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Underground Film Festival Status - Dream Nine Studios Site Updated
Thursday, March 11, 2010 - 4:00 PM - Tampa Indie Film Log for Filmmaker C. A. Passinault
All The Time In The World
I believe that
the line above is from a James Bond movie (In her majesty’s
secret service, the one with Diana Rigg, if I am not mistaken), but
it fits here, too. Simply put, the Tampa indie film scene is close to
where it needs to be to finally make some progress, but we are not quite
there, yet.
Another reason why my film festivals and other projects are on hold. With
the film festivals, too, I don’t want to do any of the more conventional
ones until I have films to show. Also, I might point out, that I don't
answer to anyone but myself, as investors are not involved, yet. I will
not be making films and producing revolutionary film festivals to "prove"
myself, but, rather, because it is in my best interest to do so (I have
noting to prove to anyone, and I will not be goaded into doing anything
prematurely; the few who are complaining are in no position to effect
me one way or another). It's not a question of if, but rather when. All
this is going to happen. It'll just happen when I choose for it to happen.
I don't rush anything, or cut corners. I am in the position to do what
I want to, at the pace that I dictate, and, as a result, whatever I do
will be the best in the market.
There sure are a lot of film festivals in Tampa, and despite the large
number of them, none of them have been that effective, especially for
Tampa filmmakers. Right now, the market is quite cluttered. This said,
I'm going to take my time; I am in no rush to do anything. Whatever shall
I do before I proceed with the film festivals?
My event planning and stage production companies will not be limited to
producing film festivals, although those film festivals will be the best
that Florida has ever seen. We’ll be doing other types of events,
too, and all those events will cross-promote each other. Lately, for those
of you who do not know, I've been working on a video game festival. What
does this have to do with me as a filmmaker? Well, I will become one of
the best indie filmmakers, and a leader in the industry, but what most
may not know is that I am one of the rare few who are equally proficient
with video games (one of my greatest advantages is that I have experience
in a wide variety of diverse fields and industries, and I have a talent
for adapting ideas between them- good luck trying to follow my path. If
you're really smart, and really talented, expect to spend at least ten
years becoming professionally certified in each industry. I did in 20
different professions, and it wasn't easy, despite my advantages with
my early education, talent, and IQ. If you start now, I can expect competition
in the next ten to twenty years- if things work out, it'll be too late
to compete with me in less than five). I’ll be able to do equally
significant work in both the indie film and video game industries; in
some instances, too, I’ll be able to do some crossover projects
between the two, too.
My main media production company, Dream Nine Studios, is an independent
film production company, a video game developer, and a record label. Besides
the independent publishing business, my company will be making high quality,
innovative media projects which will be marketed in a variety of ways.
Regarding video games, I have some rather unique concepts in new types
of video games which have not been done before, at least not in the way
that we will be doing them. Rather than focus on the type of 3D crap currently
dominating modern video game hardware such as the Playstation 3 and the
Xbox 360, I’m going to focus on older styles of games, sprite-based
2D games, which are about gameplay, and, well, playing around with the
games. Game designer Jeff Minter (Tempest 2000, Defender 2000, Space Giraffe)
coined the phrase "Retro Evolved",
if I'm not mistaken. A lot of my video games will be retro evolved types
of games, arcade games like they used to make in the 1980's, but made
with modern technology and new ideas. My games will have stellar gameplay,
lots of innovation, will be customizable, and instead of relying on patterns
and standard AI subroutines, we will be incorporating things like artificial
life and ingenious ways of introducing random elements to the games (with
computers, it is presently impossible to generate genuine random numbers
because of the nature of computers, not counting some innovations in fuzzy
logic. I have figured out ways of introducing true random variables into
games. Sure, games like the NES Castlevania are cool, and hold a certain
charm, with their predictive patterns, but an even better game experience
can be achieved if the game experience was more focused on actual gameplay,
and there were no patterns which could be predicted. Also note that I
love, and still play, those games).
