Addictive TV is a creative studio that's found an interesting niche, combining video editing and effects skills with live music mixing and VJ-ing. Their latest commercial work takes edits from the brand new fighting game Street Fighter x Tekken and turns them into a percussive music video. The whole idea behind it is that two of the biggest fighting games have been mashed up together by Capcom, and so Addictive TV was called upon to mash-up elements of the game itself into a captivating video to promote it.
Putting it together was trickier than you'd think, they had to play the game for ages setting up sequences of live gameplay to capture with the right visual and audio content. Creative director Graham Daniels explains: "We decided the best thing was to sample real game play footage, getting the characters to do certain things – like rhythmic hits, grunts, kicks and sword swipes. This also made the piece unique."
It was important to both see the characters moving, and hear the sounds. Daniels describes it as 'diegetic audio' - you can see the source of each noise. And because it was a fighting game this was usually kicks, punches, combos and other special moves, worked together by Addictive TV using AcidPro, Ableton Live, Adobe PremierPro and After Effects. "Because of the nature of those sounds, we always knew it would be a very percussive piece. Think of it as up front drums and tribal sounding - like a computer game version of a Stomp track," continues Daniels.
Then there's the viral aspect of it. The vast majority of video game footage on YouTube is only of interest to other gamers, but by hiring Addictive TV to create the Street Fighter x Tekken mash-up Capcom is aiming for a wider audience. It's appearing on music, news sites and digital creativity sites (ahem...) and even on a site for stay at home dads.
You can catch Addictive TV's stunning VJ-ing show at the Gadget Show Live next month at the NEC in Birmingham. Click here for more details. Street Fighter x Tekken is released tomorrow in Europe.
