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]
