Starr Park was never meant to feel like a commercial. It was designed as a ‘discovered’ corporate video, a strange, retro relic from the early ’60s that hints at a theme park world gone wrong. A piece of internal propaganda from a company that doesn’t quite exist anymore. The tone was intentionally uncanny, a retro aesthetic with deliberate ruptures in logic and style, made to add to the mystery. And threaded throughout the film were easter eggs that nodded to the 40+ characters of Brawl Stars.

The intention was to tell the story in a similar way to the E.P.C.O.T. films that Walt Disney made in the late 1960’s about the development of Disney World in Orlando, Florida. We used lenses that reflected what the studio cameras would have used and similar lighting plans. We also tried to replicate the feel of studio cameras and how they moved around a set and how actors would switch eyeline from one camera to another. Whilst we didn’t want to recreate those specific films, they were important references

As the film was supposedly a relic from another time, it made sense that we filmed as much as possible in-camera to give it a period feel. The project was a massive production design undertaking considering that everything we shot had to be custom made to reflect particular aspects of the game itself. Essentially everything became an ‘easter egg’ for game players, so each element had to hold up under their scrutiny. It meant that nearly every set, every prop, every piece of costume had to be individually designed and manufactured specifically for this film.