The Art of Directing & Creating Cinematics- Mike Hollands, Act 3 Animation Introduction Why do Cinematics Good cinematics can do two main things for a game. The first is to add to the value of the game itself. To provide a more intoxicating, immersive, involving experience for the player by deepening the world in which the player moves and embedding his actions in a wider story. The second is to provide a hook that will assist with the marketing of the game. Neither of these functions is as important as the game itself, but both can contribute significantly to the success of a game. If they don't, then they're a waste of money. Your money. Some game makers take the view that cinematics are just about providing better quality vision than the game. This is completely wrong! Mike's rule number 1 High visual quality is the LEAST important aspect of a Cinematic. Write that down. I'm going to show you why it's true. How do Cinematics differ from games? Games always involve a connected series of events in which the player creates this narrative by interaction with the game engine. The narrative created by the player is variable. Cinematics on the other hand are pieces of fixed narrative. This means that they can be constructed to have greater dramatic impact by the use of cinematic narrative techniques as well as higher visual production values if they are pre- rendered. (the LEAST important thing) When a player plays a game, they are involved. What involves them is the interactivity, the playability and interest of the game. When a viewer watches a movie its not like that. Audience involvement is more passive than in a game. The Secret This is the secret! The viewer is enthralled by being told a story! Cinematics work when they tell a story well and when that story says something appropriate about the game. The story carries the information, the quality of the storytelling captures the viewer. Storytelling and Why it is Important Human Culture You've probably heard it said that the wheel is the greatest of all inventions. Not true. Its a pretty neat invention, but nothing compared to the human race's greatest ever single invention, Human Culture. An enormous unique abstract artefact comprising Language, Story, Song, Poetry, Image Making, Dance, Music, that our species has invented to pass information on from generation to generation. Its this invention that ensures that succeeding generations don't have to re-invent that other lesser invention. Story/Song/Poetry and Hard Wiring Language is the core artefact for passing on information, with Images, Story, Song and Poetry providing high level mnemonic properties, informational redundancy and so on. This is powerful and entrancing and universal to human beings. Let me hasten to add that these are not the only functions of human culture in general or of story telling in particular. Social cohesion, self expression, entertainment are other elements that may have equal weight from and evolutionary point of view. But it's the property of stories to contain abstract or even metaphoric content that I want you to consider. Revelation Once when my son was about 2, I saw him patting the wall of our
house. The story of the Three Little Pigs is one of the ways our culture has warning our offspring about Wolves with a capital W. We don't have to explain the story, we don't have to tell them the moral. They achieve that themselves by what I might call direct revelation, without the supernatural implications of that phrase. When we absorb a story the way Tom did the Three Little Pigs, we also absorb the metaphorical implications of the stories content. This is one of the most powerful aspects of storytelling and has been known by story tellers from Jesus to Goebels. We like stories because they entertain us, but they also deliver information, messages, propaganda. So its very important to get the story right, and to tell it properly. Cinematic Storytelling Belief When you tell someone a story, in any medium they agree to go along with you. They agree to believe what you tell them. This is called the willing suspension of disbelief. Its an extraordinary thing. So extraordinary that its tempting to think that its hard wired into humans. Stories Stories are told in Cinema using dramatised action displayed as moving pictures, shots, that also contain sound and music. These are the elements of cinematic narrative and their creation and assembly is the craft of Cinema. Narrative A story is a connected narrative. Good cinematic story telling makes this narrative clear to the viewer by showing a sequence of shots in such a way that the action and events are clear to viewer. Clarity is the most important aspect of narrative. Who did what to whom? How it came about. This is an important directorial discipline. Characters Are usually essential components of a story. Making them come alive is crucial and is demanding from a script, performance and animation point of view. Dramatic Structure Stories are structured like this, introduce the audience to a situation, introduce the protagonists, the characters, build the conflict and then create a climax usually with action that resolves the conflict, then wind down the action and wrap up the loose ends. (This last bit is called the Catharsis). Longer stories might have smaller versions of this structure inside the overall dramatic structure. It's possible to create the idea of a story by using dramatic structure even when the narrative is disconnected. Think of a curve starting out pretty flat, we're easing the audience into the story, the curve gets steeper, this is the rising conflict and action, it reaches a peak, the climax where we resolve the conflict, then it curves fairly fast back down to the baseline. Now that you understand the structure watch for it, and for variations of it in the movies you like. You can learn a lot that way. Cinematic Structure Productions are broken up into scenes, scenes into shots. The shots, created by live action or animation, are sewn together using a variety of shot changing techniques, cuts, dissolves, wipes, the process is called Editing or Post Production, to create smooth flowing Cinematic Narrative. Shots Cinematic stories are told in shots! Each shot contains a bit of
