By Carolyn Giardina

The explosive interest in and rapid expansion of the interactive entertainment community holds great promise for experience-based storytelling–and Hollywood and Madison Avenue are taking notice.
    In response, the Visual Effects Society (VES) and the Los Angeles Professional Chapter of ACM Siggraph recently presented a program titled “Experiential Narrative in Games and Film,” which dissected the convergence of games, entertainment and advertising. The event was held at the Entertainment Technology Center in USC’s Digital Cinema Laboratory at the Hollywood Pacific Theater.
    Speakers brought experience in multiple media to the table. They were David Goyer, writer/director, whose credits include The Invisible, Batman Begins, Dark City, and the Blade trilogy; Tom DeSanto, executive producer, Transformers: The Movie, X-Men, and X-Men United; John Gaeta, visual effects supervisor on The Matrix trilogy; Habib Zargarpour, Electronic Arts’ game designer on “Need for Speed: Most Wanted,” which features a BMW in the leading role; and Jonathan Ackley, a LucasArts alumnus. Richard Taylor, cinematics director at Electronic Arts, moderated the discussion. Loni Peristere, co-founder of Culver City-based Zoic Studios, was a meeting producer and participated in the discussion.
    The general consensus from the panel was that filmmakers and game designers should work together to create a seamless experience where one medium informs and enriches the other. This would involve combining the emotion and drama of film with the interactivity of video games to create stories in which a viewer can participate as well as watch. Peristere observes that the games will continue to become more sophisticated as the CG world moves toward real time photoreal rendering.
    But what is the model of the future? One that is already happening is the development and release of movie-based video games that hit the market around the time of the film’s release.
    “It’s natural to try to extend a successful film,” says Gaeta, who won an Academy Award and BAFTA Award for visual effects on The Matrix. “But the trend of trying to create a successful property from one media to another has had some hiccups.”
    Specifically addressing the creative side, he points out that a film’s creators play a large role in the success of a film. “But we’ve been separated from the [game development] process,” he says. “Part of the problem is that directors have not been direct participants in the game.”
    “It’s about communication,” agrees DeSanto. “I don’t think there’s ever been a good synergy between film and games because they [operate as] two creative creatures.”
    “The time to nail down all the relationships [between filmmakers and game developers] is in prepro,” asserts Gaeta. “[Prepro] is the privotal point. I totally believe the directors and writers have probably the best insights into [the characters and situations].”
    Goyer says that character and story are critical in a successful movie-based game, but while video games today often have the image of the characters in a film, they are not always about the characters. Another inherent problem, he suggests, is that “development windows are not long enough to do a proper game,” keeping in mind that a film has already been greenlit when game development begins.
    “In order to make a really good game, you need three to four years,” says DeSanto. “[It will be an issue] until video games shorten their development time.”
    EA’s Zargarpour, an alum of Industrial Light + Magic and the feature world, where he is a two-time Academy Award nominee and two–time BAFTA Award winner (both for The Perfect Storm and Twister), relates, “I found making a game requires as much time as making a movie; most people don’t realize this.”
    Success is also about proper use of the benefits of each medium. “For any entertainment technology to survive, it has to have a niche,” says Ackley. “When translating a property from one to another, you need to look at strengths and weaknesses of a new medium. To be successful in interactive, the true art is knowing how much control to give.”
    Like movie-based games, there is also strong interest in branded games. That business model has been shifting in recent years, driven by increasing demand.
    “Three years ago you used to have to pay advertisers to put ads in games; now they pay us,” observes Zargarpour, whose “Need for Speed: Most Wanted” featuring a BMW won the ’06 VES Award for outstanding real time visuals in a video game.
    The relationship between game developers and advertisers is an important one, he relates, as clients pay close attention to how their product is portrayed. “Each car company has a different idea of what they want,” he explains, noting that this includes how much damage–and the type of damage–that the developers can inflict on a vehicle in the course of the game. As an example, he explained that on a BMW, windows were allowed to crack, but they could not smash. Ironically, he says, “you can explode a car in a movie, but you can’t in a game.”
    Automotive advertising seems to be an obvious fit for video games, which frequently include chase sequences. Yet speakers acknowledged that the industry is looking for fresh ideas and new genres–including those for the less frequently targeted female audience.
    Among those being looked at are games with portals to the Web. Panelists seemed to think this was a particularly interesting model for advertising to explore, as it could result in product placement as well as product involvement. It was suggested that on a Web site, one could learn more about–and even purchase–products that are featured in games. “It’s about commerce,” suggests DeSanto. “If people feel the dollars are there, it will happen.”
    These advertiser opportunities were also viewed as something to consider for another suggested model, what Gaeta calls a “hybrid” film–that is, a game where the player can affect the outcome. With story choices that a player can make, he observes, “think about how many movies can be constructed in one environment.”

MySHOOT Profiles