Storyline Release Trailer // Escape from Tarkov

This is a story about how I suddenly became the feature owner of the story trailer for EFT.

At the end of 2024, the game designers invited me to a meeting dedicated to the game’s story trailer. The main idea was to present it purely through newspaper clippings and a voice-over. I listened to everything and, at the end, suggested: why can’t we make a CGI trailer instead? This is such an important thing — the intro video for a project that we (and I personally) had been working on for 11 years (10 at that moment). The lead game designer rejected the idea, saying that Nikita wouldn’t give the budget or the time for it, so I didn’t push the idea any further. About 30–60 minutes later, he messaged me saying that Nikita had given the green light. I was very happy that our project was open to this kind of proposal.

Next, we had to quickly brainstorm two scripts for the trailer (worked on by two narrative designers) — one relatively expensive and “all-in,” and the other simpler, but no less impactful. All of this was done to pitch the idea to Nikita.

Nikita chose a script, and then we had to move into an accelerated storyboard phase. Thanks to our amazing artist, Vlad Novikov, the storyboard was created almost overnight and was approved by Nikita with little to no feedback.

After that, the process was launched at full speed. A small group of us gathered gear, weapons, and locations for the trailer. This happened in parallel with our regular work, since we still had ongoing tasks to handle.

The most difficult part was the transitions. At that moment, I realized that since I had zero experience with this kind of content, we really had to push ourselves. Thankfully, our amazing video production team took over this part of the work, and the synergy was great.

It was very interesting to work on draft edits of the video and come up with tasks and solutions on the fly. For example, I separately recorded people’s movements in the shots and then edited everything myself using DaVinci Resolve.

It was also fun to take part in the voice-over process. We had to do it while the video was still at a very rough stage. I also placed everything on the timeline myself. I really love voice actors — I usually get goosebumps when it turns out great.

I really like that many of my personal ideas made it into this trailer. For example, the trader animation with lighting a cigarette, the quadcopter scene, the camera pull-back from a satellite to the map and then to a billboard, and so on.

At some point, my eye became very tired, and I was worried that no one would like the trailer. In the end, at the moment of release, I realized that we had made something meaningful — which means we succeeded.

Oh, and I also helped direct the motion capture for this trailer. That, too, was an unforgettable experience.

Thanks to the entire team for their involvement! I hope I’ll have more tasks like this in my life, because it feels like I unlocked an art director chakra in some way.

(Here you can see some random screenshots from the trailer’s development that I prepared for you.)