story and so tells a small story in itself. One example of how a bad cut can spoil something is called a 'line cross.' That is, a cut which crosses the line of the action. It happens like this. Visualise a shot where a train enters frame left and moves across screen from left to right. Now imagine we cut to a point of view of the train from the other side of the train track (which is the line of the action). In this view the train now appears to be traveling from right to left. What we have done is create confusion in the mind of the audience. Is this a different view of the same train, or are there two trains traveling toward one another? What the hell is happening? Suddenly the audience doesn't know, and so the story telling has fails! Much of the craft of cinema is concerned with the simple idea that
the audience must understand the story. These are the mechanical problems of cinematic story telling and unless you get them right the story will not get told. The second aspect of shots is to creative and is to do with how we use the shot to reveal something to the audience. Our solution to this depends on the drama of the situation we are showing. Sometimes you want to show something as clearly and simply as possible, violent action for example often needs to be shown in this way. Sometimes you may want to use the camera to reveal something about the environment, so you may use a camera move to do this. Sometimes you may wish to enhance the drama of the situation so you use an extreme camera angle that that forces the audience to look at thing in an unusual or striking way. Framing shots and the use of moving camera are the way in which a director forges a unique style. For example the great mid 20th century John Huston said that he moved his camera as little as possible, and then only when he wanted to show the audience something about the situation they couldn't see with a static shot. This suited Huston's very dialogue based work. It can look a little stodgy when the performances are less than great. Brian De Palma by contrast moves his cameras with wonderful skill and involves his audience far more in the environment of his movies than a director like Huston does. Cuts Dissolves, fades and wipes are all techniques for changing from one shot to another. They work in certain ways and differ from one another in their narrative effect. Cuts feel like they join together different views of unbroken sequential pieces of action, wipes create transitions between shots taking place at different locations or at different times and dissolves usually indicate a lapse of time. Fades are a bit like dissolves except they indicate pieces of disconnected action. Performance/Character Animation Its important that characters come alive. This is partly a matter of animation technique but also of direction. Characters succeed or fail on how well they are animated. The animator here is the physical actor, marrying his performance to the voice. Disney animators developed the techniques which make an animated character look alive. Anticipation is the most important of these. This is the name given to the way that the eyes and the head of a character must lead or anticipate its actions. It creates the sense that a character is not an automaton, but is driving its body from the brain that resides behind its eyes. Squash and Stretch describes the way limbs of a character should elongate or compress along lines of action in a way that suggests a volitional biological structure built of muscles and ligaments. Bounce is the effect of applying slightly fluid secondary motions to a character that tells us we are watching an organism not a mechanism constructed of rigid parts. Performance Those are the basics of character animation. On top of these must go the finer details that create the performance of the character. These things can be mapped out and put into a bible, firstly by the director, but then added to by animators working on the character. Always keep in mind that the character animator IS the actor! Cinematography This is the framing of shots, how interesting and dramatic they are and how well the lighting creates the mood required by the nature of the action, how the camera moves. It is sensible to have animators who specialize in doing this, even if the director works things out in advance. Look How convincing the animation is is more important than how impressive the modelling and texturing, special effects and rendering are. All these things do contribute to the overall enjoyablity though. Music & Audio effects are very important to any movie and game
cinematics are no exception. You can indicate a great deal with
sound, especially about things you can't see. Examples Grand Theft Auto/Vicecity So, the first thing we see are all those tell tale fades to black
between shots that tell the viewer straight away that there's no
story. That they're watching a discontinuous narrative. Immediately
you begin losing their attention. Its not interesting or involving
and it won't sell any games. The production values are pretty uninspiring
too, good old lens flares, but you could have forgiven that if a
story were Warcraft III Trailer This has much higher production values and is altogether a better
piece. We still have an discontinuous story, those fades to black
again, but its structured properly with introduction, rising action
and climax, so it feels like we're getting story even though we're
not. Too many graphics and too much exposition by voice over. Exposition
is when you tell somebody what's going on instead of showing them.
