Ismaël Auray

WORK HISTORY

EDUCATION

SKILLS

ABOUT ISMAËL AURAY

Storytelling has always been a passion for me and I\'m fortunate that it is now one of the most important aspects of my professional life.My role as a Cinematics Director is to understand the key concepts of the different projects that I’m working on and translate them into playable objectives (actions) for the actors in order to create meaningful performances.I studied Cinema at New York Film Academy and Concordia University and I have directed over 12 short films.In 2007, my last short film Cabaret de la dernière chance was showcased in a \"Coup de coeur\" selection by the renowned festival programmer Danny Lennon at Cannes Film Festival. This short film also received the jury\'s fiction prize during the Vidéastes recherché.es film festival.In 2011, I started working in the video game industry in the cinematics department at Beenox - Activision as a Cinematic Designer. I’ve worked on various titles including the renowned franchise Skylanders and The Amazing Spider-Man.In 2013, I joined Ubisoft Quebec as the Assistant Cinematic Director for Assassin’s Creed Syndicate. On this title, I organized and prepared the Performance Capture pre-production of over 90+ minutes of cinematics. I assisted the main director with staging and direction. I also contributed as main director for over 35 minutes of cinematics.In 2016, I joined Gearbox Studio Québec as the Narrative Director / Cinematic Director to work on an unannounced project.In 2018, I moved to Amsterdam to join Guerrilla Games to work as Cinematics Director on Horizon Forbidden West to define the vision and to sustain consistent quality for non-interactive and interactive scenes on about 22 hours of content.In 2023, I gave a talk at the Game Developers Conference on the cinematics of Horizon Forbidden West. I also served as Cinematics Director for the DLC Burning Shores, released in the same year.I now work as Cinematics Director of an unnanonced project at Gearbox Montreal.