HARDCORE | An Unreal Engine Action Short Film

A lone soldier trapped in a concrete warzone fights against waves of green-hazmat suited attackers as they attempt to close in. The battle escalates into a chaotic, over-the-top assault filled with explosions, gunfire, and the occasional dark comedic beat. It’s a love letter to classic action cinematography, drawing from many inspirations. Created in Unreal Engine 5, this short film combines in-engine cinematography, kinetic staging and some minor visual effects with a rich, textured sound mix to deliver a fun cinematic experience. This film was a bit of a stream of consciousness. I was originally intending to put together a couple of shots for a test, but the shots kept pouring out until it finally became what you see on screen here. I figured it was entertaining enough to share. All the shots were set up in Sequencer and rendered in Unreal 5.3 on an RTX 3070 Ti. The characters came from a Big/Medium/Small kitbash pack. The animations are a mix of Paragon animations that I chopped up and blended in Sequencer, plus a bit of keyframe animation I added myself. I swapped in a MetaHuman head for the main character and did some simple facial mocap to get the eyes feeling alive for certain shots. Some very minor comp work was applied. I also added a dirt mask, minor grain, some flash frames for added impact during gunfire/explosions, and a bit of chromatic aberration. I hope you enjoy it! Credits: Director / Cinematography / Edit / Color Grade / Sound Mix — Jakub Kuczynski Character / Set Assets — Big / Medium / Small Body Animations — Paragon + custom animations Facial MetaHuman Mocap — Jakub Kuczynski Music — Custom samples + SFX Subscribe for more! #UnrealEngine #ShortFilm #ActionShortFilm #CinematicVFX #UE5Cinematics #unreal #ue5