Are you ready for VICTORY? In this real life COD WARZONE POV, BLOCKHEAD have teamed up with Claudiu Voicu to celebrate a combination that has seen us through lockdown III, COD & BLOCKHEAD Energy Gum.

Writer, Director, Editor: Claudiu Voicu
Writer, Music: John Kerr
Cast: Ashley Holland, Mike Lienard, Josh Lowe, Dan Morbin, Charlie Camp
Fuel: BLOCKHEAD Energy Gum

STAY READY WITH A TRIFECTA OF OPTIMISED INGREDIENTS

CAFFEINE FOR ALERTNESS

Perfect your dose, with 50mg in each piece you can adjust your intake precisely. Enjoy fresh tasting crash-free caffeine without the sugar or calories of alternatives.

GINSENG for ENDURANCE

Ginseng is a natural ingredient that has been used in Chinese medicine as a remedy for centuries. As a nootropic, it works to support the bodies natural ability to deal with stress and boost endurance, and as an adaptogenic, it has antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties.

B-VITAMINS for ACCURACY

Three B-vitamins combined in one gum:
B1 for optimal cognitive performance aiding fast decision making, B6 assists with reducing tiredness and fatigue & B12 helps to metabolise energy in the body and keeps nerves healthy.

EXTRA FEATURES

Fast-acting caffeine – gets absorbed through your gums as you chew, so it goes straight to your system, not your stomach, getting to work in just 5 minutes.

Long lasting – the effects of each piece of gum last up to 5 hours. Chew multiple gums over time to maintain your desired dose of caffeine.

Excellent value – at a fraction of the cost of other caffeine products on the market. One six pack bundle contains SIXTY portions! That's more caffeine than 24 standard energy drinks.

Liquid free – game with full focus and zero interruptions, liquid free energy means no need for loo breaks. No shaker means no messy spills or fiddly powders to deal with.

DIRECTOR'S NOTES

Throughout this entire lockdown period we've used Warzone as a way of re-connecting with old friends. John, who co-wrote this video with me, and provided the music, now lives in Peru and we always found it hard to make time to have a chat and see what was up. I had made a few gaming-related GoPro videos in the past so it seemed fitting to do a project relating to something that had become a fun part of our weeknights. I knew from doing the Mirror's Edge video in the past that we could do something fairly true to the game, and using the skills of some our talented friends, incorporate some of our own elements.

Ashley Holland standing in front of the London skyline

Ash - our real life Spiderman - was keen to be involved in being the hero behind the camera. We shot a couple of very, very quick test clips when it snowed in London, and this later became part of the Gulag sequence in the video. Being a man of many talents, Ash was also responsible for making a bunch of props from scratch, including the handguns, bear trap and snapshot grenade.

Knowing we wanted to film in a forest where it'd be quite safe to run around screaming with a bunch of prop guns, we thought it'd be a great opportunity to involve Josh Lowe as well. After seeing some of his tricks on instagram we wrote in a fun section involving a downhill mountain bike... not exactly true to the game but we never intended to be completely accurate when it came to a 'real life' recreation. Both John and I associated focus with gaming and extreme sports, so we also thought it'd be fitting to have this burst of high-energy extreme sports after our hero picks up the Blockhead care package. We used a few hidden cuts to replace Ash with Josh, and then back again, as by that time Ash was already battered and bruised from jumping and running into thorn bushes and hard packs of snow/ice.

Mike Lienard - who now seems to be the guy that gets knocked down in every video - and Dan Morbin, starred alongside Charlie Camp, our unfortunate driver. The former 2 featured in the Mirror's Edge video and were also down for some fun in the forest. Keeping the crew small meant we could shoot the entire video in a short day - especially handy when it's pretty cold in the UK.

The entire edit was put together in Adobe After Effects and took approx 3 weeks. The first week was spent combining all of the footage together and making the cuts and transitions as hidden as possible. Removing snow, adding trees, changing the sky, and other small arduous bits were part of the process here. Once that was done it was time to 3D track some of the sections to add explosions, debris and care packages. the final week was the fairly easy part - incorporating the game GUI elements and creating the sound design - where almost every footstep was put back in manually to match those from the game.

See more work from Claudiu here.