The history of the appearance of the Shadow Fight series on TV screens. From Russian shows to Netflix
The Shadow Fight Arena game from Nekki and Banzai Games studios was selected by Netflix for integration into the new Jupiter’s Legacy series, which is based on the superhero comic book series of the same name. Nekki Business Development Director Nikita Korzhavin told in his column on App2Top.ru how does the company manage to “appear on TV” and does it have a chance to create its own series based on the Shadow Fight universe.
Nikita Korzhavin
For our projects, working with various TV series and films is not a new story.
It all started with the integration of the “Ural Dumplings“: quite by chance they noticed how one of the participants played Shadow Fight 2 on a tablet during the scene. We have not received any requests from the creators of the show. They probably just chose a game that probably every schoolboy in the country knew about at that time. And despite the fact that the gameplay was visible tangentially, friends and colleagues still wrote to us that they noticed SF2 in the show.
In the fall of 2018, one of the agencies that helps TV content production studios to obtain legal materials for commercial use in movies, TV series, and advertising contacted us for the first time. The request was about the gameplay of Shadow Fight 3 — just by that time the project was a year old from the moment of release. We needed a simple fight with two characters so that it would look great on the TV screen, since the actors would play through the gamepads as if it were a console fighting game. In terms of picture quality, SF3 always looked very cool, so our task was simple — to record a few tens of seconds of the fight and give it to the agency. There were no special requirements. When shooting, the actors, of course, did not play the game, just then they imposed gameplay on the editing of the scene. Well, the first series with our integration was the sensational project “Call DiCaprio!“.
And from that moment on, it went-it went. Several times a year, people came to us with similar requests, we sent footages, sometimes we adapted them a little for the video (for example, we wrote specific nicknames of actors), and then they caught us on the air or sent us segments where our integration was. Some of our cameos didn’t make it into the final cut, so before the project aired, we didn’t know for sure if there would be a game scene in the end.
Nevertheless, over these 2.5 years, we have participated in the creation of several popular domestic TV series and good films at once. So, for example, footages on Shadow Fight 3 could be seen in the TV series “Ivanovs-Ivanovs“, the film “Dear Dad” with Vladimir Vdovichenko and an advertisement for non-alcoholic beer “Klinskoe“. And the integration of the 11×11 football manager was made in the series “Senyafedya“.
But the most unusual cameo happened in the movie “Fairy“. The plot revolves around the head of the game studio, played by Konstantin Khabensky. To create a more or less realistic hero, the authors of the film and director Anna Melikyan consulted with several gaming companies, among which we were. The guys came to our office, asked questions about game development. And the integration was due to the use of promo art and posters for Shadow Fight 3 in the design of the studio office in the film.
All described integrations can be seen in a short video that we made together with Banzai Games.
The Netflix story, of course, is on a different level. If before all the projects were focused on the Russian market, then there is an international format, and even with a top streaming service. We couldn’t miss such a chance.
How did it all start in this case? Yes, in fact, everything is the same: one of the producers of the series “Jupiter’s Legacy” wrote to us with a request to provide footage from any fighting game of the Shadow Fight universe, with which, as it turned out, they were well acquainted. At the end of last year, a new game of the Shadow Fight Arena series was released — our most technologically advanced fighting game — so we suggested using it, showing what kind of heroes and effects we have. The producer liked everything, he told us about the scene in which the gameplay would be involved, we discussed the technical features of the video (for example, that it should ideally be in 4K) and then sent several footages to choose from.
In parallel, we got acquainted with the Netflix marketing team, as we decided to offer our services in promoting the show through our users. Netflix liked the idea, and we agreed to post several posts on our social networks and a banner inside the games in the first week after the release of the series. In return, Netflix promised to make posts about the game in their social networks, which we are discussing right now.
Returning to the creation of the footage, the whole process of approval and waiting for a solution took several months. There were no serious edits from the partners, the director really liked the cuts. It’s a bit of a pity that it was originally planned that the scene would include about 15 seconds, but the final montage reduced our airtime. What to do… Hollywood. But we were very happy when we saw that our cameo appeared in the first episode already at the 7th minute of the series.
I think many people are interested in the financial conditions of all these integrations. Usually the customer lays down a very small budget for such content. And most often this amount is not even worth it to prepare documents, so it will not work on such cooperation. Our goal is cool integration in an interesting project. We are sure that this works positively both for the external development of the company’s brand and projects, and adds pleasant emotions inside the studio — not every game can boast of its own cameo in the Netflix series!
We also discussed for a long time inside whether it was worth getting the rights to use these scenes in our marketing campaigns. Firstly, it can be quite difficult to get such a permit. Secondly, and this is the main thing, in all integrations (except, by the way, Netflix), actors played on the screen using gamepads. This, of course, is a big curtsey towards the visual quality of our games, but this is also a bigger mistake than saving princesses. So we decided it wasn’t worth it yet. But perhaps with Netflix we will discuss options for using video with us in the purchase.
Well, a separate victory of cooperation with the Netflix team was the contacts of people who understand the production of films and TV series and with whom we are already discussing the Shadow Fight universe as an idea for creating a separate show. Of course, it still sounds cooler than it really is. Moreover, people have come to us before with proposals to launch a series on Shadow Fight, but those ideas did not seem really working. Now, having become more familiar with those who are already making successful projects for the whole world, we have a chance, if not to launch a movie or a series based on the game, then at least get an honest feedback from professionals, does the Shadow Fight universe have the potential to go beyond the gaming industry.
We believe there is.
