The alternate version of the ‘Halo 3: Believe’ ad that fans never saw

Halo 2Microsoft established its status as a leading video game publisher and hardware manufacturer by releasing. The release of, which was released in 2007, presented executives with an even greater opportunity. Halo 3. An entire generation had been early adopters of the franchise. Therefore, the third installment in the series was seen as an opportunity for gaming to be mainstreamed even more. How did they do it? It was an advertising campaign of epic proportions that fans have never experienced before. It was called “Halo: Believe.”

Polygon spoke with several of the creatives behind the “Believe” ad campaign, including one of the makers of the Halo diorama featured in the ads. We’ve also uncovered an alternate television spot, one that few outside of Microsoft have ever seen before.

Scott Duchon was the story’s chief creative officer at 215 McCann in San Francisco. As the creative director of the “Believe” campaign, he was involved in some of the original pitches that landed the deal.

“We had just had some success with the Mad WorldAdvertisement Gears of War,” Duchon recalls, name-dropping another of video gaming’s most memorable ads of all time. “No one had ever played it before, so we were setting the stage with that ad. You can find it here Halo 3We built on the success of Halo 1And Halo 2There was much hype around gaming, as well as the Halo fandom. We wanted to figure out, ‘How do we expand the universe?’”

“Our goal was to do something that the core [audience] would respect and they would love because they’d been on the journey [with Master Chief],” Duchon continued. “Then the new, broader audience coming into gaming would go, ‘I want in on this. I don’t care if I’ve never played 1Oder 2 before. I want in on this, because this is a story and something that I could get excited by.’”

Duchon suggested that the best solution was to wrap it. Halo 3Bungie created a universe of fiction to promote their marketing campaigns. A miniature exhibit of a Halo-related battle would be created by the team at Bungie and used as the centerpiece for many ads. The actors who played the roles of veterans would also be supporting that prop. Halo 3’s fictional front lines. “Believe” was more than just the tagline: It was the entire concept itself.

“If we believe it to be so true, and we never blink in the marketing,” Duchon said, “then that’s how we have to approach everything […]. We have to all kind of lock hands on this, and if we do then we will make everyone else believe that this is how important gaming is.”

It was crucial to find a team to help you bring this vision to fruition. Incidentally, that’s also where things started to get a little bit out of hand.

“I think it was four weeks to do everything,” said Matthew Gratzner, one of the partners at New Deal Studios, the special effects house that ended up assembling the final diorama. Microsoft and 215 McCann already had a rough idea of how the final diorama would look. Gratzner claims that Stan Winston Studios now called Legacy Effects had started work on the intricate human and alien figures. Rupert Sanders was a director (who would eventually go on and direct). Ghost in the ShellScarlett Johansson) was lined up and casting for various actors had begun.

Photo: New Deal Studios

Photo: New Deal Studios

Photo: New Deal Studios

It was now a race to build the set. The trouble was that, as conceived, there was nothing “mini” about this build at all. This is due to the Stan Winston figures’ size and the detail that was required to capture the detailed close-up photos 215 McCann had envisioned. The set was six inches in height, which meant that each model had to be approximately 6 inches tall.

All the characters of the hero were created from scratch. To capture actors’ expressions, the team utilized early face scanning technology. As for the rest of the figures, Gratzner explained, “What they used for background pieces were McFarlane Toys’ Operation Desert Storm figures.” Those minor figures were quickly dressed and added to the inventory, which he said required nearly 1,000 figures in all.

Grid View

“We built a foam maquette, a small sculpted version that was a scale version of the scale model,” Gratzner said. “And that whole thing was maybe three feet by maybe a foot and a half.” Perched next to that mock-up was a cardboard cutout of a human being, roughly the same size as one of the McFarlane Toys’ figurines. The maquette was viewed by representatives of Microsoft and 215 McCann.

“Are you sure you want to do it this way?” Gratzner remembers asking. They were sure, and so he spent the better part of a month building out the landscape — including ruined buildings, vehicles, explosions, and more. According to him, the final diorama was approximately 40×20 feet. The video documentary was even created alongside to capture that process, cleverly baked into the fiction of the Halo universe itself as an extension of the “Believe” campaign.

“We took that maquette — that original scale version,” Gratzner said, “did a grid, cut it all up, and then we cut it into profiles, […]This was then transferred to huge patterns. We were then able to construct this massive plywood. [wooden framework with]The metal wire cloth was then layered on top and then sprayed with the urethane foam. We would then sculpt pieces and cover them with sand and paint. It was a hell of a lot of work.”

Gratzner stated that he worked with his team to find the right combination of techniques and tools in order to accomplish this feat. He’s especially proud of the explosions, which were made using fresh heads of cauliflower as the base for vacuum-formed hollow plastic molds. These vegetable-shaped bombs looked as if they were frozen in time, lit from beneath and decorated with cotton and fiber optics.

Photo: Matthew Gratzner

Unfortunately, Gratzner says that he was never truly happy with how the final shoot of the “Believe” commercial turned out. To emphasize the very small scale of final product, the depth-of-field was purposefully low. He and his team from New Deal Studios worked for years on miniatures to be used in major movies like The AviatorIt took time and effort to blend their mini-cinematography with real action. It meant shooting at a greater depth of field. Gratzner believes Martin Scorsese selected his team to shoot every single plane crash in the country. The AviatorAll exteriors and interiors of Hollywood Boulevard are shown in miniature. The depth of the field is the same as for the main production. Similar techniques were used by New Deal in another instance. The Dark Knight The Dark Knight Rises. Gratzner’s business partner, Ian Hunter, would even go on to win an Oscar for the visual effects in Interstellar.

With “Believe”, the goal was to make a miniature that actually As it lookedIt is a tiny model. While it was 215 McCann and Microsoft’s vision, Gratzner felt like it didn’t really show off the massive scale model’s true potential. After helping to create an online model fly-through that could be toured online by fans, Gratzner was granted permission to film additional footage of the diorama he made.

This production resulted in a totally different television advertisement that was never released. It was shot entirely differently.

“The concept for the spot was that it’s this Marine’s recollection of what the battle was, but in a hyper-realized slow motion,” Gratzner said. “I took all the miniature frozen moments [scattered around the diorama already]Then we added digital effects like slow-moving particulate, and other stuff. After that, I shot the Marine in an unfrozen position. That was insane! He then did motion control shots around him and that was it! [composited in a miniature of] the brute that’s firing the gun.”

Photo: Matthew Gratzner

Photo: Matthew Gratzner

Photo: Matthew Gratzner

The commercial never made it to air, but it’s lived on in Gratzner’s promotional reels ever since.

But what about the 40-foot-wide “miniature” itself? Some pieces were destroyed during manufacturing. Scott Duchon said that he still owns the Stan Winston miniature, which he sculpted using his own facial features. Profiles in History eventually sold other sections in 2010 at auction. The creators of Halo still own the section that is the largest.

In 2020, the “Believe” diorama — including Master Chief himself — held a place of pride at the Bungie studio in Bellevue, Washington. Recently, it was moved to storage in order to make room for renovations and office moves. Polygon has been informed by representatives that the item will soon be displayed again.