A riveting tour de force of broadcast promotion from director Tomek Baginski and the crew at Platige Image in Warsaw, Poland for History Channel.

Tomek Baginski: “We were working with the client for a long time before we even started planning the shoot. The idea was short and simple: present all the main Vikings characters as a god from Norse mythology.

“Ragnar became Odin, Aslaug became Freya, and so on. Every element added to the characters had its meaning. It all started with a final picture, where all characters stand to form the Gungir symbol.

“All marketing materials were shot at the same time, so we only had each actor for an hour as they all had a lot of other production responsibilities the same day. That meant incredible focus and absolute precision; we had to work crazy fast on the set.

A 15-minute delay on our side would mean undoable damage to the whole timing, not only for the promotional spot but for all of History’s marketing. This promo was just the tip of the iceberg.

“It wouldn’t be possible without an amazing crew in Ireland. Everyone was totally professional. The cast, the crew, the production department. We managed to produce a huge amount of shots which then allowed us to expand the spot a lot. The initial plan was to make 60-second spots, but we ended up with almost four minutes to be used in many different spots, cut down from several hours of footage.

“Also, finding a deer which is not afraid of people was a hard task. We finally shot the deer in Poland, without any people within a 40-meter radius. It took half a day for just a few shots. The rest of the animals were much easier to work with, but due to the complexity of the main shoot we scheduled all the animals for another shooting day in Poland.”

Schedule: Four months.

For Platige
Pablo Pulido, Senior Creative Director for History Brand Creative
Krista Liney, VP History Brand Creative
Dave Bouffard, Senior Writer Producer History Brand Creative
Anthony Karkosza, Senior Writer Producer History Brand Creative
Director: Tomek Baginski
Executive producer: Bartek Rainski
DOP: Wojtek Zielinski
Art director: Maciej Jackiewicz
Post producers: Justyna Supernak, Katarzyna Chodak
On-set supervisor: Adam Wierzchowski
Offline edit: Mgdalena Mikolajczyk-Zielinska
Lead 3D/compositing artists: Jakub Knapik, Stanislaw Marek, Michal Firek, Selim Sykut, Andrzej Sykut, Tadeusz Chmiel
Concept artists: Michal Misinski, Damian Bajowski
Compositing artists: Wojciech Baginski, Marcin Charlicki, Sylwester Lipinski, Tomasz Suwalski, Mateusz Weglarz, Juliusz Zenkner
3D artists Konrad Kielczykowski, Pawel Lorenc, Olga Szblewicz-Pisuk, Tomasz Zaborek, Lukasz Smaga, Krzysztof Stefanski
Tracking: Waldemar Wozniak, Tomasz Wachnik
Matte painting: Adam Tredowski
Storyboard: Oleh Ridzel
FX TD: Maciej Benczarski, Lukasz Sobisz
Character TD: Mateusz Poplawski

For Blinder:
EP: Michael Duffy
Producer: Dara McClatchie
Production manager: Maggie Mooney
Production coordinator: Niamh Gale
Production trainee: Cian Boyne
Production assistant: Steven Daly
1st AD: Glenn Delaney
2nd AD: Nessa Linnane
3rd AD: Jonathan Quinlan
Trainee AD: Steven Daly, Angela Lowth
Camera Operator: Russell Gleeson
Focus puller: Ron Coe
Phatom technicians: John Hadfield, Mark Denton
Video assist: Brian Cullingan
Gaffer: Paul McNulty
Electricians: Barry Conroy, Graham Haughton, Tim Fletcher, Ingrid Whelan, Mick Frawley, Kelly McLaughlin, Peter O’toole
Key grip: Philip Murphy
Grips: Darrell Murphy, Martin Kelly, Jimmy Gillen
Costume supervisor: Susan O’Connor Cave
Wardrobe assistant: Ciara James, Ciara McArdle, Tania Zemcugova, Barbara Milne
Wardrobe trainee: Miriam Donohue
Chief makeup artist: Tom McInerney
Assistant makeup: Katie Derwin
Makeup trainees: Catherine Fox, Clare Lambe
Prosthetics: Matthew Smith
Chief hair designer: Dee Corcoran
Assistant hair: Catherine Argue, Susie Redmond, Ida Eriksson, Zuelika Delaney, Rachel Molloy
Armourers: Brian Mulvey, Rory Talbot
Construction manager: Martin Hayes
Construction: Jimmy Hennessy, Richard Lany, Robbie Richardson
Standby props: Alan Harvey
Dressing props: Arne Klohn
Trainee standby props: Joseph Ferguson
Trainee props: Paul McKenna

Toolkit
Nuke, Maya, 3ds Max