NARUTO (LIVE-ACTION TRAILER)

CREATED FOR YOUTUBE

Created as part of YouTube’s Geek Week, Cinesaurus was flown to Japan to supervise Portal A’s production of Ryan Higa’s “Naruto Fake Movie Trailer.” The project was filmed on location in Japan, including rice fields, iconic temples, and YouTube Space in Tokyo.

After returning to Seattle, Cinesaurus jumped into the post-production of the trailer. Creating visual effects that met the expectations of Naruto fans required us to deep dive the original show and fully understand the design of its characters and their ninja powers. The amount of creative effort we put into bringing a cartoon to real-life for the first time paid off as the video has been viewed over 20 million times and was by far the most watched piece of Geek Week.

Visual Effects: Before and After

Our visual effects were a vital part in bringing Naruto to life. In our Before & After featurette below, check out how our design transformed the original footage. From CG animation of energy balls to the set extension for Hokage Rock — a Mount Rushmore of ninjas! — we used our own ninja powers in over 75 VFX shots.

Credits

Produced by Portal A
Post-Production by Cinesaurus
Director: Kai Hasson
Writer: Ryan Higa
Visual Effects Supervisor: David Hudson
Director of Photography: Catherine Goldschmidt
Producer: Jeff Winkler
Associate Producer: Jeffrey Sabin-Matsumoto
Music: Joachim Horsely
Sound Design: Brent Kiser
Special Thanks to SET Japan

Cast

Naruto: Ryan Higa
Sasuke: Orson Mochizuki
Rock Lee: Kenroku
Shikamaru: Sean Fujiyoshi