Brief
Strider is an exclusive tier within the Portals ecosystem - think of it as an inner circle, a club within a club. Our friends over at Portals gave us full creative freedom to produce a promo video that would build genuine mystery and exclusivity around the Strider identity. No hand-holding, no mood board. Just a brief to make people want in. The mission was simple - make it feel like a secret worth knowing!
Scope
1 | Creating a cinematic promo video that communicated the exclusivity of the Strider tier. |
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2 | Building atmosphere and mystery through environment, lighting and narrative. |
3 | Producing a custom soundtrack with sound effects. |
4 | Using the Strider journal as a central narrative device throughout the video. |
Approach
With full creative freedom and a brief built around mystery, we knew the worst thing we could do was be too obvious about it. The best exclusive clubs don't tell you how exclusive they are - they just make you feel it.
We built the video around a dark, atmospheric forest setting, centred on a campfire and a journal bearing the Strider insignia. The journal is the heart of the piece - something discovered, something belonging to someone who clearly knows things you don't. The firelight catches the pages just enough to suggest what's inside without giving anything away. The red fabric, the smoke, the darkness pressing in at the edges - everything in the frame is doing work, building a sense that you've stumbled onto something you weren't supposed to find.
The whole environment was built in Unreal Engine 5, and the quality of the volumetric lighting and smoke simulation was something we pushed hard on. Getting firelight to feel genuinely warm and alive in a real-time environment takes patience, and we think it really paid off here.
Results & Outcome
The video gave the Strider community something exactly what it needed - a piece of content that felt worthy of an exclusive tier. Mysterious, cinematic and atmospheric without over-explaining itself. When the brief is to make people feel like they're missing out on something special, you don't spell it out. You just show them the campfire and let their imagination do the rest. We loved working on this one!
More work
Contact
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