28.09.2008 15:34
[Sonstiges]
The RISEN-Trailer - Making of, Part 1
A little Making Of...
The trailers for games on which you work yourself always cause a lot of talk in the studios. This is inevitable.
Usually, you meet heavy resistance right on from planning phase: On the one hand, the trailer is supposed to “rock”, be cool and correctly represent the game. On the other hand, almost no one has enough spare time besides his or her other duties in the studio to work on the trailer for a longer period of time.
Game studios are no film studios after all.
And usually the developers are involved only with making the concept of the trailer, provide the in-game assets – and then the job is given to an external animation studio.
RISEN is no exception here.
We needed two tries to finish the trailer for the GC and only the second attempt lead to the result you can now see on http://risen.deepsilver.com/.
The first attempt to create a storyboard failed because I (Ralf) got very ill unexpectedly (it would have been my job to coordinate and plan the trailer production). Although Mike Hoge threw himself into the gap I left behind death-defying, he ended up having too much work to do in too little time.
Because even our day has only 24 hours, he assigned concept and realisation of this part of the production to our producer Michael Paeck.
Michael Paeck is very important for the project because even if he is operating more in the background, he is the one responsible for monitoring and milestones, for coordinating the cooperation between DS and PB and the test play phases.
To give you an impression on his work as well on the one of the director Ettore Pizzetti, I asked him a few questions.
1) Michael, you are co-writer of the story. What was your personal highlight in the trailer creation and how did you divide the work between the different people?
The work started in April this year. At that time Ettore Pizzetti – the incredible director of the trailer – and I were thinking what the goal of the trailer should be.
We came to the result that we should concentrate primarily on the story and not on the features. We wanted to make people watching the trailer long for more. And we wanted some open questions from the trailer left unanswered to provoke discussions in the forum.
After that design goal was set, we from the story department of Piranha Bytes started to assemble the pieces that were interesting and important enough to be included in that one short minute we had as time allowance. Well, that are the scenes you can currently see in the trailer. We agreed upon a certain structure for the trailer: First, there was supposed to be some action and frightening events to gain the viewers attention (flight over the ocean and the monster in the woods). Then, we wanted to show you that the story of the game will be profound and deep and not some fantasy trash (curfew on the island, Inquisition oppresses the people). And finally we intended to show you that there will be some action and the player will be a part of that (arrow in the woods, traps in the dungeon, etc.). This layed down the course of events for the trailer and we started working.
Ettore created the so-called “director's script”. That's a screenplay that not only includes the dialogues but also all instructions for the camera. His experience influenced that a lot. How could we present a certain point in the story in the most effective and most interesting way? Where must the camera be? How to cut the scene? All these questions were answered by that script.
download textfile: script version
This script went around – Deep Silver and Piranha Bytes both gave valuable tips where things were fine for them and where we needed a little improvement. In the 13th version, we had the final script and transformed it into a series of pictures. The illustrations were done by a company in Vienna called “Lemonaut Creations”. They not only created a coloured storyboard under Ettore's guidance but also put so much love for detail into the pictures that you could almost make a graphic novel from them. With this coloured storyboard we went looking for a graphics studio that could realise this vision. Our choice fell on “Virgin Lands”.
to storyboard gallery
To come back to the question: The first phase in which we made a coloured storyboard from an abstract idea was the part that was the most fun for me.
The trailers for games on which you work yourself always cause a lot of talk in the studios. This is inevitable.
Usually, you meet heavy resistance right on from planning phase: On the one hand, the trailer is supposed to “rock”, be cool and correctly represent the game. On the other hand, almost no one has enough spare time besides his or her other duties in the studio to work on the trailer for a longer period of time.
Game studios are no film studios after all.
And usually the developers are involved only with making the concept of the trailer, provide the in-game assets – and then the job is given to an external animation studio.
RISEN is no exception here.
We needed two tries to finish the trailer for the GC and only the second attempt lead to the result you can now see on http://risen.deepsilver.com/.
The first attempt to create a storyboard failed because I (Ralf) got very ill unexpectedly (it would have been my job to coordinate and plan the trailer production). Although Mike Hoge threw himself into the gap I left behind death-defying, he ended up having too much work to do in too little time.
Because even our day has only 24 hours, he assigned concept and realisation of this part of the production to our producer Michael Paeck.
Michael Paeck is very important for the project because even if he is operating more in the background, he is the one responsible for monitoring and milestones, for coordinating the cooperation between DS and PB and the test play phases.
To give you an impression on his work as well on the one of the director Ettore Pizzetti, I asked him a few questions.
1) Michael, you are co-writer of the story. What was your personal highlight in the trailer creation and how did you divide the work between the different people?
The work started in April this year. At that time Ettore Pizzetti – the incredible director of the trailer – and I were thinking what the goal of the trailer should be.
We came to the result that we should concentrate primarily on the story and not on the features. We wanted to make people watching the trailer long for more. And we wanted some open questions from the trailer left unanswered to provoke discussions in the forum.
After that design goal was set, we from the story department of Piranha Bytes started to assemble the pieces that were interesting and important enough to be included in that one short minute we had as time allowance. Well, that are the scenes you can currently see in the trailer. We agreed upon a certain structure for the trailer: First, there was supposed to be some action and frightening events to gain the viewers attention (flight over the ocean and the monster in the woods). Then, we wanted to show you that the story of the game will be profound and deep and not some fantasy trash (curfew on the island, Inquisition oppresses the people). And finally we intended to show you that there will be some action and the player will be a part of that (arrow in the woods, traps in the dungeon, etc.). This layed down the course of events for the trailer and we started working.
Ettore created the so-called “director's script”. That's a screenplay that not only includes the dialogues but also all instructions for the camera. His experience influenced that a lot. How could we present a certain point in the story in the most effective and most interesting way? Where must the camera be? How to cut the scene? All these questions were answered by that script.
download textfile: script version
This script went around – Deep Silver and Piranha Bytes both gave valuable tips where things were fine for them and where we needed a little improvement. In the 13th version, we had the final script and transformed it into a series of pictures. The illustrations were done by a company in Vienna called “Lemonaut Creations”. They not only created a coloured storyboard under Ettore's guidance but also put so much love for detail into the pictures that you could almost make a graphic novel from them. With this coloured storyboard we went looking for a graphics studio that could realise this vision. Our choice fell on “Virgin Lands”.
to storyboard gallery
To come back to the question: The first phase in which we made a coloured storyboard from an abstract idea was the part that was the most fun for me.
