IGS & IGTM - An Interview Made With Love

A little while back we hooked with Mark Carr of the Indie Game Searchlight (IGS) to talk a little IGTM.  If you haven't seen Mark's IGS work, it's definitely worth checking out.  He puts a ton of work into his videos and it shows.  And we are very happy to say that Mark's IGTM video is no exception :)

Thanks so much to Mark and the IGS for the chat and the wonderful video.  Check it out:

So, What's So Special About the Special Edition?

We have a lot of people asking what’s going to be in the Special Edition.  Enough that we thought it was about time we write a post about it.

The Special Edition is indeed going to be special. 

We have a ton of ideas with regards to what we’re going to include.  Unfortunately though at this point, it’s just too early to state specifically what the S.E. will consist of.  Our mindset right now is:  Finish the film first and then work on making the S.E. outstanding.  But this is what we can tell you...

Too Much Good Stuff

So far, we’ve collected over 200 hours of footage - much of it meaty, info-ladden story & design-filled interview content.  However, the projected run time of the finished film is 80 minutes (not to short, but more importantly, not too long).  As a result, we know (and we’re already seeing this) that there will be tons of interesting, intriguing and emotional content that won’t make the film - simply due to time constraints.  

A lot this extra material is design/game-specific content that might be a little too esoteric, some of it is plot pieces that might not fit the pacing of the final film.  A good example of something that we love, but would likely not go into the film is the Canabalt piece you’ve seen already.  The Special Edition will be filled with little vignettes like this...

Multiple Movies Worth

Overall, we think we have enough quality material to cover not one, not two, but  likely three films worth.  You can already see this happening with our web content: 

To date: We‘ve released 86 minutes of free web content 

(remember our film is aiming to be 80 minutes long).

This means that between the web, the special edition and the film itself.  There will be a mountain of IGTM-related content out there.

Fully Produced Extras

One important point that we need to make with regards to our S.E. content is that we plan to fully produced these bonus items.  A lot of traditional bonus features are simply dumped to a film's DVD's special features.  We'd like to treat all S.E. content as if it were its own stand alone film.

Other Material

We also want to include as much other relevant material we possibly can.  A lot of this would be dependent on the approval/blessing of the film’s subjects.  But we’d love to see content such as:

• Game Concept Drawings/Art 
• Official Soundtrack 
• Behind the scenes material
• Limited Edition Packaging
• We are also toying with the idea of a companion hard copy book of some sort.

Going To Be Worth it

Overall, the Special Edition will be our way to do everything we possibly want to do with this project.  Our own personal way of closing the book creatively on this film, before we start the next.  The material mentioned above, is the type of stuff we’re thinking for the Special Edition.  Basically as much high quality material as we can possibly fit into 2 or 3 discs.  But like I said earlier, all of this is yet-to-be-determined.  Make the movie first; then the extra goodies.

But rest assured the mandate for the Special Edition is to make it rock and make it worth every penny of the donation (which really does help and goes straight into the current production).

Any follow up questions or ideas?  We’d love to hear ‘em!  Let us know via email or comments below...

-J 

Update on Tuesday, July 19, 2011 at 12:23AM by J + L

ANNOUNCEMENTS:

We've started to announce various segments that will be included in the Special Edition of the film. Here are a few of the planned segments... 

• Steph Thirion & Eliss
• Thatgamecompany (Flower, Flow, Journey)
• David Hellman & The Art of Braid
• Jason Rohrer (Passage, Sleep is Death, Under a Star Filled Sky)

There's a lot more to come, and we'll be posting additional material as the package develops :)

Congratulations Demruth & Dragon Divide!

We’re kinda late on this news, and likely if you follow this film, you’ve already heard about this.  But, the 2011 IGF finalists we’re announced this week.  It looks like a fantastic lineup, and it’s so awesome to see some of the names we’ve already talked to up for awards.  Check out the finalists here and be sure to read the Jury Statements as well.

