New Twisted Metal has Live-Action cut scenes! Jaffe Interview
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This dude David Jaffe is the coldest ever. Check out this interview he did talking about live-action scenes in the upcoming Twisted Metal - coming out in 2011. This joint is gonna be sick!
The creator of ? of War and Twisted Metal says he hasn’t “? the Kool-Aid” when it comes to the idea that video games can be made into playable movies. But that hasn’t stopped him from being a major film freak.
By Craigh Barboza
July 13, 2010
DAVID JAFFE IS on a soundstage in San Diego filming live-action scenes for Twisted Metal. The update (don’t call it a reboot) of his popular 1994 vehicle-combat game doesn’t ship until 2011, but they’re a long way from finished. Today’s footage will eventually make it into the game’s cutscenes, the sequences in which players sit back and watch as the plot advances. Other than a short trailer shown last month at the video game expo E3, this is the first time players will catch a glimpse of Twisted Metal’s main characters in human form, and Jaffe is stoked about it. “It’s like Halloween here,” he says. “You’ve got a huge bodybuilder walking around dressed as Sweet Tooth, and Mr. Grimm in his twisted clown mask. The prop table’s covered with all kinds of disturbing stuff. It’s really sweet.” He laughs.
For the past few years, Jaffe, 36, has been the video game-equivalent of a rock star, spawning imitators and drawing crowds at Comic-Con. His games brim with spectacular action. In addition to the Twisted Metal series, he’s also the creator of that gloriously ? 2005 mythological adventure ? of War, widely considered one of the greatest games ever made as well as a damn entertaining story in the Hollywood tradition. In 2007, Jaffe formed an independent studio, Eat Sleep Play, where he works with a handpicked team of designers on the next generation of interactive games.
Born in Birmingham, Alabama, Jaffe attended U.S.C., where he wanted to major in film but was turned down by their prestigious School of Cinematic Arts. After “selling a few reality shows before reality shows were big,” he fell into video games, where he worked in test and design on titles like Mickey Mania. The idea for Twisted Metal hit while he was stuck in LAX traffic. “Like a lot of people you don’t actually want to do it,” he says, “but you have these fantasies, like, ‘Oh wouldn’t it be great to have a rocket-launcher on my car and blow up the car in front of me so I can just get home?’ You have visions of what that fantasy’s going to be. But at the time there’s only so much you can do with the technology.”
Jaffe, renowned for making incendiary comments, has a mind as sharp as an Intel processor, and was candid and insightful when we caught up with him during a break on the set.
Shooting live-action cutscenes for video games is rare, isn’t it?
It didn’t used to be. Back in the ’90s, it was the order of the day. Everybody was doing these cheesy full-motion movie cutscenes. They didn’t go down too well with players and then production teams became masterful at doing CG so it switched. There was a lot of hybrid storytelling, what game developers call “motion comics.”
Looking at films like 300 and Watchmen, in terms of the great compositing effects that have come along and Sony’s ability to do that really well, I wanted to go back to that era of storytelling and try to do it not cheesy. This is something we felt would surprise players. If you’re a fan of the series and you followed Twisted Metal, it’s a real thrill to see characters like Sweet Tooth in the flesh, with his head actually on fire, wearing the creepy mask and walking around with his disturbing machete — as opposed to seeing him made of polygons.
So you’re shooting against a green screen with the actors and some physical objects in front of it?
Yeah, and we’re taking some 2D and 3D imagery and superimposing it into the background. Most effects films these days use a large amount of green screen, and that’s what we’re doing. The technology has gotten to the point where there’s this otherworldly dreamlike quality that comes when you do a heavy compositing job and I think for the Twisted Metal stories, which are very inspired by Creep Show and Twilight Zone and DC Comics, that dreamlike quality really plays to the vibe of the series.
What are your thoughts on the trend in video games to create a more genuinely cinematic experience? Titles like Red Dead Redemption, Heavy Rain and the Unchartered series play like live-action movies.
There’s certainly a place for it. I like playing games like that. But ultimately games are not movies.
I worry sometimes that game developers have walked away from the things that have made video games so strong as a medium. In terms of exploration and creativity on the part of the player. Camaraderie. Teamwork. Competition. They’ve kind of abandoned some of those core things that make games great in order to sort of go off and try to become moviemakers. That would be fine if the vast majority of video games attempting the cinematic experience were able to get really close and even bypass movies and television.
Clearly, you’d be a fool to look at Unchartered 2 and say it’s not an amazing game. It is. Same thing with Heavy Rain. Same thing with Alan Wake. But I’m just not a drinker of Kool-Aid when it comes to the saying that games should be movies and that the next step is to turn them into playable films.
Video game-based movies haven’t turned out to be the bonanza Hollywood thought they’d be. Films like Super Mario Bros. heard the death Pegasus sound at the box office. The Halo feature never quite got off the ground. The conventional wisdom is games get lost in translation. It’s the old participatory versus passivity argument. Is it a little more complicated than that?
