A Collection of Interviews of Interviewers

Photo by Matthew Wegner. Title treatment shamefully ripped from The Social Network :)While on our latest trip to GDC and PAX, we were lucky enough to do some chattin' about the film with pretty cool folks.  If you're looking to watch some filmmakers squirm in front of the camera (not our natural habitat), read on!

First up, while on the GDC floor catching up with Tommy, we ran into Mr. Anthony Carboni and his Bytejacker crew.  I think we pop up at the half way point.

Next up, we were invited to the Manitoba booth, to talk with Alec Holowka in front of the indie arcade force that is the Winnitron.  Kert Gartner was there filming the proceedings.

And finally, while following Phil at PAXEast, we were hit up by the nice guys at G4TV's XPLAY.

Game Trailers - E3 2011

Thanks so much to everyone for being interested in the project and for taking the time to talk to us!

Note: Photo by the talented Matthew Wegner

Another Trip Completed!

We are back from another filming spurt on the road!  The past 16 days were spent at GDC in San Francisco and then we high tailed it over to Boston for PAX East.  Shooting went really really well and the film is markedly better for us making the trip.

SAN FRANCISCO:  GDC was spent gathering some more general interviews with some knowledgeable industry folks.  This material is important to help set some context for the audience, and help them understand how independent games fit into the industry at large.  Because, as much as we would like to assume that people know what indie games are, that simply won’t be the case for a good portion of our audience.  Our solution to this will be a bit of an indie-primer mixed into the opening credits of the film.  Short, sweet, but effective...we hope :)

But beyond filming, GDC was super productive for IGTM - we met a lot of great people.  Got some wonderful feedback and made some connections that we hope will help the film reach its full potential come release time.

BOSTON:  Following GDC, we hopped a plane and travelled to the other coast to attend PAX East to film Mr. Phil Fish presenting the first playable demo of FEZ since it made its debut at the IGF awards 3 years ago.  

From all angles, this is a pretty big deal.  Firstly, the game looks great and is lining up to be a big title in 2011 (yes, 2011, get your XBOX Pts ready).  But more importantly, Phil and Renaud have been toiling on this game, in a near-vaccum, for four years.  Imagine that, working on something for four years, without much feedback, much validation, without much of anything really....except maybe pressure...there’s a lot of that with FEZ.

It was pretty exciting to watch someone’s baby be put out to the world.  This is our second time in the delivery room (we followed Super Meat Boy’s release days as well), and we’re confident that people will be genuinely surprised at what goes on with a developer in these moments.

We would like to thank Phil, Renaud and the Trapdoor gang for being so generous with their time, opinions, emotion and booth space.  Constant cameras and questions can be a drag at times, and everyone was nothing but open and accommodating ... even when they maybe would rather not be :)

Sooo ... FEZ?  What’s the deal?

From a indiegame spectator standpoint, these are probably the FEZ PAX takeaways you need to know:  FEZ is coming and yes, it is good. But of course, we have a relatively skewed opinion.  Luckily though, the booth was super active and these fine people had a chance to play the game and post their thoughts.

Penny Arcade

Destructoid

Joystiq

The Escapist

1up

Original Launch IGTM Preview / Proof-of-concept Segment

Back in May 2010, this is the first public piece of IGTM put out there.  It served as a proof of concept & indication of film's spirit/tone.  It was quite well received and was the main reason for the film's initial kickstarter success.

Progress

It’s Coming Together

Well, we’ve gone through all footage and have been cutting for the past 2 months.  With the exception of pesky things like Christmas and the odd bout of the Flu, it’s been pretty much non-stop editing over here.

The process has certainly been interesting. Going into filming we had a pretty clear base idea of what we wanted to accomplish with the film.  Our basic approach was to create a film that was at its core, a discussion of games and how they relate to their creators - basically something that was a collection of assorted self-contained stories & vignettes.  However, always in the back of our mind was the idea, and hope, that we could create more of a narrative arc throughout the film.  Something that urged you to keep on watching the movie from beginning to end.

Naturally, we thought, ‘wouldn’t it be great to follow a game during its development?’  However, given the inherent challenges with doing this (i.e. games take a looonnngg time to develop, and the on-camera action of making a game is somewhat unremarkable from a cinematic point of view), we didn’t think this was a strategy we could soundly rely on.  

We figured:  Let’s shoot for the discrete-segment driven doc and if the narrative pieces fall into place, then we’ll pursue that.  If not, then we keep on with the segmented strategy. 

We Got Story & Everything!

Well luckily for us, a few things unfolded during shooting to allow us to create more of that narrative we were hoping for.  We’re not going to tell you the details here - that would ruin it :)  But we are happy to say that the film is shaping into a richer narrative experience than we initially thought it would be.

That’s not to say the original vision of IGTM has changed at all.  It hasn’t.  

We just now have some story arcs that prompt one to keep on watching this doc.  One thing that we feared early on was created something that was a collection of disparate ideas.  A film in which the viewer could watch 5 minutes at the beginning, 5 minutes at the end and not sense that they’re missing anything in between.

The doc has more of a journey now.  And that’s a good thing. 

‘Good for you, but when’s it coming out?’

We’ve done an extremely rough edit of about 80% of the film.  Enough to allow us to chart of the film on the big wall below.  Each card on the top row represents a scene or movement within the film.  The bottom row is simply various notes and general 'scene intentions'  (shoddy timelapse intentionally blown out to keep it all spoiler free).

We still have some filming to do (20% or so).  But the heavy, monotonous lifting is done and we are on track for a September (ish) 2011 release.  What remains are some focused shoots, a huge collection of graphic creation and the just some good ol’ fashion creative editing.

A couple of realizations: 

1. The film is shaping up to be a tad longer (10-15 mins) than our original target of 80 mins.  We're still going to fight to keep it as lean as possible though.
2. The Special Edition is going to have some kick ass content that kills us to leave out of the film.
3. The way the script has continually changed on us throughout this process, everything we said above, could be rendered obsolete tomorrow...but hopefully not :)

Soooo, that's what we're doing. 

Take Care,

James + Lisanne

p.s. Once we get the editing humming along at a nice pace.  You can likely expect beefier updates with some new content.  All video-creation energies are directed into the film these days, but this is not the end of our online content. 

Want to see IGTM in your town?

We are hard at work on getting the initial rough cut of IGTM, but it's time to start thinking about where we're going to show this thing.  We have a lot of great ideas about the film's eventual screening/distribution, and we can't wait for the film's debut this Fall!

Once the film is done and ready to show, we are of course going to have the film available for viewing in the form of DVDs, Digital Download and the like.  But, we do want something a little more special as well.

We would love to tour the film in theatrical venues and hold community screening EVENTS.  We want to do it up right - A theatre, post-screening Q & A (with us and hopefully people appearing in the film), community get togethers and some unique screening bonuses that you can only get live (we're working on some things :)

If game jams have taught us anything, it's that communities are strengthened and some wonderful things can happen simply by getting like-minded people in an actual room together.  We're hoping that an IGTM screening can help to that end.

So with that in mind (community-building & kick-ass screenings), we are starting to put feelers out to people and associations that would like to see (or host) an IGTM screening in their town, city, community.  Got a good screening idea?  We'd love to hear from you!