In artificial intelligence circles, computer science has attempted to
solve the myriad problems associated with AI with sheer computational
power and scripted subroutines. This has not worked, and science needs
to take cues from nature (you'd be surprised by how much watching nature
work has taught me about business.... weird, but true. Most animals would
starve to death if they didn't work smart routines every day, and be truly
independent in most cases). In nature, higher intelligence is built upon
by the building blocks of simpler biological processes. From the interactions
of these processes arise the unpredictable, and fluid, nature of intelligence.
The key to artificial intelligence is artificial life.
I recall a simple exercise in artificial life that I experimented with
using a Commodore 64 in the late 1980's, when I was in school. It was
an experiment with variables, statistics, and interactions which were
unpredictable because of the way that the variables interacted (also keep
in mind that this has nothing to do with my concepts for introducing true
random variables, and that this experiment is done with conventional computer
subroutines and “random” numbers taken from the system clock
upon boot. The interactions of those variables, however, become quite
complex, and the results are quite unpredictable).
At any rate, I had read about the exercise in Omni, and replicated it
with my computer. It proved to be really interesting, as well as eye opening.
In the experiment, a computer program creates a type of “game”
which “plays” itself. It is a virtual ecosystem, where you
have resources such as land. On the land you have edible vegetation and
water, and you start out with some rabbits. You also add foxes. For the
population to grow, you have to have two genders, of course, and resources
like food and water to sustain life. So, you add four rabbits, two females,
and two males. You add three foxes, a male and two females (and pray that
the male fox is able to survive long enough to have offspring with the
females; I’ve seen instances where the male fox starved to death
before he could reproduce, and the foxes died off, allowing the rabbits
to overtake the limited environment, eat all of the vegetation, and starve
themselves into extinction themselves). To make it interesting, you’d
make is so that you could make a map with trees and other terrain features,
and the game had simple behavioral rules based on input and output, and
and /or subroutines. The game would have a time cycle, of course,
with each real-time “turn” representing one day. For example,
the rabbits could move two to three spaces per turn, and would have to
navigate around obstacles in their way. Certain terrain slowed them down,
too. The foxes also had to be able to move, and were limited to one to
two spaces per turn. Each “animal” had perceptual abilities,
too, like in real life. The rabbits could only see two spaces in front
of them and one to the sides. They could hear for two spaces all around,
though, and the noise that any animal made depended upon their speed and
the terrain that they were moving over. You also had other variables taking
into account things such as hunger, food consumption, etc. So, the rabbits
roamed around, eating vegetation and drinking water. The foxes hunted
the rabbits, which, in turn, were not as fast as the rabbits, but were
successful in eating them when more successful tactics, such as ambushes,
were stumbled upon. The foxes which ran around and couldn’t catch
the rabbits starved, and didn’t pass on their “learned behaviors”.
Thus, the game became populated with foxes who snuck around and ambushed
the rabbits, rather than chase them around. The rabbits, on the other
hand, learned, too. The rabbits when were not constantly looking around
for dangers became dinner. The ones which did, survived, and passed those
behavior subroutines to their offspring.
You get the concept. I programmed that scenario, with crude graphics representing
the land, the animals, and other things, and let it rip. No two scenarios
played out the same, and you had a “game” which took on a
life of its own. The smallest changes would have significant long-term
results. Sometimes, the rabbits outnumbered the foxes, consuming all of
the natural resources. The rabbits, in turn, died off... mostly because,
once they starved, they were slower and much less alert, becoming easy
dinner for the foxes. The rabbit population declined, the fox population
grew, and the vegetation recovered. The foxes would then outnumber the
rabbits, starve because of a lack of prey, and the rabbits would rebound.
Sometimes, things got out of balance, with the foxes eating all of the
rabbits, and then dying off as they starved, leading to mass extinction.