No, it’s more simple. So many hit games owe their conceptual existence to movies in the first place so when you’re adapting them for the screen what you’re saying is you want to make this film based on a game that was initially based on film. If you look at ? of War, thematically that game exists because of Raiders of the Lost Ark. It exists because of the original Clash of the Titans movie. It exists because of all the high-adventure films I grew up with.
Metal Gear Solid, is another great example. It’s one of my favorite games of all time, but I’ve always said if you were to take the story of Metal Gear Solid and make it a straight movie, it’s kind of a direct-to-video scenario. That’s not to knock it, because I don’t think there’s a better video game series ever made. But movies are all about story and character and if you strip away the fact that it’s from a video game, if you take your marketing hat off and you say, ‘Okay, forget the fact that X-million people love this brand and the video game. That goes away. And you strip away the fact that the genre and the setting are basically inspired by a film, and that goes away. What are you left with? Are you left with a genuinely compelling story?
Prince of Persia is probably one of my favorite films of the summer, but it didn’t seem to catch fire with anyone. If I were to sit and think, what games would make the best movies? [long pause] What really has enough meat on the bone in terms of its world? Let me think…. It’s a tough question.
Hollywood obviously hasn’t figured it out. A movie starts with a blueprint: the script. Where do you begin as a game designer?
Well, you can either start with mechanics or with theme. The best designers start with mechanics. I’m not one of the best designers. So if you’re talking to someone like a Sid Meier or a Warren Spector, they’d probably tell you they start with, ‘Okay, let me imagine what I want to do in this interactive space.’ That’s probably the smartest way to start. I start with, ‘What is the fantasy I want to give the player?
All my fantasies tend to be kind of locked-in at 14-year-old, junior high-level. A lot of people mock me about that, but I really like that. I like that I still have a nice relationship with that part of me.
So for me ? of War was all about, I want to go on an epic quest. I want feel like I am the hero of this amazing, rock-n-roll, heavy metal, sexual, ultra-violent adventure that I used to daydream about as a kid. So I start with more of the theme and then I say, ‘Okay, what sort of things would I have the player do in that space to fulfill that fantasy?
Kratos, the hero in ? of War, has been called one of the most compelling video game characters of the last decade. How did you come up with him?
.....READ THE REST OF THE INTERVIEW AT http://www.mydvdinsider.com/category/conversations/
The creator of ? of War and Twisted Metal says he hasn’t “? the Kool-Aid” when it comes to the idea that video games can be made into playable movies. But that hasn’t stopped him from being a major film freak.
By Craigh Barboza
July 13, 2010
DAVID JAFFE IS on a soundstage in San Diego filming live-action scenes for Twisted Metal. The update (don’t call it a reboot) of his popular 1994 vehicle-combat game doesn’t ship until 2011, but they’re a long way from finished. Today’s footage will eventually make it into the game’s cutscenes, the sequences in which players sit back and watch as the plot advances. Other than a short trailer shown last month at the video game expo E3, this is the first time players will catch a glimpse of Twisted Metal’s main characters in human form, and Jaffe is stoked about it. “It’s like Halloween here,” he says. “You’ve got a huge bodybuilder walking around dressed as Sweet Tooth, and Mr. Grimm in his twisted clown mask. The prop table’s covered with all kinds of disturbing stuff. It’s really sweet.” He laughs.
For the past few years, Jaffe, 36, has been the video game-equivalent of a rock star, spawning imitators and drawing crowds at Comic-Con. His games brim with spectacular action. In addition to the Twisted Metal series, he’s also the creator of that gloriously ? 2005 mythological adventure ? of War, widely considered one of the greatest games ever made as well as a damn entertaining story in the Hollywood tradition. In 2007, Jaffe formed an independent studio, Eat Sleep Play, where he works with a handpicked team of designers on the next generation of interactive games.
Born in Birmingham, Alabama, Jaffe attended U.S.C., where he wanted to major in film but was turned down by their prestigious School of Cinematic Arts. After “selling a few reality shows before reality shows were big,” he fell into video games, where he worked in test and design on titles like Mickey Mania. The idea for Twisted Metal hit while he was stuck in LAX traffic. “Like a lot of people you don’t actually want to do it,” he says, “but you have these fantasies, like, ‘Oh wouldn’t it be great to have a rocket-launcher on my car and blow up the car in front of me so I can just get home?’ You have visions of what that fantasy’s going to be. But at the time there’s only so much you can do with the technology.”
Jaffe, renowned for making incendiary comments, has a mind as sharp as an Intel processor, and was candid and insightful when we caught up with him during a break on the set.
Shooting live-action cutscenes for video games is rare, isn’t it?
