The witcher 3 “A Night to Remember” cinematic trailer opens with the list of the high ratings this game has received we then see the logo of CD Projekt Red which fades as we hear Orianna a higher vampire from Toussaint singing as the camera is looking over her shoulder at Toussaint with moon set just above the city, we then hear Geralt talking to her as the camera slowly pans around Orianna to reveal him stood behind her they start to converse about the contract he has on Orianna, she then starts to undress and the quiet tone starts to change as her voice becomes more sinister Geralt is stood with his sword unsheathed and a close up of Geralt's face shows us that he is focused on his target. Orianna then drops her dress and disappears floating around Geralt then the barn doors swing open, Geralt approaches with caution then drinks a portion of black blood as he's doing this a single drop of residue drops to the ground burning it on the touch this shows the player how mutated Geralt is to handle such a potion. As Geralt enters the barn there's a quiet tone running in the background but the sounds main focus is that of the surroundings the creaking beams and the swinging medallion around Geralt's neck. He then throws a bomb in the air revealing Orianna's location and the battle sequence commences fast paced violins playing throughout until she bites him on the neck and the black blood potion poisons her weakening her to his strikes. The end of the fight leads them both outside of the barn both lying on the floor from exhaustion as Orianna's song continues come morning Geralt's awakes and Orianna is dead he then rides to city to claim his reward. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ehjJ614QfeM

 Throughout the production of this trailer the company wanted to show the audience a great use of story and show that killing monsters was actually hard work they wanted to convey the harsh reality of what it takes to be a famed monster hunter and that they had to outsmart there opponent, CD Projekt Red began their production on the cinematic trailer using motion capture to get the exact movements for the characters within this scene. The music sequence “A Hole in the Sun by Two Steps from Hell” was used for this scene they used it in the early stages of the animatic to set the mood for the scene and it worked so well that it made its way through into the final piece the final audio piece was done by CD Projekt Red.

 In the design of the characters for this they used the main features for Geralt for example they captured the look of his hairstyle and cat-like eyes which he developed from his rigorous training and mutations, most of the tweaks however where subtle changes because within the game we play Geralt in third person, the hands of Geralt are a bit over sized so the team scaled them back to make them more realistic looking, the body was also tweaked to make it sync better with stunt performer for the motion capture this would later help with more realistic animation. Orianna the vampire women was more complex however as she had two different forms that of the human and vampire form they cast a local actress for the motion capture whose face was scanned and several different facial expressions they also hired a local model for the body of her human form once this was complete they used both in combination with each other than did their final tweaks using Zbrush which then created there final character. The girl’s body remained to create the vampire as they wanted the body to be as close to human form as possible they then studied pictures of anorexic patients which they later decided that the body should be more muscular with slight exaggerated bony features they also decided to add digitigrade feet to make the vampire look more bestial this helped later on to make her taller than Geralt and gave the creepy crawl animation at the end of the fight. Geralt and Orianna's hair was achieved with a combination of Ornatrix and Yeti the bigger challenge however was Orianna as she lets her hair down in the sequence the team had to create 2 different hair assets rolled up and let down these were both created with the same curves so they would blend better between 2 states simulation was then added to the top for blending this then achieved the final result.

Ian Failes. (10/08/15). Behind the scenes of Digic’s Witcher 3 cinematic.Available: https://www.fxguide.com/featured/behind-the-scenes-of-digics-witcher-3-cinematic/. Last accessed 03/09/18.