Mind the plot-holes: The bumpy road to success

The games trailer project is beginning to ramp up. We've finally pinned down the story for our games trailer - for which we now have a name: 

(*drum roll*)

'The Bones of Essimer'

I have to be careful about what project info I can release at this stage but I'm sure I will end up leaking a few snippets here and there.

It's good to have a story figured out because it's pretty much impossible to cut a trailer together without knowing what the story really is. Your trailer is all about hinting at what the story is, so if you don't know what it is, how can you communicate effectively to sell it to the masses?

One of the more challenging aspects of the writing side has been the logic testing process. Quite often you'll come across plot holes that need fixing and it comes down to a decision on whether to continue writing and try to fix it later, or whether you need to fix it right there and then before you proceed. You'll find that everyone wants to add their two cents as well with coming up with suggestions - which is great - but a lot of the time you find that those solutions have plot holes themselves, or they create plot holes elsewhere in the script. You end up having to balance a ton of variables. It's like trying to solve an algebra Rubik cube. Not only that, but some people get attached to those ideas and maybe don't understand why they can't be used. When you have to keep finding fixes for fixes for fixes you start to stretch the credibility of the story. 

Suffice to say, there have been a lot of changes. I know that's difficult for the rest of the team because it ruins their flow and sometimes it means their work might be unusable or need to be adapted. I feel their frustration. It's frustrating for me too - I think I'm on my third or forth script now and I've lost a lot of things that were originally scripted. But then I sat down and thought about it - that's not that unusual, scripts generally go through multiple drafts, sometimes dozens or hundreds of drafts. Some films have writers on set writing new things for a film that's being shot in front of them. It's probably best not to think of that as wasted material, but rather think of it as just a part of the process.

So far I've got an overview of the story, the next stage will be taking that and turning it into a beat sheet, then from there I can start crafting a proper script. 

Having said all that, we are only a few weeks out from shooting and I'm keen to finish this script so I can pull up my sleeves and start helping the rest of the team out. It'll be good to be doing something physical because everything so far has been very cerebral. Over the last few months, I've been helping out as an Art Direction intern on a short film called 'The Ballad of Maddog Quinn' which has just finished shooting. It has been really good to be doing things with my hands, painting, assembling, disassembling etc - it's actually quite cathartic to be doing stuff like that for a change.

Also over the last few days we have been running a casting call. This is something we do every year just to bring in as many people as we can - it's always helpful to have a database of various people we can look through for casting various roles and extra parts. The games trailer will potentially need a lot of extras so this has been a useful process. The next stage in this process will be reviewing all the casting call performances and doing call backs for the main roles, but we will also be looking to advertise more auditions for specific parts so we're getting a chance to see actors from other parts of the country as well.

We're also looking at expanding our team heading into shooting - I've been in touch with the Beauty Therapy students and the Hairdressing students to see if we can get them on board because these are two area's that will feature prominently.

Much to do - must be off.

Do the write thing

The games trailer is proving to be a difficult beast to pin down. I've had to go back to the drawing board writing page quite a few times now. Our original brief was to create an opening cinematic which led into a playable part of the game. The brief has since evolved then. 

The problem with the opening cinematic is that it doesn't give enough of an indication of what the game is about. The concept we have has quite a complex set of character and world elements in play and the cinematic would only have touched on a couple of them - e.g. we have a morally gray protagonist whose back-story is important to understand in order to be relatable, but we also need to explain what their 'hero's journey' will encompass. We had plotted out a three act structure for the game, but when I sat down to write the opening sequence, I found I was only writing the very beginning, the setup to the first act. On one hand, it's possible to say interesting things about plot and character in three minutes, but you're also balancing out the fact that you don't really want to hit the first turning point that early on in the game. It feels too rushed and you miss a lot of important character development. You could cram a lot of exposition into the opening but it wouldn't make for a good cinematic and you don't want to overload your audience. Games are all about exploring and finding things out for yourself during the game, so it would be a waste to do too much with the opening cinematic - and as I said earlier, this game's particular complexities don't make it easy to convey what needs to be conveyed within one opening scene.

