Friday, April 20, 2007

At one point, I may also have said "Boo Yah!", I can't remember.

I've asterisked out the name of the computer game I was wittering about in the previous post, as after about ten hours of violently minding my own business, I've just realised that the advertising hoardings up around the city are actual adverts for actual products that supposedly I'm going to buy now.

Was the game cheaper because it had adverts? Not as far as I know. Do I play computer games to create a space where I don't have adverts shoved in my face all day? Yes. It's also spoilt the aesthetics of the setting - I'm fairly sure a city which has genetically-engineered super-agents shouldn't have ads for last years cars.

It's spoilt the game for me, which is a shame, as the beast itself is perfectly enjoyable. Yesterday, as I leapt two storeys firing a grenade launcher at a sniper nest, I distinctly heard myself shouting "That's what you get for messing with the J-Man!". Which I'm fairly sure I've never said before in my life.

When I'm not chasing round an imaginary city dispatching various ethnic based gangs (I've done the Mexicans and am half-way through the Eastern Europeans, but the Asians are out of my reach at the moment - I don't know why people think these things are a bad influence), I'm on the second draft of my superhero movie.

The plan is for the second act to kick off no later than twenty minutes in - it's the point where the two main guys have met, and are ready to start their journey. In the first draft this is exactly what happened. The second draft has a lot more going on, so I decided not to worry, I can just cut the scenes down to length later on. Bearing in mind one page = roughly one minute of screen time, they need to be in the car, facing west with the engine running, by page twenty.

Current page at which the main characters are in the car, facing west with the engine running: sixty four.

Arse.


UPDATE: got it down to thirty five minutes now, woo hoo! Anyway, never mind all that, here's an excellent video from Feist (via Popjustice).






8 comments:

Sylvia said...

Keep up the good work, James - am looking forward to the finished article.
Is it easier to add things or cut things out in order to get the timing right?
Am off to help daughter colour in holy communion work book - she can't manage the picture of the 5000 all on her own.....

Julia Buckley said...

Really looking forward to the movie. I love superheros. I hope you've got a hunky Wolverine type character in there!

Taiga the Fox said...

Wow, thanks for posting the Feist video!

Abaculus said...

Just cut out anything that isn't absolutely brilliantly fantasticocious. It can be hard locating such weak points in one's precious baby script, but they're there: usually the bits on the boat, or the bits with the baby, or the bits where they have to disguise themselves as guards by knocking out a real guard and stealing his clothes behind a hedge.

********* looks ace, advertising aside. You should play Okami, which lets you be a wolf in a painting and magically takes up all your time.

Jen said...

Ha! That's what you get for playing a Microsoft-only game.

Only joking. Don't kill me, J-Man.

James Henry said...

Jen - unrelated note, yes that was Ori emailing you earlier.

Jen said...

I know. My tail is firmly between my legs.

Damn my stupid face to hell.

Sean McManus said...

You have plenty of extra stuff for the DVD then. Although it's probably not much use if the extras don't get beyond draft script.

Ads in games are evil, unless the game is free or extremely cheap. I remember there was a computer game for the Spectrum which had three loading screens promoting a packet of crisps. How annoying is that, when each one takes a few minutes to load? But the ads have always been there. They've just become a lot more subtle. And they do spoil the whole experience and stop the creative team from delivering on its vision. Just when you're getting into it, and running with the fantasy you crash back to earth as you realise the whole virtual world is just another way to try to brainwash you into buying a mostly crap product. It's as crass as fading FGTH's 'Power of Love' into a double glazing advert on local radio.