Writer for Rent
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Gears of War 2
Creative Service supplied by W4R: copywriting for Gears of War 2 video script
It is not unusual for Writer for Rent to get a phone call from a creative director or account executive who is in a crisis situation and needs to have rock solid copywriting for a campaign, pitch, commerical or speech by the next morning! Because I have a reputation for being able to deliver exciting copy quickly without the need for extensive creative briefs (hey, that's another function of expertise), creative directors know they can count on me. 
So when my phone rang at 7pm the night before the highly anticipated Gears of War 2 game was about to launch in Canada to an eager gaming crowd, I knew something was up! As part of the fanfare, the midnight launch would entail an elaborate Gears of War mock up where actors would be recruiting waiting gamers to play a "real" Gears of War 2 game, complete with bootcamp and a fight scene. (All this took place as the gamers lined up waiting for the official release time.) The entire evening would be videotaped and later spliced up into a recruiting video for the Gears of War 2 game (youtube). Everyone was set to go - except no one had a written script for the final video. It was a regular SNAFU, in army speak.
Without a script to define the story it is impossible to assure that the right video shots would be taken - and there wasn't any opportunity for more takes. It was live action and it was going to happen the next day. A kick-ass script was essential.
The creative brief was this, "it's a tough bootcamp sarge recruiting members to fight the Horde"...not much to work on (especially since I have never played the original Gears of War.) But I had seen enough war movies to know exactly what the flavour was - it was Officer and Gentlemen meets Stormtroopers crossed with Cool Hand Luke and Aliens blended with every war scene Shakespeare ever wrote. The job of a copywriter is to get into the head of the person reading or seeing the video. I had to know what made Gears of War gamers excited. I began to write...
Within a few hours, the client had her script in hand. She was thrilled (she said "This is EXACTLY what I was hoping for). I was thrilled because I like it when my clients are happy and I get to work on cool stuff like Gears of War 2.
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