So, we've had to change tack and aim for a different format. I'm no longer writing an opening cinematic, I'm writing something closer to an actual trailer - more of a mashup, highlight of some the key story elements and  a showcase of the visual elements. This approach comes with it's own problems and complications. Writing a trailer sounds easy in theory - we've seen thousands of trailers in our time, we know exactly what they look like, surely it should be easier than writing a short film or feature? Those were my thoughts - how wrong I was! The big problem I've encountered here is that I'm trying to completely reverse-engineer everything. In a normal environment for film or games, you already have a product (a game or film), so the trailer is really the editor's job of taking some key moments and using them to give an impression of what that film or game is about. However, we don't actually have a final product, nor do we even have a full script of the game, so we've had to try to imagine the full game, those key moments, key pieces of dialogue and try to figure out how they might arise. The difficulty in this is trying to maintain the sense of authenticity while manufacturing those moments. For example, having  a soundbite of dialogue that sounds like a natural product of the script is not easy without knowing the circumstances to how that dialogue would arise - who is speaking, who are they speaking to, where are they, what is their context? All of those questions are important when dealing with authenticity. It's hard to manufacture those moments without it sounding too 'on the nose'.

The other big issue I've had to contend with is that the world we've created has a lot of complexities that we haven't been able to fully pin down yet. We just don't have time to write a full script. A project of this complexity would take a lot of writing and re-writing to fully pin down. Without even a first draft we're jumping into the deep end in a big way. Imagine trying to create a trailer for 'Inception' without knowing exactly know how that world operates (and not even having the first draft as a guide!).  

The other danger of this is that once the trailer is made, there may be the feeling we'll be locked into the story in certain ways which would be difficult to change without making the trailer an obsolete relic. But, I'm trying not to think of it that way, I've had to come to accept that this is a pioneering venture and that a certain amount of malleability needs to be expected. 

However, now that I know what the problems are, I can start fixing them. I had a few eureka moments this morning actually. I think the way to I'm going to have to approach this is by anchoring on to (believable) key dialogue and things that just hint at turning points and character dilemmas. Hint is the key word there - I still think that "show, don't tell" applies. I'll also need to build the trailer through tiny snippets and try to get ideas across in extremely concise fragments, in unison with overlapping dialogue. In essence, I'm going to have to channel my writing and editing skills simultaneously. That will make up about two thirds of the trailer, leaving the last third to focus on the visual aspects - this will be where we get to bring out the inner Michael Bay and just throw our most explosive shots out there, remembering the fact that the point of trailers are to sell.

I've highlighted a lot of problems and difficulties in this post, not to complain or make excuses, but to show how much it has challenged my expectations. These were all problems I hadn't actually anticipated - it sounded much easier than it has been! I've very much had to learn through trial and error because no one else has done this before, and any advice/guidance I receive has to be taken with a pinch of salt as I know those people haven't been through this process either. Those are the joys of being a pioneer. Hopefully, with any luck, we'll survive and we can pass our knowledge along to all those who follow us.

 

One Flu Over the Cuckoo's Nest

Big week. I think. It's hard to tell, can barely remember it. I got wiped out by the flu on Thursday afternoon through til Saturday, but beginning to turn the corner on it now (Sunday). But here's what I can recall of the week... (in no particular order, other than the order I remember it in).

Meetings. Meetings. Meetings.
What were those meetings about? Mostly about meetings: the need for meetings, the running of meetings, the frequency of meetings, who needs to be involved in the meetings, rescheduling meetings.

Speaking of meetings... we had a nice meeting with the Co-Founder of Pledge-me, Anna Guenther. She was in Invercargill catching up with some people who have had successful Pledge-me campaigns in the area and dropped in to give us some advice. Really useful stuff that we'll take into our crowdfunding campaign for the games trailer. We should be getting that up and running soon. I think her most important points were really about making your crowdfunding campaign personal and take people on a journey - giving updates on where you're at, selling your vision, having interesting rewards that are not always physical items (e.g. having 'indirect rewards' - she gave us an example of one campaign where the reward was having someone jump into a freezing lake shouting your name to camera). She has a TED talk here.

Coming out of some of those meetings we've knocked out a rough schedule that we can refine a bit more this week. We're also looking ahead to doing casting calls and auditions in the next few weeks, which means we need posters and promotional things up and running yesterday.

We've also had more script meetings. I'll have to be honest here - I would do things differently if given another chance.
We've all heard great things about democracy, but sometimes it doesn't work, sometimes it does but it's an extremely slow and unwieldy process. Usually within that process and within the goal of pleasing everyone, you end up pleasing almost no one.

Our format this year has gone something like this:
- Brainstorm ideas in small groups
- Refine ideas down to a pitch within small groups
- Team vote on the two "best" pitches (and hope that the writer can connect with either or both ideas)
- Script team brainstorm ways of combining these idea's (somehow)
- Hope that something cohesive forms out of the mix
- Hope that the wider team get on board with the hybrid idea

That's one way of doing it, and I'm not saying it can't work, I just feel that it's probably not the best approach. It's slow, energy-sapping and extremely frustrating. Scriptwriting by comity is a hard slog.
However, hindsight is 20/20.

