The Shadow of Death is the opening cinematic for Diablo 3: Reaper of Souls, the first expansion for Diablo 3. It's also the only cinematic in the expansion with pre-rendered CG. The rest of the cinematics employ the 2.5D storybook approach for the art.
The Shadow of Death went through a lot of iterations, including the removal of what was going to be the primary villain. Marc Messenger, the director, reflected on the process of filmmaking in a great way:
Sometimes the thing that you love the most is the thing that ends up on the cutting room floor. I think every filmmaker and editor knows that the thing that you started out with, the little nugget that you thought, "oh this is the heart of my piece," almost always ends up being tossed out at some point. Because you find something better. You find something that's more organic, that makes more sense, that solves more problems. And sometimes the story, if you let it, will lead you to some unexpected places. That's usually where the good stuff is.
The music throughout the Diablo series is iconic. And for the Reaper of Souls expansion, Derek Duke and the crew worked to create something that fit within that universe but still evoked a different mood for the new adventure. The music is sombre, emotional and very much about death. It compliments the seriousness and beauty within both the cinematic and the game itself.
In the following video, you can see the storyboards, color script and the final rendered version together.
The Shadow of Death - Cinematic Development Progression
At BlizzCon 2013, Blizzard held a cinematics panel that discussed the making of The Shadow of Death cinematic. It's about an hour long, but there's a lot of information on every part of the process.
Reaper of Souls Cinematic Panel - BlizzCon 2013
Audio commentary with Marc Messenger and James McCoy:
Project Director:
Marc Messenger
2D Project Director:
James McCoy
Project Art Director:
Chris Thunig
Lead Composer:
Derek Duke
Project CG Supervisor:
Mike Kelleher
Senior Project Producer:
Taka Yasuda
Cinematic Script:
Brian Kindregan,
Marc Messenger,
Chris Metzen
Vice President, Art & Cinematic Development:
Nicholas S. Carpenter
Vice President, Cinematic Operations:
Michael Ryder
Director of Technology:
Mark A. Brown
Production Director:
Noel Wolfman
Associate Project Producer:
Eric Kieron Davis
Project Editors:
Brian Horn,
Rebecca Lilienfeld
Department Supervisors:
John Burnett,
Laurent Charbonnel,
Steven Chen,
Dan Cox,
Scott Goffman,
Steeg Haskell,
Jared Keller,
David J. Stephens,
Fin Teo,
Seth Thompson,
Xin Wang
Project Leads:
Jongha Baik,
Ricardo Biriba,
Joe Frayne,
Chung Kan,
Eddie Yonghyun Kim,
Jason J. Hill,
Bill La Barge,
Scott Lange,
Laurent Pierlot,
Chris Rock,
Billy Shih
Cinematic Artists:
Samuel Alicea,
Becca Baldwin,
Ted Boonthanakit,
Nathan Boyd,
Toni Bratincevic,
Alvaro Buendia,
Aaron Chan,
Hosuk Chang,
Daniel Chavez,
Ray Chih,
Tae Young Choi,
Jon Collins,
Matt Cordner,
James Crowson,
Graham Cunningham,
Ryan Denniston,
Drew Dobernecker,
Anthony Eftekhari,
Mustazar Essa,
Chris Evans,
Casey Fulton,
Shuntaro Furukawa,
Hunter Grant,
Eric Grimenstein,
Jeremy Gritton,
Steven Guevara,
Chris Ha,
Mike Hardison,
