Black market 2021. Episode 1. Heist
Black Market 2021
Black Market is an advertising event/special that millions of players worldwide eagerly wait for every year, while its exact start date is held top secret.

A day before the Black Market starts, a video that announces it and sets the tone for the future event is released.
In 2021, with the appearance of a new Black Market mechanic, the video should not only announce the event but also become a main link in supporting the narrative. Then, together with the event development team, we decided to create a mini series that successively told players the story, supported the lore, and created intrigue due to unspoken things in the first (announcing) episode.
Black Market 2021. Episode 2. The deal
Black Market 2021. Episode 3. Outcome
Behind the scenes: Black market 2021
The 2021 video was filed on LED screens. Thanks to this, we could recreate the art pieces in 3D, which were later used in the game client during the Black Market. All backgrounds were created in Unreal Engine 4.

Four videos were shot in 3 filming scenes in one pavilion: this includes almost 100 shots and about 10 minutes of final timing.
Black Market 2021. Chinese adaptation
In China, the Black Market started only in 2021 and had a design different from the Black Market that was released in other regions for the third time already.

The Chinese version of the announcing video for Black Market 2021 is a separate video with the scenario written specifically for it. It was similar to the video used to announce the first Black Market event in other regions in 2019.
Сast
Nikita Plashevsky, Dmitry Vrangel, Andrey Dobrovolsky, Alexander Livov
Creative Producer
Anastasia Chistyakova
Executive Producer
Anastasia Chistyakova, By Movie Production
Screenplay
Ilia Cheripko
Film director
Ilia Kluisha
DOP
Konstantin Ivanov
Production designer
Aleksander Grinko
Costume designer
Tatiana Stasilovich
CG (Unreal location)
VRX Digital
Editor
Ilia Kluisha
Sound design
Futuroom
Color correct
Ilia Kluisha
Black Market 2019
Black Market 2020
The video for this event is one of the most difficult and global cases I worked on.

The event was first released in 2019 and was quite risky. Together with the development team, we worked on the narrative from the very start of the idea of this feature. We created a character and a successive lore.

In the video, we presented a hero to the viewers, and set a certain event atmosphere. Then, when players got in their Garages, they continued interacting with this character via texts and art.

This approach worked well and proved to be one of the first successful examples of successive lore with a character in World of Tanks. The character has established itself as a main character of the event for three years in a row already.
Behind the scenes: Black market 2020​
Creative Producer
Anastasia Chistyakova
Executive Producer
Anastasia Chistyakova, Alexsandr Bakherev
Screenplay
Nikita Sidorenko
Film director
Ilia Kluisha
DOP
Artem Emelianov, Andrey Mytnik
Edit
Ilia Kluisha, Maksim Sivokozov
Sound design
Evgeny Sukhavey, Futuroom
Color correct
Ilia Kluisha
Made on
Tilda