It didn’t used to be. Back in the ’90s, it was the order of the day. Everybody was doing these cheesy full-motion movie cutscenes. They didn’t go down too well with players and then production teams became masterful at doing CG so it switched. There was a lot of hybrid storytelling, what game developers call “motion comics.”
Looking at films like 300 and Watchmen, in terms of the great compositing effects that have come along and Sony’s ability to do that really well, I wanted to go back to that era of storytelling and try to do it not cheesy. This is something we felt would surprise players. If you’re a fan of the series and you followed Twisted Metal, it’s a real thrill to see characters like Sweet Tooth in the flesh, with his head actually on fire, wearing the creepy mask and walking around with his disturbing machete — as opposed to seeing him made of polygons.
So you’re shooting against a green screen with the actors and some physical objects in front of it?
Yeah, and we’re taking some 2D and 3D imagery and superimposing it into the background. Most effects films these days use a large amount of green screen, and that’s what we’re doing. The technology has gotten to the point where there’s this otherworldly dreamlike quality that comes when you do a heavy compositing job and I think for the Twisted Metal stories, which are very inspired by Creep Show and Twilight Zone and DC Comics, that dreamlike quality really plays to the vibe of the series.
What are your thoughts on the trend in video games to create a more genuinely cinematic experience? Titles like Red Dead Redemption, Heavy Rain and the Unchartered series play like live-action movies.
There’s certainly a place for it. I like playing games like that. But ultimately games are not movies.
I worry sometimes that game developers have walked away from the things that have made video games so strong as a medium. In terms of exploration and creativity on the part of the player. Camaraderie. Teamwork. Competition. They’ve kind of abandoned some of those core things that make games great in order to sort of go off and try to become moviemakers. That would be fine if the vast majority of video games attempting the cinematic experience were able to get really close and even bypass movies and television.
Clearly, you’d be a fool to look at Unchartered 2 and say it’s not an amazing game. It is. Same thing with Heavy Rain. Same thing with Alan Wake. But I’m just not a drinker of Kool-Aid when it comes to the saying that games should be movies and that the next step is to turn them into playable films.
Video game-based movies haven’t turned out to be the bonanza Hollywood thought they’d be. Films like Super Mario Bros. heard the death Pegasus sound at the box office. The Halo feature never quite got off the ground. The conventional wisdom is games get lost in translation. It’s the old participatory versus passivity argument. Is it a little more complicated than that?
No, it’s more simple. So many hit games owe their conceptual existence to movies in the first place so when you’re adapting them for the screen what you’re saying is you want to make this film based on a game that was initially based on film. If you look at ? of War, thematically that game exists because of Raiders of the Lost Ark. It exists because of the original Clash of the Titans movie. It exists because of all the high-adventure films I grew up with.
Metal Gear Solid, is another great example. It’s one of my favorite games of all time, but I’ve always said if you were to take the story of Metal Gear Solid and make it a straight movie, it’s kind of a direct-to-video scenario. That’s not to knock it, because I don’t think there’s a better video game series ever made. But movies are all about story and character and if you strip away the fact that it’s from a video game, if you take your marketing hat off and you say, ‘Okay, forget the fact that X-million people love this brand and the video game. That goes away. And you strip away the fact that the genre and the setting are basically inspired by a film, and that goes away. What are you left with? Are you left with a genuinely compelling story?
Prince of Persia is probably one of my favorite films of the summer, but it didn’t seem to catch fire with anyone. If I were to sit and think, what games would make the best movies? [long pause] What really has enough meat on the bone in terms of its world? Let me think…. It’s a tough question.
Hollywood obviously hasn’t figured it out. A movie starts with a blueprint: the script. Where do you begin as a game designer?
Well, you can either start with mechanics or with theme. The best designers start with mechanics. I’m not one of the best designers. So if you’re talking to someone like a Sid Meier or a Warren Spector, they’d probably tell you they start with, ‘Okay, let me imagine what I want to do in this interactive space.’ That’s probably the smartest way to start. I start with, ‘What is the fantasy I want to give the player?
All my fantasies tend to be kind of locked-in at 14-year-old, junior high-level. A lot of people mock me about that, but I really like that. I like that I still have a nice relationship with that part of me.
So for me ? of War was all about, I want to go on an epic quest. I want feel like I am the hero of this amazing, rock-n-roll, heavy metal, sexual, ultra-violent adventure that I used to daydream about as a kid. So I start with more of the theme and then I say, ‘Okay, what sort of things would I have the player do in that space to fulfill that fantasy?
Kratos, the hero in ? of War, has been called one of the most compelling video game characters of the last decade. How did you come up with him?
.....READ THE REST OF THE INTERVIEW AT http://www.mydvdinsider.com/category/conversations/
Comments
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dope........
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More developers/producers should be like Jaffe. He's creative and wants his ? to be different.
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biggyboy_karl wrote: »Remember them cheesy scenes on Road Rash?
Classic.
lol hell yeah
