Movies to Games to Movies
Previously I looked briefly at the idea of Games as Cinema and thought it worth looking riffing a little more on this idea in regard to the historical evolution of games.
Early computer games were arguably far removed from cinematic form simply because there was no clear distinction of the game being 'complete' or having a defined narrative end point. Complete was a high score and on the bulk of games the HS could always go higher. Witness the launch of the original Nintendo Entertainment System with the slogan "you cannot beat us" playing off the fact that games had no end.
But contemporary games across an array of genres move the form into a mode very much more cinematic. Games have distinct ends and clear narrative evolutions. Where as early games had no certainty of 'completion' (either because there was no end or because the repetition of stages growing increasingly difficult to the point of impossibility) most contemporary games (even mmorpg's) have a multitude of clear quests that have discreet and specific beginnings and endings. Of course you may choose not to partake but it doesn't change the fact of their existence or focus; there role as the key element for the games existence. Much as reading small excepts from a book or pondering a poetic phrase doesn't diminish or detract from the fact the whole book exists or that wholeness is the focus.
In recent essays and research articles I've penned, as well as here on the Digital Basin, I've argued that rather than a separate and unique medium video and computer gaming is simply a form a cinema. An evolved and hybridized cinematic form certainly but one that draws upon the same cinematic language constructs, visual specitcal and thrill of seeing as traditional cinematic modes.
In this context this interview article makes for interesting reading. The ideas are about the relationship between Games and Cinema but yet the focus seems ill directed. The movies cited as being those embodying game ideas are constrained to the bleeding obvious - movies adapted from games.
Rather that looking to the celebration of banality that is the bulk of movie from game adaptations, we should be looking to the cross-pollination of game aesthetics in cinema. Those films that utilise a gaming cinematic language but not necessarily emulating game genres or styles.
High among this list to my mind is Gus Van Sant's Elephant. Far from extolling grenade lobbing explosions and alien blood splatters, Elephant doesn't obviously emulate what might be considered obvious game connections in terms of content. But Elephant does evoke a deeper game aesthetic associated with perspective - a more open mise en scene where the framed space is not privileged and action is allowed to operate outside the frame, beyond vision - a composed spatial environment where the viewers understanding of narrative is derived from a knowledge of the space itself as much as the characters.
We might also look to David Fincher's virtual camera movements in Fight Club and Panic Room, defying physicality and spatially exploring the scene before it is occupied by characters and events yet to take place.
The game aesthetic and the language constructed by the game production processes and game experience is far more influential and profound than the facile game to film adaptations where are without exception bloody awful.
Posted at 01:00AM Aug 26, 2007
by Mike Jones in 3D graphics & gaming |
