Ruhr Hunter - In Memory With Blackest Wings
Posted: Thu Jan 17, 2013 4:50 am
A study in ambiance and cinematography
A growing subject in podcasts, reviewers, and like-minded statements in regards to cinema within games/movies these days is that they are, in essence, awful. What makes them awful? Well, a lot of things. Everything from the abuse of camera shaking, depth of field, motion blur, slowmo, down to the very choreography, down to the way audio is used (HKS brought to attention the "basey stinger" that hitman uses every five seconds in a cinematic).
What I noticed very early in modern productions is the love of rushing cinema. The art of stuffing 15-30 minutes worth of actions into 1-2 minutes at most. This rushed, overly excited mishmash of activity.
When creating Retribution, I'll be going into my first true forays as a movie director and choreographer. I'm looking back to older movies, like 2001: Space Odyssey, old James Bond movies, old Kung Fu movies, and trying to really determine the directional alterations between then and now.
I really get the impression that media today is overly obsessed with the fear that things can be still for too long, that there isn't enough action. Hollywood tries to wash over "slow" motions with over the top guitars and action-ey music badly accented with shakycam, "dramatic" zooms, and teenage protagonists doing "normal" things to "connect" to the audience.
Much like the old productions, I'm investing a huge amount of effort into those "slow" scenes, as they'll serve as breathing points between my enormous fleet battles and character interaction. To achieve the emotions I seek to evoke, I need to rely on powerful ambient music. There are many ways of doing ambiance, and I'll be experimenting with a lot of them. Since we're working with an original world, music greatly dictates how people will see and experience that work. We want power and mood oozing from every orifice in a smooth, undulating symphony.
My pursuit for material of such nature has lead me across the world, from the ever so obvious as Dead Can Dance to the distantly but still related Vas, Azam Ali, and Niyaz. My treks brought me to mother Russia with the Stalker soundtrack and an abundance of black metal instrumentals. I've been to Bulgaria with the potent choral folk music only fleetingly seen in the West at all, and I've been to Europe for classical Medieval ballets.
The grand picture of Retribution's musical score is slowly taking shape, and slowly, through the motion of that score, the shape of the world is emerging from the shadows of thought. Taking the moment to absorb the details and the motion is what this is all about.
A growing subject in podcasts, reviewers, and like-minded statements in regards to cinema within games/movies these days is that they are, in essence, awful. What makes them awful? Well, a lot of things. Everything from the abuse of camera shaking, depth of field, motion blur, slowmo, down to the very choreography, down to the way audio is used (HKS brought to attention the "basey stinger" that hitman uses every five seconds in a cinematic).
What I noticed very early in modern productions is the love of rushing cinema. The art of stuffing 15-30 minutes worth of actions into 1-2 minutes at most. This rushed, overly excited mishmash of activity.
When creating Retribution, I'll be going into my first true forays as a movie director and choreographer. I'm looking back to older movies, like 2001: Space Odyssey, old James Bond movies, old Kung Fu movies, and trying to really determine the directional alterations between then and now.
I really get the impression that media today is overly obsessed with the fear that things can be still for too long, that there isn't enough action. Hollywood tries to wash over "slow" motions with over the top guitars and action-ey music badly accented with shakycam, "dramatic" zooms, and teenage protagonists doing "normal" things to "connect" to the audience.
Much like the old productions, I'm investing a huge amount of effort into those "slow" scenes, as they'll serve as breathing points between my enormous fleet battles and character interaction. To achieve the emotions I seek to evoke, I need to rely on powerful ambient music. There are many ways of doing ambiance, and I'll be experimenting with a lot of them. Since we're working with an original world, music greatly dictates how people will see and experience that work. We want power and mood oozing from every orifice in a smooth, undulating symphony.
My pursuit for material of such nature has lead me across the world, from the ever so obvious as Dead Can Dance to the distantly but still related Vas, Azam Ali, and Niyaz. My treks brought me to mother Russia with the Stalker soundtrack and an abundance of black metal instrumentals. I've been to Bulgaria with the potent choral folk music only fleetingly seen in the West at all, and I've been to Europe for classical Medieval ballets.
The grand picture of Retribution's musical score is slowly taking shape, and slowly, through the motion of that score, the shape of the world is emerging from the shadows of thought. Taking the moment to absorb the details and the motion is what this is all about.
