Studio 1 Folio Plan Post

While reflecting on the few short projects I made in my first semester at MAGI in Animated Narratives and Character, Place and Simulation, I came to realise that I had made several trailers for video games that don’t really exist. These came about because I was tooling around with very scrappy, basic 3D animation and then presenting them in video form. Probably because of my advanced (ahem) video editing/ filmmaking skills, I cut these short animated renders into reasonably polished videos and they were a lot of fun to make. The semester was tough and a bit confusing, but over the break I was able to reflect on this work and realise that I was actually really interested in this idea of fictional games and the fictional characters who make the games, and had the idea of making a film that shows off a vast, epic, and very strange video game, and gives the audience some insight into the maker of that game. I think this could actually be reasonably simple.

A hugely inspiring work was a video made by Youtube channel Game Maker's Toolkit- Why Does Celeste Feel So Good to Play?, which is a deep breakdown of the game and an interview with the makers. Having never played Celeste or seen anyone in the real world playing it, this video is really the only proof that the game exists, and technically it could all be fake- there may be no Celeste, it could be a giant conspiracy. I find this idea extremely fun to consider.

My first idea was to make a video which is an interview between a journalist and the video game maker, and to intercut the interview with footage from the game. Chatting with my mentor Uyen Nguyen though, I was asked to reconsider the final outcome being a video. Video is definitely my comfort zone, so I think I’m going to consider the outcome maybe being more interactive, like say, a website, or to make the fictional games as real games, but then present them in a way that makes it seem like they were made by a fictional character. This semester I definitely want to learn some more skills in interactivity as well as levelling up my 3D animation, though I wouldn’t want to only make the outcome interactive for the sake of it.

I’m very interested in this concept of fictional projects. In fact I have made a few works that have confused others as to whether or not they are real. For some reason I quite like this.

The field that the work sits in is really science fiction. I have always enjoyed entering into the worlds of Phillip K. Dick and David Lynch. A friend also recommend I look at The Catamites (https://thecatamites.itch.io/) who seem to make pretty weird, short games.

The process of making the work could be pretty straightforward. If I go down the path of making the game non-playable, the footage from the game could be divided into several sections, each of which could be quite short and specific, and could be worked on each week through the semester. Then the interview with the maker could be shot and edited towards the end of the semester.

So I’m almost ready to get started. I need to come up with a concept for the actual game or games, but from Chris Barker’s lecture opening-of-semester lecture, I’m inspired to start making first and then let the ideas flow from the making. But right now I am leaning towards making a very schlocky Handmaid’s Tale style fantasy epic. I almost think it doesn’t matter just yet how bizarre it is because the game looking janky and underdeveloped will still fit with the project.