Craig Harris,
Ray Hsu,
Jason Huang,
Steve Hui,
Dwight Hwang,
Yong-ha Hwang,
Joe Jackman,
Jim Jiang,
Sheng Jin,
Jeramiah Johnson,
Jessica Dru Johnson,
Ren Kikuchi,
Mike Koizumi,
Mark Lai,
Hung Le,
John Lee,
Moonsung Lee,
Yeon-ho Lee,
Jami Levesque,
Shawn Liang,
David Luong,
Brett McConnell,
Matthew Mead,
Andrew Melnychuk-Oseen,
Sada Namiki,
Adrian Niu,
Sherman Ohms,
Kurtis Paddock,
Corey Pelton,
Jamie Pilgrim,
Kirti Pillai,
Zachary Podratz,
Dominic Qwek,
Glenn Ramos,
Jarett Riva,
Davy Sabbe,
Michael Sandrik,
Kaz Shimada,
Douglas Smith,
Fabio Stabel,
Peter Starostin,
Takuya Suzuki,
Geordie Swainbank,
Jon Teer,
Sofia Vale Cruz,
Brandan Vanderpool,
Mathias Verhasselt,
Wei Wang,
Wey Wong,
Chris Yang,
Kenson Yu,
Fabio Barretta Zungrone
Technology Team:
Chris Allen,
Kenneth Lloyd Ayers III,
Zachary Bauer,
Michael Beal,
Cameron Chrisman,
Rudy Cortes,
Tom Craigen Jr.,
Ben Deda,
Frank Du,
Michael Eizenberg,
Jeff Hill,
Saber Jlassi,
Piotrek Krawczyk,
Chris Luce,
Xiyang Robert Luo,
Vinod Melapudi,
Huong Nguyen,
Lucas Panian,
Peter Shinners,
FunShing Sin,
Michael Su,
Thomas V. Thompson II,
Joey Tobiska,
Theresa Wolf
Production Team:
Patricia L. Adams,
Kelly Aguilar,
Angela Blake,
Tok Braun,
Sarah Butler,
Leonard Chang,
Phillip Hillenbrand Jr.,
Kim Kotfis Horn,
Jennifer Owings,
Brandy Stiles,
Jessica Ponte Thomas,
Gabriel VanHuss,
Gurpreet Singh Wahla
Studio Engineers:
Johann Helgi Agnarsson,
Rob Tomson
Cinematic Project Directors:
Ben Dai,
Terran Gregory,
Matt Samia
Cinematic Art Directors:
Stephane Belin,
Jonathan Berube
Cinematic CG Supervisor:
Shimon Cohen,
David Satchwell
Additional Artists:
Brett Achorn,
Till Aschwanden,
Ben Barker,
John Berry,
Vitaly Bulgarov,
Jason Burton,
Jon Cox,
Cynthia Dickson,
Emanuel Druckmann,
Devon Fay,
Toph Gorham,
Shinya Ishii,
Rodney Iwashina,
Charles Lee,
Vincent Lee,
Tianshu Liu,
Vimanyu Jain,
Anthony Jones,
Jason Kang,
David Keegan,
Andy King,
Daniel Knowlton,
Brian LaFrance,
Eric Landreneau,
Ryan Leasher,
Alan Lee,
Dyllan Lu,
Levi Peterffy,
Dennis Price,
Yun-Chen Sung,
Robert Thomas,
Kishore Vijay,
Ding Wei,
David Yoon,
Simon Yuen,
Yunhao Zhang
Additional Production:
Josh Burnett,
Melissa Kan,
Steve McIlwain
Supervising Sound Designer:
Paul Menichini
Cinematic Sound Producer:
Caroline Hernandez
Cinematic Sound Design:
David Farmer,
Stuart Provine
Voice-Over Design & Editing:
Paul Menichini
Foley Artist:
Gregg Barbanell
Cinematic Re-recording Mixer:
Thomas C. Brewer
Additional Cinematic Sound Editing:
Alexander L. Ephraim,
Clinton D. Jones
Voice of Tyrael:
Jonathan Adams
Voice of Malthael:
Paul Nakauchi
Casting & Voice Director:
Andrea Toyias
Additional Direction:
Tom Keegan,
Andrea Romano,
Kelly Ward
Voice Over & Casting Producer:
Tina T. Nguyen
Additional Art by CJ POWERCAST
CG Supervisor:
ChangHee Lee
Lead Artists:
YeongGil Gwon,
YounChan Alex Jung,
YoungGyun Ryu
Concept Artists:
SunJung Choi,
YeonSoo Rich Kim,
SungJun Kim,
InPyung Matt Park,
HyunJin Zogae Park,
CG Artists:
Dong Hyun Kim,
YongBin Kim,
HanSol Lee,
Danyo DongHyun Yoon
Compositors:
YoungAh Kim,
MinSoo Shin
FX & Editorial Artist:
SungHwan Charles Kim
IT Administrator:
JungHoon Lee
R&D Specialists:
JiHo Lim,
JungMin Park
Additional Art by:
Marco Teixeira