Possibly a more efficient way of doing it might have been:
- Brainstorm ideas in small groups
- Bring those idea's back to the writer as possible inspiration
- The writer goes away and writes X amount of pitches which may or may not have anything to do with the original ideas
- The team votes on their favourite one.

This way, you know that the writer is already has a connection with it. The writer more than anyone else in the team needs to connect with the idea. I think it's easier for the team to get on board with a well thought out story written by a good writer, than it is for a writer to get on board with two concepts that they may not connect with. In the same way that you don't want the painters voting on how a house should be built, I don't think you want the accountants voting on how a script should be written.

Hell, maybe there is no "easy" way of doing it, maybe it was always destined to be difficult.

Having said all that however, I think we do (miraculously) have an idea that we can proceed with and something the rest of the team will like.
And that's my current mission: writing a draft script, by tomorrow. Which means no more blogging tonight...

It is a lovely language, but it takes a very long time to say anything in it, because we do not say anything in it, unless it is worth taking a long time to say, and to listen to.

It's only the third post in so it might be too early to call, but I have a feeling that may be the longest post title I'm likely to write. Possibly the longest that anyone is likely to write. But I feel that it encapsulates the past week quite accurately.

We pitched our games trailer concepts at the beginning of the week - I wouldn't say we have a concept yet, in fact I would be highly surprised if the final product looks anything like what was originally pitched. There is still a large degree of metamorphosis yet to occur. We've narrowed down the field, but there was no great eureka moment of "that's it! That's our concept!". If anything, I'd say we had discovered which direction to take by figuring out which directions we didn't want to take. We have the foundation for which something can be built, but we don't quite know what we're building yet.

I think the team feels slightly restless and anxious at the moment - everyone is keen to start working on their own corner of the project, which is understandable. We've had a few weeks of brainstorming so it's natural to feel a little frustrated that we don't have anything concrete yet. We would like to be moving a bit quicker, although as I alluded to in the title, my feeling is that this is the most important phase of the project and we shouldn't rush it unnecessarily. Don't do it unless you're going to do it right. 

Unfortunately for most of the crew, this phase is more producer/writer heavy and there won't be a huge amount for them to get stuck into yet. This is very much the calm before the storm.

In the Producers Realm, Lee has been getting the social media aspects off the ground and ready for some shameless self promotion (I will post links to these a little later). Meanwhile, I have organised headshots for the crew (that's photographs, not executions...) that will appear on our website, which is due to be built soon. One of our incredibly talented friends in the Bachelor of Applied Media Arts course, kindly donated her Friday morning to us for the headshots (and she can be found here: https://www.facebook.com/FeliciaGoffinCreative). Thank you, Felicia, you rock!

First positions

This has been a week of foundations and beginnings. After a long and surprisingly arduous process (stretching back as far as the mid 2013) we have now settled on a name for our production company. Henceforth, we shall be known as 'Physical Realm Studio'. I'm very pleased we finally have a banner to rally around (although I still don't see what was wrong with 'Radioactive Latino Penguins' mutter mutter...).

Anyway, here is our fancy-pants logo, courtesy of Jade, our project Art Director.

We've also had our roles allocated (mostly). I have picked up the role of 'Internal Producer', which means I'll be taking charge of logistics, budgets, scheduling and general crew management,that sort of thing. I'm also the writer for the game trailer, which is very exciting, but at the same time I do feel a little wary of it. I haven't written anything resembling a game or a game trailer before so this will be a new challenge. Sounds easy, but there are whole new elements, structures and mechanics to consider, especially as we will be making a playable pilot with the possibility for further development. Still, it's a good opportunity and I'm sure I will learn a lot from the process. As well as producing and writing, I may possibly (read: probably) pick up some additional roles heading into production and post.

To keep track of things on the producing side, I've set up a Trello page. Trello is a neat little online app and it's an absolute godsend for collaborative projects. It's sort of like an online post-it board where you have tasks on 'cards' that you can move around and assign different people to. It's really handy so I'll be using it throughout the year as the main organisation hub for the games trailer and for all the other projects I've got going.

We've had a couple of brainstorming meetings this week - some interesting ideas coming out. We've also had to renew our student ID's and the film guys have started on first aid training so that has eaten into our meeting times a bit, and scheduling around everyone's different timetables is tricky to say the least. Having to schedule meetings at the end of the week (and after 2 hours of research class) isn't ideal but sometimes it has to be done.

Our BTS crew - which is currently a one man operation but will be expanding soon - is finishing off the edit on the first of the weblogs. I did a few behind-the-scenes interviews earlier this week so hopefully it shouldn't be too long until it goes online and we can show you some of the inner workings of the madcap crew at Physical Realm Studio.