In particular, we’re very happy to see one of this film’s early supporters, Demruth's Alexander Bruce nominated for the Nuovo Award for his game “Hazard: The Journey of Life”.  ‘Hazard’ is described as 

A philosophical first person single player environmental puzzle game. The game presents no goals directly to the player, but they create goals for themselves based on what they know of the world.

Alexander wrote a really nice blog post about his journey with Hazard, perseverance and everything that led up to the nomination.  An inspiring read for anyone working on a creative project of their own.

While we’re at it.  We’d also like to point you in the direction of another supporter of ours:  Alpha Squad by Dragon Divide coming out very soon (Jan 10th) on XBLIG.  Here’s a bit about the game:

Alpha Squad is an adventure game that has mechanics primarily used in dual-stick shooters, to keep the action fast and heavy as you explore the world and its characters. Up to 4 player co-op, a customizable storyline, large world, unforgettable weapons, music from Stemage of Metroid Metal, and art from industry veterans.

Alpha Squad is part of Microsoft’s Indie Games ‘Winter Uprising’ promotion, and should be available on XBLIG very soon.  The game looks fantastic - watch the trailer below, and consider heading on over to your local dashboard and picking it up.

Production Update

Filming:  Road trip is complete!  We are back at BlinkWorks’ HQ, and starting the very long process that is editing.  After the 102 days on the road, to date, we’ve conducted 42 separate interviews totally over 200 hours of some pretty great material.  

The crazy thing is, we actually still have more shooting to do (yikes).  We have a few more people we’d like to talk to and include.  Plus, there will be some additional shooting near the end of the editing process, in order to notch up the production value and take the film to the next level.

Editing: For the past two weeks, we’ve been doing what we refer to as ‘processing’ the collected footage so far.  This is basically a process of 

1. Encode the footage from it’s native H.264 codec to a more edit friendly version of PRORESS
2. Sync the DSLR footage with its appropriate audio
3. Sit and watch EVERYTHING
4. Make notes, and do some preliminary cutting of EVERYTHING (basically we take an interview on the FCP timeline, and ‘chunk out’ the interview into notarized topics/themes and thoughts.
5. Record each topic/theme ‘Chunk’ on a physical notecards.

Once we’ve gone through all footage, we sit down and put together an edit-script.  Something to guide the actual edit.  We should mention that we’ve had a script since the inception of the project.  It’s a loose script to be sure, and one that, to date, has been re-written 5 times.  The current version bares very little resemblance to the original script.  It’ll be interesting to see how close the finished product is to the edit script.

Timeline:  This is a pretty big project.  The size of which is somewhat magnified by the fact that it is indeed just two people working on it.  But, so far (knock on wood) we are right where we thought we’d be.  Jan/Feb is going to be spent ‘processing’ footage and gathering the last few interviews.  We then are doing a hard push for a rough cut by April 30th.  From there on, it’s edit, graphics, audio and pickup shots.

Overall, we’re looking at a fall, 2011 release.  We’re insanely excited for that time to roll around.  We have a ton of fun ideas for getting this film out there.  But alas, lots more work to do before then :)

Globe and Mail Talks to IGTM

Check it out:  We had a nice long chat with the Globe and Mail!  It’s a really beefy article covering a fair bit of ground.  Chad Sapieha, Technology and Gaming columnist wrote some really kind words about the project, including this dream of a quote:

 ...it is both polished and poignant. Interviewees tell frank, heartfelt stories about their lives, inspirations, and creative processes, affirming in a way that no essay or article ever could that their creations are labours of love and works of art.

We can’t tell you how cool it is to see a reaction like that in print.  It is EXACTLY in line with what we are trying to achieve with this film, and its so encouraging to see that those intentions are getting through - especially when put so complimentary & eloquently.  Make no mistake, that sucka’s going on our front page :)

But, as flattering as it is, we are far from done, and still have yet to make good on Chad’s generous words.  If there is a 2011 resolution - that’ll be it :)

Click here for the article