Video Game Movie Ideas

Penguin_Otaku

So for my project for my Electronic Field Production class, I' thinking about doing basically a... guy wakes up, life is like a videogame.

The catch is he wakes up, finds a note and it's all "Come over, I've baked a cake for you. -Girlfriend" and he goes into his hall and finds little white dots ala Pacman. Goes into his living room and sees a ghost and he's all, "wtf?" Ghost is awkward and says, "Don't eat that big dot there. For the love of God." He catches on, does it and... discards of the ghost somehow.

Goes through a few different thing (project has to be, at most, 4:30 but I don't he'd care too much if qwere more) and I was thinking of having a Katz reference. "All your girlfriend are belong to us." and maybe the protagonist has to pull the master sword out of something or some such. He ends up in a eerie building to face off against the final bad guy and he goes through this big thing and when he's about to finish him, the bad guy shows him his girlfriend who is in peril and he's all, "Wtf. That's not my girlfriend. I'm out." End.

So I need some ideas (ideas that include NO BUDGET) that could be meet along the way. This goes along with film style too if you have any idea how shot could be better then let me know. I was going to make a Resident Evil quip with him trying to get into/out of a room but can't because of bad camera angles.

Thanks guys.

Element Brian

The Dave Chappelle GTA skit comes to mind. If you can find the video, theres a pretty great portion where it shows his character randomly changing positions as he does a cheat code. Something similar to that would be pretty funny.

JAEF

Marshmallows hanging on strings from some sticky tack on the ceiling for the pacman dots.. mm...

Topia

No video game reference comedy will be complete without a lag or "loading..." section.

edit:

also... http://www.bash.org/?583977

<DannyB> some girl on the street asked if i was saved yet
<DannyB> i told her i saved at the checkpoint a couple minutes back
<DannyB> and can reload from there if i die
<DannyB> she was confused

zilo

Google The Legend of Neil.

starmanbrand

Record a wooden door. Have it hold there for 5-10 seconds and then have it slowly open to a pitch black room with an eerie squeek. Make sure no hands can be seen.

Play this every time you come to a door you have to open.

@Raziel-

Oh man a four minute "Escape from the room" type video. haha.

Raziel

You know how in old point-and-click adventure games, the heroes always talk to themselves? "I can't pick that up." "Those things don't go together." "It's a coffee cup." The character could walk around and pick up EVERYTHING, since the most innocuous items are always the most vital.

ApexMirage

This sounds awesome, post up the finished product once you have it!

Penguin_Otaku

Keep'm coming. These are great.

Reznik

Guy gets into a fight with someone that turns into a Final Fantasy-style ATB thing. You know, standing like 10 feet apart, facing each other, waiting for the time gauge to fill.

I don't know what type of video editing software you have available, but it's not hard to set up the health bars/atb gauge/damage numbers. You could animate it in flash and then 'green screen' it on to the footage.

Penguin_Otaku

I have access to both Avid and FCP. I'm ok at FCP but I feel more comfortable with Avid.

Anyhow, this is wha I have planned so far.

-Guy wakes up, finds letter that his girlfriend left him and says, "I've baked you some yummy shit. Come over. -Girlfriend" ala Mario 64.

-Walks into his hallway, sees the pellets (marshmallows) and follows them into the room. Ghost says don't eat the (different) one. He does. I planned to just have the sheet go from... green to blue in a jump-cut or something. I don't think I'm good enough in AE or anything to key them and make it flash.

-Guy is like what the hell is going on. Gets a call on his phone from Katz (complete with picture.) He answers it and it's a video message. (Achieved filming it already, sending the file in an e-mail and opening on the iPhone where he says something about how they have his girlfriend, come to some location and ending with, "All your girlfriend are belong to us.)

At this point I see it at 1 minute to 1:30 in duration. I'm not sure in what sequence these other things should happen. I was thinking when he gets to the street he sort of realizes the world he's in and jumps a car (GTA.)

Then for lolz maybe put a clip of Pole Position and then it shows him getting out of the car. From here I'm not sure what could happen along the way. I do like the door idea and Raziel's idea as well. If you guys could help and incorporate these into what I have already that'd be appreciate it or even give me idea for the next few scenes.

And how to achieve lag. I was thinking of after the door opening just have it go to a "Loading..." screen. But lag + bad camera angles would be gold, too.

SanderJK

"WoW lag" would be great to animate. If there's lag in WoW, the whole world stands still for a bit, then all of a sudden the world skips to catch up with real time. If a person was moving during the lagspike, for the duration of the spike he'd be running on the spot, then suddenly appear elsewhere when the spike ends.

Loading an area (on logging in, or teleporting) is also pretty great. The surroundings load first, then the other player characters, and only then the NPC's.

Another RPG/MMO trope is finding the unlikeliest of loot on a monster. It's not uncommon at all to kill say a snake, to find out it was holding a plate chest armor, or a greatsword. You can only find this out after you killed it though, it doesn't show up beforehand.

The "valuable stuff in a wooden barrel/crate" is pretty easy to pull off too.

Penguin_Otaku

What should this guy's name be? I was going to pull one from Homestar runner's game and name him Rather Dashing, but surely there's something more clever.

Element Brian

For lag you could just have him run straight into a wall for 10 seconds straight, then appear somewhere else.