Thursday 29 March 2012

Planning: designing a product



My brief was to create an action film based on a real or fictional video game, so I chose to take elements from a number of real title to create a brand which would be representative of real products whilst maintaining a setting and style which would still be achievable considering the constraints I had in terms of setting, characters and mise-en-scene in general.

A logical first chose of inspiration was EA's mirrors edge
This is a game well known for it's free-running style game-play and also incorporation of action. so was perfectly suited to my brief, however the majority of the game takes place atop sky scrapers which is not possible for me to achieve, there fore I looked to other similar games for setting.


Character Design


I found the Mirror's edge character design interesting.



The costume is simple, but also highly affective so when designing the costume for the characters I took this into account and this costume in particular was hugely influential in the design of the final costume.

Other sources of inspiration for the protagonists costume were:
Jade - Beyond Good and Evil



Cole - Infamous 2
























Setting

I looked to the Half life series for inspiration on the setting, they had an interesting combination of sci-fi and modern day elements. which would be relatively easy to achieve for my film.






Another game with an aesthetic which could be interesting to explore was portal, the simple white backgrounds could make an interesting setting, similar to the district 13 setting seen in my earlier research.




Antagonists


For the antagonists I wanted them to be highly conventional so they were immediately recognizable as the troops/members of totalitarian regime.
To ensure this I thought about the kind of images I associated with this type of character, and also looked at conventional images. I chose to include my own perceptions as well as research as I am a member of the target audience and I wanted the enemy characters to be somewhat cliche and instantly recognizable for what they were.

I again looked at Mirrors edge as a key source of inspiration:


But also examples from games such as:



RAGE                                                 Beyond Good and evil                                                                 
The look of the Antagonists also borrowed heavily from films such as


Equilibrium














To give the film some Grounding in reality I also looked at modern day SWAT teams for inspiration for the antagonists.




The product

The Idea I had for the product was one similar to many other films and games, featuring totalitarian states. the key protagonist is a key member of the rebel group who is vital to ensuring it's victory. Whilst the enemy is enforcing the status quo with excessive force.

From the examples I had gathered and seeing as many of the themes I had already collated leant themselves well to cliche, therefore I chose to name the Fictional game my video will be based on.

"On the Edge"

I felt it was representative of the kind of names seen within the genre, whilst being simple and catchy enough to be memorable. 





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