THE GAME OF UR
INTRODUCTION
The Royal Game of Ur is a two-player strategy, race, and board game of the tables family that was first played in ancient Mesopotamia during the early third millennium BC. IOM approached us to produce a mini-documentary that educates the viewer about the history of the game and also acts as a tutorial for learning the game.
![DSC09703.png](https://static.wixstatic.com/media/dde4cd_05cd00a6bc67468b99021bc2d5ba870d~mv2.png/v1/crop/x_0,y_225,w_1551,h_1029/fill/w_978,h_649,al_c,q_90,usm_1.20_1.00_0.01,enc_auto/DSC09703.png)
The process
Pre-production:
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Planning
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Storyboarding
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Script development
Production:
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Set design
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Lighting
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Camera and mic set up
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Art direction
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Animation
Post-production:
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Curating
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Editing
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Titles
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Captions (two languages)
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Colour grading
![20220607_180307.jpg](https://static.wixstatic.com/media/dde4cd_7f297c94c9eb4fa99790b2c5699f0807~mv2.jpg/v1/crop/x_0,y_76,w_4000,h_2848/fill/w_316,h_225,al_c,q_80,usm_0.66_1.00_0.01,enc_auto/20220607_180307.jpg)
![Polar edited.jpg](https://static.wixstatic.com/media/dde4cd_d2e0e33d752f49c8985f0640d9ef88e9~mv2.jpg/v1/crop/x_641,y_195,w_2469,h_1765/fill/w_316,h_226,al_c,q_80,usm_0.66_1.00_0.01,enc_auto/Polar%20edited.jpg)
![crimson macbook mockup.jpg](https://static.wixstatic.com/media/dde4cd_1c297d7d01374c8d9e1db5c1d9337bb7~mv2.jpg/v1/crop/x_526,y_153,w_2737,h_1947/fill/w_316,h_225,al_c,q_80,usm_0.66_1.00_0.01,enc_auto/crimson%20macbook%20mockup.jpg)
Stop motion
To illustrate the game's rule and strategy, we created stop motion video that serves as a b-roll when the talent explains the game, supported by graphics that explain the pathway of the pieces, specification of each square and their names.
![](https://static.wixstatic.com/media/dde4cd_243c882f5dc74684ad62564e6a184aa2f000.jpg/v1/fill/w_486,h_273,al_c,q_80,usm_0.66_1.00_0.01,enc_auto/dde4cd_243c882f5dc74684ad62564e6a184aa2f000.jpg)
Motion graphic
The first part of the documentary is a stop motion video that describes the history of the game and its social context. To remain within the theme of archaic/historical that the game has, we used a muted grey colour for the background contrasted with heavier titles.
Color grading
With a multi-camera set-up, it's often the case that even with the same camera settings the colours from the two cameras can greatly vary.
This is what exactly happened in the recordings, but with our colour correction process, we matched the contrast, lights and colours of the two cameras and colour graded the results to get to the final result.
![pixlr.jpg](https://static.wixstatic.com/media/dde4cd_207089c07162454bafc7c1a776e2dfc0~mv2.jpg/v1/fill/w_396,h_450,al_c,q_80,usm_0.66_1.00_0.01,enc_auto/pixlr.jpg)
![pixlr_20220219213135351_edited.jpg](https://static.wixstatic.com/media/dde4cd_73e5cac285ca4e5f96fb593e1a1f79d3~mv2.jpg/v1/fill/w_397,h_451,al_c,q_80,usm_0.66_1.00_0.01,enc_auto/pixlr_20220219213135351_edited.jpg)