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GAMES — If at first you don’t succeed, make a sequel |
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Written by asap
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Wednesday, 19 July 2006 |
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 NEW YORK — Hollywood has long banked on sequels. Now, I am, too.
Last year, I made my directorial debut thanks to the PC-based Lionhead Studios video game “The Movies” with a 1970s-set action flick titled “Past Deadline” starring asap reporters. You can see the original story here!
Last month, “The Movies: Stunts and Effects” expansion pack was released, seamlessly adding more action-packed scenes and sets, including a green screen, to the game.
Once I heard the “Pirates of the Caribbean” sequel sailed away with a record-breaking $135.6 million on its opening weekend, I knew it was time for a “Past Deadline 2.” But instead of taking on “Dead Man’s Chest” in the real-world box office, I wanted my latest film to garner attention and acclaim from the highly devoted “Movies” community that’s emerged since the game’s release, something my last film didn’t do.
Besides, I always envisioned “Past Deadline” as trilogy, anyway.
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 PART ONE: THE SHOOT
At the end of “Past Deadline,” villain Ronnie Mellow was hauled away in cuffs as heroine Stacy Lubbock snapped his photo. With the sequel, I wanted to go totally meta.
So “Past Deadline 2” takes place 30 years later when Lubbock is a Pulitzer Prize winning photographer and Mellow is serving a life sentence.
The characters enter the fictionalized world of asap -- with real AP reporters and editors playing themselves. It’s sorta like how Freddy Krueger stalked into the real world in “Wes Craven’s New Nightmare” a.k.a. “Nightmare on Elm Street 7.”
asap reporters Jaime Holguin and Hillary Rhodes reprised their roles as Mellow and Lubbock, respectively, while I cast Colleen Long, Howie Rumberg and asap editor Ted Anthony as themselves. And I topped the original by adding spectacular stunts to the script: a growling werewolf, burning library and stinging chase scene.
Click. Click. Click. After a few hours of shooting and editing in cyberspace, I uploaded “Past Deadline 2” to “The Movies”’ official Web site and anxiously awaited reviews from other players.
A day later, nothing.
Three days later, still nothing.
So I did what any fame-seeking director would do: I whored myself on “The Movies” message board.
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PART TWO: THE P.R. MACHINE
Like a MySpace or YouTube for “Movies” fans, the official message board has truly become an online community. Players discuss and promote their digital creations and sometimes help each other out.
No good with Adobe Illustrator? Someone will probably cook up a digital movie poster for you if you ask nicely enough. Need a deep voice for that villainous vampire character? There are always fans exchanging voiceovers.
Sometimes the jobs pay. Users often exchange “virtual credits” — “The Movies” online currency -- in exchange for virtual services.
Just like in the real Hollywood, the online component of “The Movies” is all about networking. Instead of “doing lunch,” I reviewed other filmmakers’ movies in hopes they would review mine. Some did. And I made a movie poster with the tagline: “Ronnie Mellow is back. This time, he bites.”
(You can weigh in on the film yourself here. For a higher-resolution version of the movie, click here.
The publicity process was made easier with the help of ReviewTrader.com, a site developed by 18-year-old Matt “z33to” Marcin. It’s just one of a dozen fan sites that’s sprung up since the original game was released last year. Some sites assist in public relations while others host “Movies” filmmaking contests.
“I think it’s human nature when you make something creative like a movie, you kinda want to share it with other people.,” Marcin tells me. “It’s like, if no one’s watching your movies, you get kinda frustrated. At least through my site, you can watch other people’s movies and they would watch yours. So it really helps out these people who are like, ’This game kinda sucks because I can’t get anyone to watch my movie.”’
So true.
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PART THREE: THE BOX OFFICE
After my schmoozing on the message board, reviews -- rave reviews, actually! -- began to accumulate on the asap Studios home page. BentPr0ducti0ns declared “Past Deadline 2” had “a cartoon kind of feel to it, a great change of pace from the mundane” while gamegeek said it had a “completely surprise ending.” The average rating for “Past Deadline 2” was 4.75 out of 5 stars.
They like me! They really like me!
Just when I was about quit my day job, sell all my possessions and move to La La Land to direct films, Marcin reminds me that although aspects of “The Movies” mirror the film industry, at the end of the day, “The Movies” is only make-believe.
“This is a game,” he says. “It was built to be fun. Hollywood is a lot more hardcore.”
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asap reporter Derrik J. Lang has an option for “Past Deadline 3.” | Only registered users can write comments.
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