Its bad writing. It's a trailer though, and there's a tradition
of voice over with trailers as well as picking the eyes out of the
action without giving away the story. Also to be fair its probably
built out of in-game cinematics. Warcraft 3 Ingame This is an in game piece from Warcraft 3 and it's a good example
of how good something like this can be. The story is properly structured
within itself. It cuts well, the shots are powerful, the animation
great, the rendering excellent, How to make Cinematics The Brief Start by writing a brief, not only so the creative team have something to go on, but so you have a yardstick to measure what they give back to you. Function Think about the job the cinematic has to do. Here are some possible examples. To play on a monitor in a store to interest a potential buyer. To set up a framing story for a player at the start of a game. To create embellishing 'reward' sequences when players achieve things during a game. To create transitions between levels. Of course you may want the piece to have more than one function. If so, prioritise them. Spend most of your money on what is most important. Content Content will come mostly from the game itself. The writer will need a full briefing on the nature of the game, what its unique features are and so on. The writer will also be creating unique content so if there are proscribed features, violence say, the writer needs to know. Hats There are a number of sets of responsibilities in movies production that you should consider for your own productions. Just because your production may be smaller than a movie doesn't mean these responsibilities go away. Think of these sets of responsibilities as hats. They carry the following titles. Producer The producer is responsible for everything. Everyone reports to him. He evaluates everyone's contribution, he hires and fires, he is responsible for budget. Writer Get a Writer. I've been talking about 'the writer' because you
need one. Its very important that you have someone who understands
dramatic structure write your story for you. Its also more efficient
to have a third party walk in and do this. Director The director is responsible for actually telling the story, for the performances, for the action, for the drama, for the shots. Its possible for one person to wear all these hats. I've frequently done so myself. But it is important to make sure that all these responsibilities are carried by someone. Storyboarding Storyboarding is crucial to efficient production because it makes the animators work easier. Director and producer should both oversee storyboarding because this is where the primary decisions about how to tell the story with shots are made. Most of the direction in an animated production takes place during this process. Don't just give an illustrator a script and tell him to come back with a storyboard. You might get nice shots, but you won't necessarily get the creative component of visual story telling that you want. Budget Budget is of great importance in cinematic production as it is in every other part of the games industry, or the entertainment industry in general for that matter. You don't want to spend more than you have to accomplish your goal, you also don't want to spend so little that you can't achieve your goal. Writers have no idea about budget. They need to be given parameters. Here are some to think about.
The Film and TV Model You will have noticed that I am continually using terms from Film & TV production to describe roles and activities. This is pretty understandable I think, given the similarity of the beast under discussion. It is worth stopping to consider this model in more detail. The creation of cinematics requires high skill levels, as do other aspects of game production. However cinematic production is a smaller part of game production than the production of the game itself, and cinematic production occurs over a shorter period. The expertise required to produce a cinematic becomes cheaper if it is spread over lots of productions, but more expensive if it is kept in-house and restricted in production. The model used by the Film industry works by spreading expertise over a number of productions. The way it works is that the Film Industry as a whole supports a bunch of expert service suppliers. Directors, D.O.P.'s, Gaffers, Make Up Artists, Musical Directors, Sound Engineers, Film Crews and so on. A Director of Photography might work on two films a year for example, but for different production companies. This means that a single production doesn't have to provide him with a years income, which it would do if he worked in-house for one or other of the production companies. This in turn means that the industry as a whole supports fewer crew, because none of them are being paid for idle or unproductive time. The industry therefore runs much more cost efficiently than it would if all the production companies ran expert services like this in house. It also means that when you can afford it, you can have the best. |