February 2018. I am smoking a cigarette standing on the balcony of the Minsk HQ looking at the industrial landscape of Minsk suburbs covered in snow. I feel exhausted after pulling out a major campaign for the World of Tanks global relaunch. My friend Anton from the WoT product team comes out for a cigarette break.
– Oh it’s good that you are here. I have news for you. We(WoT) are gonna release a football mode this summer prior to the Football Word Cup in Russia. We are negotiating a celebrity endorsement to promote this mode, and there’s a high chance that we will sign Gianluigi Buffon.
– Wow! I want this project man!
I am not exhausted anymore, this is the chance I was waiting for, it had to be special and it was special. I am grateful for everything that happened with me on this project: Starting from a chance to work and to dream together with my friend a talented film director Sergei Protasovitski; Meeting and international crew of truly professional people during shooting in Italy and Minsk.
Brainstorming ideas in the night before shooting day; Meeting a legend and god who turned out to be a really nice and easy going guy; Creating a tight circle of trust with a client and production team; Seeing that the sun comes out exactly the moment when we need to have sunlight in the shot; Sleepless nights and long shooting days.
The day of the project release, 6 in the morning and I am sitting in my apartment and waiting for a message from Sergei.
– It’s done man, Final cut, take a look if you are not sleeping.
– Hold on a second, I’ll put it on the big screen. 

File, download, play…

The video starts with an intro that we finished few hours ago, I continue watching and I can’t believe that we made this video. at 4:45 of the video the tanks are rolling out on the CGI football pitch and at this moment my eyes start bursting with tears. I can’t stop myself, probably it was a reaction of the highly intense last days of production, but I believe that it was tears of true happiness. 

Thank you everyone who participated in this project!