This film was created to introduce Star Wars: Zero Company™, a single-player turn-based tactics game from Bit Reactor in collaboration with Respawn Entertainment, Lucasfilm Games, and EA. The story follows Hawks, a former Republic officer, leading an unconventional squad of professionals for hire against a rising threat during the twilight of the Clone Wars.
Our brief was to craft a cinematic trailer that would set the tone, reveal the world, and hint at the stakes, without revealing too much. We developed the storyboards directly from the script, establishing a “noir-meets-Star Wars” mood: shadow and light in constant tension, mystery over exposition, leaving the audience with more questions than answers.
The film was produced and directed by ARC creative in lockstep with the game’s development, using its real-time engine and original assets for authenticity, while elevating every frame with crafted lighting, nuanced animation, and layered compositing. The film was produced and directed by ARC creative in lockstep with the game’s development, using its real-time engine and original assets for authenticity, while elevating every frame with crafted lighting, nuanced animation, and layered compositing.
After previs mapped every movement, we conducted a motion capture shoot to refine performance. Lighting was guided by bespoke concept art and executed entirely in Unreal Engine, supplemented with custom FX passes. Atmospherics and lens flares were added in compositing, with the final grade completed in Baselight.
Every discipline, story, animation, lighting, FX, compositing, worked as one. The result is a cinematic that feels embedded in the Star Wars universe yet unmistakably its own, standing at the intersection of bleeding-edge real-time technology and hand-crafted storytelling.
Star Wars is more than a franchise, it’s a shared cultural language spanning generations. Zero Company™ enters this legacy with a fresh perspective: a smaller, morally complex story told from the fringes of the galaxy, where the “heroes” are flawed, diverse, and deeply human (or alien).
From the outset, we embraced the series’ ethos of inclusion, building a cast that reflects the richness of the Star Wars galaxy, species, backgrounds, and perspectives that challenge the “one-size-fits-all” hero narrative. Hawks’ crew is a team of uneasy allies whose differences are their strength, mirroring the collaborative nature of the production itself.
Technically, the project embodies sustainable innovation. By using the game’s real-time engine and assets during production, we reduced the need for resource-heavy offline rendering, minimizing impact while maintaining visual fidelity. This approach also created a tighter feedback loop between the game and film teams, fostering a culture of creative reciprocity rather than siloed development.
Production was a study in coordination across continents and disciplines, uniting ARC creative with EA’s marketing vision, Bit Reactor’s creative leadership, and Lucasfilm’s storytelling legacy. Despite working with a small creative and director lead team, the synergy allowed ARC creative to push boundaries, proving that scale is not a prerequisite for ambition.
The result is more than a game trailer; it’s a piece of Star Wars storytelling that honors its cultural legacy while pushing its aesthetic and technological frontiers forward.
