12,000 miles traveled.
21 days of production.
140 videos delivered.
League of Legends: Mid-Season Invitational is anually one of the largest international esports events in the world.
This year it was hosted in Busan, South Korea and we had the pleasure of creating a full slate of content for it!
TAKE_NOTES.
Every Riot Games event has its own unique brand identity.
The Riot creative team presents us with their branding for the event: key art, taglines, brand kit, look-and-feel— everything that makes this specific event unique.
Our next step is to develop the video content identity. How can we transform the branding into film language— the camera movement, the art direction and sets, lighting— what’s the tonality? How can we meld all of this into compelling storytelling?
We try to think bigger than just including brand colors, or setting up step-and-repeats of key art— we try to create a world.
[Key art provided by Riot Games ]
THE LAB
Given the tagline for MSI BUSAN, “TAKE NOTES,” we decided to premise our art direction around a mysterious, retro-furustic “LAB” in which the players could analyze each other.
STREET PHOTOGRAPHY
was a core part of our DNA.
We traveled to Busan, South Korea.
10 days later, we published our first video.
OPENING_FILMS
At League of Legends events, prior to each stage of the tournament, our team has the opportunity to film bespoke content with each of the competing teams.
On the first day of each stage we premiere an opening film that encapsulates the overarching narrative and thematic of the tournament.
We decided to divide this story into three parts ARRIVE, ANALYZE and ANNIHILATE.
OPENING FILM: This tease was focused on arrival of the global competitors in Busan. Awaiting them was FAKER. Prior to MSI, FAKER, the winningest pro in LoL history, and his team T1, had an undefeated season— something never before witnessed in the LCK. For this reason, establishing FAKER as elevated and untouchable in his home nation was a core part of our visual story-telling.
RUMBLE FILM: As 10 teams diminish to 6, and the global competition heats up, "The Rumble" opening tease asks our pro-players: "How will you chase the impossible?" With every team having a chance to face one-another in this stage, it was important for us to give equivalent weight to all the competitors in this opening film.
FINALS FILM: Tapping into the massive Korean fandom over league, and pulling inspiration from Korean rap music videos, we wanted to tell a story here of a fan rally interrupted by their imminent threat— RNG.
We delivered a daily tease everyday.
We designed
custom interview sets in the MSI brand aesthetic.
We conducted ~100 interviews across the event.
We created 5 post-match interview player profile videos daily for broadcast.
CASE_FILES
For this series, we created 5 in-depth player profiles— diving into backstories, playstyles, legacy and fandom.
Our goal with this series was to create something that true fans of LoL esports would love. This series required a lot more work than meets the eyes, as many of our subjects had to be interviewed internationally while we were running production out of South Korea.
We activated local production crews across the globe, and used remote production techniques to allow our director to interview subjects internationally.
This series rolled out throughout the event as part of our full-content package for Riot Games, and was met with adoration by fans.
Hello, World!
