Set several years after the events of Just Cause 2, Rico Rodriguez leaves The Agency and returns to his homeland of Medici, a fictional Mediterranean island under the brutal control of dictator General Di Ravello, who has set his eyes on world domination. Wanting to stop him, Rico goes on a journey to destroy his evil plans

Director: Roland Lesterlin
Cinematic cut scenes storyboards: Roger Hom

At my interview at Avalanche, Roland and I hit it off and began acting out scenes together immediately. I hadn’t brought my gear, so I wasn’t ready to work, but with a couple of sheets of paper, a whiteboard and a pen, we kicked it old school. I returned the next day with my laptop and it was fast and furious as soon as I sat down. We didn’t have much time for my booking so my boards were way looser than usual, but the ideas were all there. The most exciting thing about this project was that it was the first one where I felt like I was a co-director, pitching my ideas for script changes and revealing emotional story arcs that were not easily apparent in the script. Key to the success of this was: 1. Establishing Rico and Frigo’s over-the-top bromance. 2. Revealing the mother-son relationship between Rico and Diina in thoughtful vignettes. 3. Cranking up the cartoony brutality of Ravelle, the insane fire-obsessed dictator. One of the biggest and fun challenges was designing all shots so they could work with a continuous camera, without losing any of our key emotional beats. Below are some of my favorite scenes, warts and all.