The Gray Man Training Experience

Do you have what it takes?

There’s no denying the exhilarating rush you get after walking out of a particularly good action movie. Part of you is awed by the effects (and explosions), while some reptilian part of your brain thinks to itself “I could do that.” With this project, we challenged visitors to see if they could actually pull off being an action hero.

In perhaps one of our most involved projects yet, we created a real-life secret agent training experience based on Netflix’s original movie The Gray Man. The training simulation occupied two decommissioned train cars that we brought with us to Comic Con 2022 in San Diego and transformed into a skill test for prospective Sierra agents.

The experience tested each visitor’s strength, skill, and speed, forcing them to solve puzzles to move through the train cars. Each puzzle brought visitors in on the action, inviting them to look, touch, and feel their way through the installation. The training simulation ended with a pulse-pounding sprint across the top of the train cars as visitors ran to secure a USB disc with sensitive intel, an interpretation of the movie’s Prague sequence.

The Gray Man is an homage to the classic over-the-top action movies of the ‘80s and ‘90s, and we channeled that in the best way possible: explosions. To craft an experience that was both exhilarating and safe for visitors, we played visuals of explosions on screens lining the wall of the train cars.

Our core strategy for the project included real-life and social media guerrilla marketing aspects, which meant that we needed to create a shareable experience for visitors. To do that, we placed cameras around to capture the pulse-pounding action. We stationed two cameras in the train cars along with an eagle cam positioned high above the station, an all-time first for experiences at San Diego Comic Con.

Pulling this off required all of our site engineering, custom fabrication, interactive design, and audio/visual production know-how. Over the course of four days, we put around 2,000 San Diego Comic Con attendees to the test and turned them into elite operatives worthy of the Sierra Program.