BioShock Assets
I have written several times recently about the glorious cinematic game experience that is
Bioshock. I am to soon deliver a lecture exploring the sound design of Bioshock entitled :
Aural Architecture -
BioShock, Game Sound and Narrative Space
For more than a century we have composed cinema in frames; made meaning by the portrait arrangement of the visual and aural in the defined composition of the Mise en Scene. But the over-arching super-structure of cinema in the 21st century is not the Frame but the Space - the composition, navigation, arrangement, exploration and design of Space itself.
Immersive 3D gaming presents moving-image media with a profoundly different aesthetic paradigm for understanding how we compose meaning, emotion and story. In gaming it is the Spatial environment that is composed, not the Frame; both aesthetically and technically.
What makes this conceptual shift profound is that since the tools for game production are the same as those used for non-interactive cinema - 3D environments, CGI composits and surround sound - and the movie-going audience is increasingly populated with 'Gamers' carrying ingrained game aesthetic expectations, the process of 'Composition' for all cinematic forms is shifted, never to be the same.
At the heart of this composition of space is sound; no other element can convey the complexities of space with more innate emotive connectivity than sound. In this new Macro-Mise en Scene the aural becomes the architecture of experience.
This presentation will examine gaming sound and space and its impact across the diversity of cinema. With specific reference to Bioshock and the specifics of technical production it will re-consider how we compose meaning, narrative and emotion in a game-soaked world.In researching this presentation I have compiled a useful set of assets from the game which I'm posting here with confidence you'll find them as fascinating as I did.
-
Bioshock Score
(a zip file of audio parts from the beautiful and haunting orchestral score)-
Concept Art Book
(a hi-res PDF book of sketch images and development drawings of characters and scenes)-
Game Desinger Podcasts
(official podcast interviews with the various creators of Bioshock)-
- And finally, BioShock on an Etch-A-Sketch
Posted at 01:00AM Sep 20, 2007
by Mike Jones in 3D graphics & gaming |
I'm playing through Bioshock right now and one of the features that immediately captured my attention was the excellent sound stage. I hope you're playing it with a decent surround setup. ;)
Posted by Steve Pick on September 20, 2007 at 10:09 PM EST #
But to my supreme joy and excitement the lecture I'll be delivering next week on Bioshock and Spatial Composition will be in a movie theatre equipped with a 4k digital cinema projector and 6.1 theatrical surround system....! Its like a wet dream only better :P
Posted by Mike Jones on September 21, 2007 at 09:56 AM EST #