TikTok: Made Me Play It

“I couldn’t imagine working with any other team other than Eastward on this project. The team at Eastward are equal parts creative and logistic powerhouses who effortlessly handled this complex project and provided an amazing final product. It has redefined our standard on productions moving forward. Looking forward to the next project with the team.”

JOSH YOUNG

HEAD OF PRODUCTION, TikTok

PRODUCTION | TIKTOK

Tiktok:
Made me Play it.

BRIEF

When Tiktok approached us about producing their 30 minute global gaming summit, we were instantly intrigued. You have to be a little nerdy to get into this line of work, so naturally our team was excited about creating a “gamified” virtual experience that would be broadcast around the world. And like Tiktok itself, this project called for a little bit of absolutely everything. Studio shoots in LA, NY, Austin, and London with multiple set builds? Check. A built-from-scratch virtual 3D world to house the real life moderator? Yep. Hundreds of unique 2D assets inspired by worldwide gaming culture? Sure why not, sign us up! We’d love to dive in to what is sure to be an exciting 6 month project! Oh, what’s that? Did you say 45 DAYS?!

Now if there’s something you need to know about Eastward, it's that we love a challenge. For better or worse, it is a weakness shared by its founding members. So, we quickly set out to build a team and a process that would allow us to handle six months worth of work in two.

APPROACH

The biggest challenge for a project like this (other than the timeline) is the variety of disciplines needed to make it happen. We needed expert project management and logistics, strong creative direction and art direction, massive production support, both 2D and 3D animation, green screen compositing, editing, post supervision and more. Normally projects fall into one category or the other, but this one truly needed everything. Thanks to our talented staff and deep network of creative partners, we were able to quickly put together a team of 13 core creatives (and many more supporting) most of whom were multi-talented and comfortable working across multiple disciplines.

WE CRAFTED A GLOBAL GAMING SUMMIT IN 30 DAYS.

DISCOVER OUR SERVICES

Now that the team was set, we still had the issue of timeline. There simply were not enough hours in the day to get it all done by launch time.

This is where we were able to lean on our experience as a fully remote production company. Our core team is naturally spread over multiple time zones, and we expanded this further for this project. In the end we had staff working from California to Portugal. This allowed us to break up our work into shifts, with one team turning over work to another each day. In the end we were able to utilize almost 20 hours of the day. Of course, the data management of this operation was another challenge, but again as a fully remote production company we were well set up to manage all data with our cloud based software. From sharing After Effects files among designers to daily progress reviews with creative directors, everything was handled remotely.

The end product was a massive success. Over 8,000 of the invitation-only audience tuned in for the wold wide showing. Tiktok saw fantastic engagement with existing partners and was able to acquire several new accounts as well. For Eastward, the project was a great test of our creative and technical skills and we were thrilled to see our remote infrastructure work flawlessly. +

CREDITS +

Jake Bulgarino: Executive Producer
Kohl Threlkeld: Creative Director/ Director Jamie Young: Creative Director/ Director Jon Bougher: Post Production Supervisor Rich Salamone: Line Producer
Donna Wood: Producer

Jonathan Kim: Editor
Matt Tanksi: Editor
Laura Porat: Art Director/ 2d Animation
Beatriz Diogo: Animation/ Motion Graphics
Jake Williams: Design/ Animation
Will Mendoza: 3D Animation/ Green Screen
Jason Krangel: Director of Photography
Colin Yarck: Sound Design