I found that the best scenarios spread out the risks, where more animal
types and behaviors were introduced. The more variables, the more unpredictable
the scenario became. Most of the time, the scenarios would keep going
indefinitely, achieving and maintaining a balance.
Most interestingly, when you allowed the computer animals to retain the
solutions to behaviors that they stumbled upon, and pass them on to their
offspring, the animals were able to achieve that balance on their own
over time.
With more complex sets of interacting variables, resulting in subroutines
which could learn the best solutions, you begin to have the building blocks
of artificial intelligence which does not depend upon scripted scenarios,
but is rather fluid and unpredictable.
Video games which use such processes are the future, as are games where
the players can customize the games to suit their preferences, and games
which allow the players to create their own content (I realized the custom
game concept years before games such as Little Big Planet came about,
too.) Games should offer total and complete freedom; sure, you can play
it as-is, and have fun, but you should also be able to get under the hood
and tinker with it as little, or as much, as you wish.
At this point, some of you may be wondering what advanced video game theory
has to do with indie film. Well, that depends upon the scenario, now,
doesn’t it?
In the video game industry, it has long been the case where video games
based upon films generally suck (and vice versa), with a few notable exceptions
(The Nintendo 64 game Goldeneye being one of them). This, of course, is
because of incompatible differences between the entertainment formats.
Video games are interactive entertainment, and they are all "cause
and effect". Films are passive entertainment, where the participant
can only watch, and is along for the ride. Video games based upon films
often make the mistake of trying to shoehorn the established plot and
sequence of events into the game, so that the “player” can
“experience” what happened in the film themselves. This does
not work. What video games should do is to take the premise of the film,
and then allow the player to define their own experience through playing
the game, allowing the “plot” to unfold within the limitations
of the interactive medium of the video game.
Limitations of the interactive medium? What’s that?
Two examples. Yuji Naki and his Sonic Team created “Nights”,
a 3D platformer, for the Sega Saturn. Nights was a fast paced game when
the character transformed into Nights and flew around, but was a slower
paced walk when the character was on the ground. On the ground, you could
move in 3D, just about anywhere on the map. Because of the fast pace of
the flying portion, though, the game designers decided to limit where
they player could go to pre-determined 2D invisible “tracks”,
as it was deemed that full 3D flight would make things too complex, and
make the flying much less fun. They were right; by limiting where the
player could fly, the gameplay was polished to perfection, making a more
entertaining, and fun, game than a game where you could fly all over the
place (incidentally, Nights also uses artificial life with the creatures
that populate the world. The creatures interact with each other using
natural cause and effect subroutines, and can even cross-breed
to form hybrid creatures and new type of creatures. Such AL features were
also included in later Sonic Team games such as the Dreamcast hit Sonic
Adventure).
Shiguru Myamoto’s Super Mario 64, for the Nintendo 64, also enhanced
the game experience by limiting what the player could do. There are levels
where it looks like the player can go anywhere, but where you have to
stick to paths in order to proceed in the game. Those limitations, which
enhance the focus of the gameplay and the game experience, are implemented
so brilliantly, in fact, that the player never realizes that they never
have the freedom that the game teases them with.
As my friend Rachel Eaglin used to tell me, structure (limitation) frees
you; a saying that she used to describe the limitations of the screenwriting
format.
The key with both passive and interactive media is to figure out what
they are really optimized to do, and then play up to what they are good
for; to play to their strengths.
At any rate, the reason that I am posting about video games on my film
blog is that I am thinking about doing a video game festival before I
debut my film festivals. I have all the time in the world to do film festivals,
especially when I have to have some of my short films done first. There
are a lot of film festivals here in Tampa, but not a single dedicated
video game festival or event. I'll probably just circle the wagons with
other types of events, first, demonstrating how advanced those events
are, before moving in and taking the Tampa film festival market.
And, with that, I have to go now.
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UPDATED 01/03/11
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