2011 short film
Find Makarov: Operation Kingfish Title logo Directed by Jeff Chan
Screenplay by Patrick Lo
Peter Huang
Chris Pare Produced by💶 Evan Stasyshyn
David
Fradkin Starring Jon Morgan
David Kinsman
David Brandon George Edited by Skinner Music
by Adam Damelin Distributed by Activision Release💶 date September 2, 2011 ( ) (Call of
Duty XP) Running time 6 minutes
Find Makarov: Operation Kingfish is a 2011💶 short film
and a prequel to Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, first shown at Call of Duty XP
convention.💶 The video was produced by We Can Pretend, with visual effects by The
Junction, and was endorsed by Activision.
The first💶 film, Find Makarov, was a
non-canonical fan-made film. The video was well received by fans as well as Activision
themselves.💶 Activision contacted We Can Pretend about the video and helped produce Find
Makarov: Operation Kingfish.[1]
The video follows closely with the💶 antagonist General
Shepherd's speech in the mission "Endgame". It shows the protagonists, Task Force 141
and Delta Force, participating in💶 an assault on a Ukrainian compound, with the
objective of finding an unidentified "High-Value Target" code-named Kingfish, who is
later💶 revealed to be Vladimir Makarov. It also shows the team leaving Captain Price
behind, leading to his future incarceration in💶 a Siberian gulag.
Plot [ edit ]
The film
begins with John "Soap" MacTavish sitting at a table, loading a STANAG magazine;💶 in the
corner stands General Shepherd, asking him to "start from the beginning." It then cuts
to the Karkonosze Mountains,💶 Ukraine (in reality, the mountains are located in the
Czech Republic and Poland), where Soap, Captain Price, Ghost, Roach, and💶 other Task
Force 141 operatives are seen walking through a forest. Delta Force operatives Sandman
and Frost are atop a💶 hill aiming with a Barrett M82 at several Russian soldiers
guarding a safehouse. After requesting permission to engage, Overlord commences💶 the
operation and Sandman and Frost start to eliminate the enemy soldiers. A friendly
AC-130, callsign Spectre 6-4, fires at💶 the incoming waves of Russian troops in a large
field outside.
After Spectre clears the way for the Task Force, Soap's💶 team advances
into the safehouse and kills all remaining hostiles. Roach plants a breaching charge on
a wall, with Ghost💶 entering the room first and killing the soldiers inside. The team
enters the room after clearing it of the enemy,💶 where there are pictures of an airport
(hinting at the eventual massacre at Zakhaev International Airport) and a Bravo Six
💶 team that had been sent in earlier. Soap and Price discover that the picture of Bravo
Six has several faces💶 crossed out, implying each of the members have been executed.
They then hear a C4 detonator beeping and escape before💶 the blast can kill them.
The
Task Force runs for a V-22 Osprey for exfil, while Spectre 6-4 provides covering fire
💶 for their escape. However, enemy RPG fire destroys Spectre 6-4, leaving the Task Force
to fend for themselves. Another RPG💶 is fired and explodes near Soap, knocking him
semi-conscious and spitting blood. Sandman and Roach drag Soap to the Osprey💶 while
Frost rushes to cover them. Price then orders the rest of the Task Force to leave
without him while💶 he provides covering fire; Soap, however, refuses to leave him
behind. Overlord orders the Osprey pilot to take off immediately,💶 but Sandman argues
with him, demanding that Price not be left behind. As Price shouts for the Osprey to
evacuate,💶 he is then shot and falls backward, struggling to get back up. He pulls out
his SIG Sauer P226 sidearm💶 and kills more soldiers before being shot again and
overwhelmed by enemy forces.
The screen then fades to black and cuts💶 to the present
day, revealing the scars that Soap had suffered from the explosion. After demanding
that Shepherd tell him💶 Kingfish's true identity, Shepherd throws him a dossier with a
picture of Vladimir Makarov, declaring "We'll get him." Soap then💶 draws his combat
knife and stabs the picture of Makarov, ending the video.
Cast [ edit ]
Jon Morgan as
Captain John💶 "Soap" MacTavish
David Kinsman as Captain John Price
David Brandon George
as Lt. Gen. Shepherd
Keeghan Wilson as Lt. Simon "Ghost" Riley
Ray Davids💶 as MSgt.
"Sandman"
Dennis Allcock as Sgt. Gary "Roach" Sanderson
Justin Major as SSgt. Derek
"Frost" Westbrook
Production and release [ edit ]
The💶 site was discovered after the
website received bloody dog tags in the mail, with one supposedly being those of
General💶 Shepherd and the containing the URL address and the message, "End the war"
above.
Upon discovery of the website, a timer💶 was ticking down until the March 2nd,
2011, a date which would coincide with the Game Developers Conference.[2] Due to💶 the
viral nature of the website, the date's significance, the site's IP being registered in
Los Angeles, and a similar💶 marketing approach for Call of Duty: Black Ops, many
believed the timer to show the date for a possible Call💶 of Duty: Modern Warfare 3
reveal trailer, causing the site to gain large amounts of traffic.
However, on February
26, Activision,💶 publishers of the Call of Duty series, denied that they were linked to
it in any way and declared it💶 to be a hoax.[3] This was proven to be true; on March 2,
2011, a video entitled "Find Makarov" was💶 uploaded onto YouTube, with the findmakarov
website having the video embedded on the page. The official video currently has over
💶 8,700,000 views.
The original short started out as a personal project for staff Jeff
Chan. "I was playing through Modern Warfare💶 2," he says, "and I'm a filmmaker and I
really liked the game. I was like I've never really seen💶 a film from a first person
perspective. I was like, what if you made a film from a first-person perspective,💶 and
it wasn't as crappy as Doom?" He came up with a story and a script, and took it to💶 his
co-workers at We Can Pretend, a digital media agency in Toronto. They all happened to
be Call of Duty💶 fans as well, and agreed to work on the movie together. "We all decided
to kind of make this project,"💶 says Chan. "We were like screw it, we'll invest into it,
and we'll see what happens".[1]
After the first film did💶 so well, the filmmakers had an
idea for a second project based on the Call of Duty series, and We💶 Can Pretend called
up Activision to propose it. "The first thing they said," says Fradkin, "is the script
that we💶 sent them, the original script, was way too close to the game. We can't do it,
we're stepping on their💶 toes. Then we kind of started about, 'Ok, these are the
elements we can use, these are the elements we💶 can't,' talking about it and making the
script that you saw".[1]
