Monday, October 13th, 2008...1:15 pm - Gary Hayes
Top Movies Made from Video Games
I posted an item on my top 10 blog personalizemedia a week or so ago entitled “Cinematic Game Renaissance – Game Now Leading Film?” – partly to be a little provocative but also to point out in text and video of the current ‘adaptation’ tipping point – there are hundreds of feature length movies being based on video game storyworlds.
I suppose my main point was that if culture is based largely around the stories we tell each other and movies reflect that – if those stories are more and more about video games then they are now a predominant part of our culture. BTW – Ben Goldsmith (AFTRS Screen Studies lecturer) gave his response to my post in his item “Cinema, games, We can work it out” and focused on games and films will coexist and it is not a war. Agreed.
Back to the point of this post though – there must be something in the air as quite a few other sites are now picking up on this phenomenom ‘films based on games’ – here is Scorecard’s review of the top 7 movies based on games so far and Morrow the writer gives rhyme and reason for each one in the post, but cutting straight to no.1…
1. Silent Hill
Recap: A woman (Radha Mitchell) and her adopted daughter (Jodelle Ferland) return to the daughter’s birthplace to pinpoint the origins of her night terrors. They are both engulfed by the dark, hellish in-between world of Silent Hill. Silent Hill games by Konami.
Reason: Ah, Silent Hill. A rose by any other name wouldn’t lurch out of the fog and rip your face off: the bloody, gory, carefree mayhem that is Silent Hill. The movie recreates Silent Hill, utilizes the music from the actual game, and we get to spend time with all our favorite psycho mutant baddies: Pyramid Head, the nurses, the disfigured mannequins … it really brings a tear to the eye. In the movie, when Pyramid Head skins the ranting zealot, all the gamers jumped for joy, because this, this is Silent Hill (it’s also a solemn reminder why it’s best to be nice to gamers—we’re a scary bunch).
Also Variety posted a brief item called ‘Almost Every Game could be a movie” looking at BioShock and Mass Effect as a new genre almost, game-to-film adaptation. For reference btw, a great site with lots of info and the latest films based on game adaptations is IGN Movies, games-to-films section.
Finally to reverse things a little, slide 75 (yes I know!) of this presentation I did called ‘Turning Stories into Games’ has a lst of the top Movies of Games money earners (for those who want a little quantification!)
and finally, finally just to finish up with another top ’something’ – here’s a little taster of games adopting that tried and tested linear form – games with best cinematics from gamerpro
4 Comments
October 13th, 2008 at 4:36 pm
Hi Gary, A couple of clarifications: I\’m not, never have been and probably unlikely ever to be a screenwriting lecturer. Oh how quickly we forget, and are forgotten. I taught Screen Studies (slightly different from screenwriting) for four years. Second point, I\’m glad you agree there is no war between cinema and games. Could you perhaps give up the battle of cultural relevance too? To be honest, it\’s a bit irrelevant really. Cheers, Ben.
October 13th, 2008 at 5:54 pm
Hi Ben, Oops sorry about the screen studies/writing thing – written quickly, now changed. As for cultural relevance I absolutely think it is relevant. Over the past 20 years I have heard endless arguments saying the reason games don’t get subsidy or funding from government is that they do not represent the culture of the nation, so films get the lions share. To be honest I really find not giving significant funding/offset/subsidy to social media (web 2.0) projects too rather odd given that most of the ‘conversation’ of the nation is now via web forum applications – many themed on local issues. Still, games becoming more culturally in synch with national identity is at the core of what I am saying – countries swamped with films from the US at least get some individuality back in interactive forms as they can ‘play’ and converse with their compatriots. It is another question whether national identity has a place on the connected earth – but that’s for another day…
October 14th, 2008 at 1:43 am
Video game engines now also assist the film maker in pre-visualization so the crossover goes on. Check out this website with a whole bunch of examples – handy resource actually. http://digitalproducer.digitalmedianet.com/articles/viewarticle.jsp?id=519527-0
Also on the topic of game cinematics, there is a little known studio in Melbourne producing siziling game cinematics for international release games and feature films. They completed Jumper last year and most recently Space Chimps. http://www.zerooneanimation.com
October 14th, 2008 at 2:50 am
Thanks Dave, the new AFTRS Animation, Games and Virtual Worlds courses (along with Production Design) will all be looking at the previz pipeline at various points in the cycle – and as you know this is a long continuum from basic 2D storyboard through to almost film ready CG animation/mattes. The article you link to has some of the tools (it misses a few) – here are the ones we are looking at (including boarding tools): Maya, StoryboardPro, Motion Builder, SketchUp, Boardomatic, Vue 5, Sketchbook Pro, HalfLife, FrameForge, NeverWinterNights, VirtualStage, XSI, Unity, Painter, Virtix Zoom, Poser, Still Life, Antics 5, Still Motion, MovieStorm, Movies, MovingPicture, iClone, Second Life, Flash, Director, Sims, World of Warcraft – to name but a few
The Melbourne company looks interesting – and yes the convergence is interesting as the full previz for Jumper film was done by LA based Monty Granito using SoftImage XSI I believe – so whether previz or game cinematic (basically the same tools nowadays)
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