniques. 

We filmed with our DynamicLight and PlateLight approaches which gave us the ability to control and move real lighting in post production, in sync with sound and action. This gave us the flexibility of synthetic approaches, but kept it real.

Call of Duty is the best selling video game franchise and this launch sees Black Ops 6 as the biggest release in its history. It was an honor and a lot of fun to bring these characters to life and add a chapter to the legendary heritage of this game. 

The film work was shown globally, from Times Square to the London Bridge, and is used along with still images we shot, as key art for the game.

Client: Activision
Production: Casey
Agency: Petrol

Toru

See the work at Cartier.com

New Zealand artists Taika Waititi and Carlo Van de Roer collaborate on 'Toru', a three channel video installation. Inspired by the significance of Tokotoru, or Trinity, in Maori culture, the work weaves together themes of unity -- earth, sea, sky -- and references to mythology, including the Maori myth of Tane retrieving three baskets of knowledge -- the basket of light, the basket of darkness and the basket of pursuit.

Each film operates as a different recollection or interpretation of the same performance. A new filmmaking approach called PlateLight enables the filmmakers to capture the same moment with different lighting conditions as separate pieces of footage. This results in three versions of the same film, presenting a record of the past as photographically accurate, yet fluid and authorable like myth. 

PlateLight was developed by Satellite-Lab, an R&D studio co-founded by Carlo Van de Roer and Stuart Rutherford at the New Museum to develop new in-camera based film-making approaches, maintaining the integrity of a real performance and real lighting in the face of a movement towards artificial filmmaking approaches.

Toru draws inspiration from the embrace of art and technology in the Light and Space movement of Southern California where the work was created. The set was designed to present a changeable representation of place through lighting and references to architecture. The project was shot in Los Angeles, not far from where Robert Irwin and James Turrell experimented with the perception of space and material through light.

Toru, 2024 opened at the West Bund Art Center in Shanghai. Created for Cartier with the support of the Maison. In a physical space, the films are presented on three screens as a triptych. Online the work is presented as interactive, enabling the viewer to control the lighting.

Toru Technical Case Study

Toru, 2024. Installation at West Bund Art Center, Shanghai.

Stills images of the three channel video installation: