A Name and a Number – 48 Hours Filmmaking Competition

 Culture, my projects  No Responses »
Apr 282010
 

2 weekends ago I participated in the annual 48 Hours Filmmaking Competition. Each team had to make a film containing a character named Sydney, a broken toy, the line “When you look at it that way”, and a dolly zoom. Cutting straight to the chase, here is the result:

(view on youtube)

I don’t think it turned out too badly – technical limitations aside I think we had a fairly decent story. The audience seemed to enjoy the film during the showing and the reviews have been generally favourable (more or less.) Unfortunately we were disqualified from the judging due to technical problems with the master we submitted on the day, but it didn’t matter in the end. One of the other teams in our heat submitted a brilliant film that was always going to be the finalist.

This is not the first time I have been involved in the 48 Hours Competition. I did it about 5 years ago with a much more professional team in Auckland. The experience was so stressful that I almost didn’t take the opportunity this year but I am glad that I did.

Bevan, the producer/director, assembled a random collection of people with little/no experience, many of whom could not be present for the whole weekend. Our equipment consisted of an 10 year old handicam (borrowed on the understanding that the owner’s daughter would be cast), a tripod and (for part of the time) some lights. So unlike my previous experience which involved hours of makeup, set dressing, rehearsing with proper actors and messing around with lighting rigs we just got on and shot stuff as we could. We actually had most of the shots on film by mid-afternoon on Saturday, about the time my previous team started shooting!

In case you are wondering, I was the main camera operator by dint of my knowledge of white balance. Having a camera with no-focus ring and no way to control the aperture made the job pretty simple. I only dropped the camera on concrete once, it actually worked better afterwards.

I think the strength of A Name and A Number is the story, a lot of films in the competition look and sound better but have plots that don’t resolve properly. If you think our film doesn’t go anywhere you should see some of the others. Although the film is humorous, the story is told in a serious tone (it was originally intended to be a psychological drama) which I think helps – a lot of the entries try to be funny which is hard to (intentionally) pull off. Lame drama is more watchable than a lame comedy.

Game Review : Cutthroat Caverns

 Games  No Responses »
Apr 142010
 

A motley band of adventurers descends into the inky darkness of the caverns in the quest for the fabulous artefact rumoured to lie somewhere deep within. Working together they should be more than a match for the terrifying creatures that wait in the shadows, but each member knows that only the most glorious amongst them will be able to claim the prize; perhaps a little backstabbing may help things along.

Cutthroat Caverns (boardgamegeek, publishers site) is a clever little game where players fight monsters as a team to gain “prestige”, the player at the end of game (usually 10 encounters) with the most prestige wins. Combat is handled by cards (there is no board), during each round the players each play one (or sometimes more) attack cards face down. These are then revealed to determine how much damage the current creature has suffered. If the creature is still alive, it gets a chance to retaliate in kind, usually striking a random player for some damage of its own.

The fighting continues until the creature’s health is reduced to zero – the twist being that only the player that struck the killing blow gets all the prestige regardless of how much damage they did over the course of the rumble. This scoring system provides the tension in the game; you usually have a range of attacks in your hand but there is no point playing your strongest cards unless you are sure that you are going to be the one who makes the kill. On the other hand, someone is going to have to do some damage to the monster or else it will make mincemeat out of party.

In addition to attack cards, there are also “items” that can be picked up along the way (representing potions and magical amulets, etc) which confer certain benefits. There are also “action” cards that can be played at certain times to aid or disrupt attacks, hopefully in ways that will be of benefit.

So far so good, Cutthroat Caverns neatly encapsulates the cheesy DnD hack-n-slash games without all the bother. What really makes the game fun is the variety of the monsters, each one is almost a different game. Some attack randomly, some can not be damaged by certain attacks, some attack the players that attacked for the most damage (or least damage, or simply who hit first) last turn, others damage everybody equally at the end of each turn. It is this randomness (10 creatures are drawn each game out of a larger pool) that ensures that each game is totally different.

Although the game has a high random component, it seems remarkably well balanced. Most of our games have ended with the party very nearly dead at the end of the 10 creatures, which leads to some very tense final encounters. It is possible to get killed, which removes that player from the game, but this will normally only happen towards end so it is not too unfair.

Cutthroat Caverns is obviously aimed at players who enjoy the trappings of role playing, but the game is simple and fast-paced enough to appeal to nearly everyone. If anything, playing it reminds me of Magic the Gathering, it is a much easier game but supports the same fast paced shifting of strategies and crazy reversals. 3 to 6 players are able to play, the more the merrier.

Highly recommended.

Film Review : A Boy and His Dog

 Culture  4 Responses »
Apr 122010
 

World War IV blasted the surface of the Earth to a barren wasteland across which roving bands of scabby bandits compete for sparse food supplies. Vic (Don Johnson!) is a young man who has teamed up with a telepathic dog to survive – Vic finds food for them both while the dog make itself useful sniffing out women (in short supply) for Vic to rape.

Yes, rape. What is it about 70s Science Fiction and rape? I have noticed this trend – up until the late 60s scifi was all space ships and aliens with heroic main characters. Not that they all portrayed woman as equals and complex characters in their own rights, but the protagonists at least had good intentions.

Then sometime just before 1970 somebody decided that scifi had to be all dark and twisted and a lot of stories started to appear where the main character basically rapes people. Sometimes this can work as social commentary but often it just comes across as exploitative and nasty. Was this a reaction to feminism? I don’t know, but it sure is irritating. Thankfully, not too many of these stories got made into films.

A Boy and His Dog almost gets away with the rape device since Vic is not very successful and is eventually taken advantage of by his supposed victim. A second point in the film’s favour is the humorous script and a light touch. Nothing is treated particularly seriously as the gormless Vic gets into one bizarre predicament after another in his quest for sex. Indeed, the general plot of the film and particularly the closing scene point to the whole exercise being conceived as the world’s most elaborate shaggy dog story, with the joke being on the audience. The second male lead actually being a shaggy dog may also point to this interpretation being correct.

What could have been a horrific and repellent story is redeemed by a well realised film that is a ropey in some places but pitched so perfectly that its flaws can be overlooked.

Recommended, but only if you like this sort of thing. Otherwise avoid.

Film Review : Fantastic Mr. Fox

 Culture  No Responses »
Apr 112010
 

Mr. Fox was a world class chicken thief but gave it all up years ago for a quiet middle-class existence when his child was born. He still yearns for some old-time larceny and naturally jumps at the chance for one last big score. Things do not go entirely to plan and Mr. Fox’s grand schemes may have grave consequences for his family and friends. Is Mr. Fox as fantastic as he believes himself to be?

Fantastic Mr. Fox is on the surface a fairly straight-forward children’s tale of talking animals vs mean humans. But director Wes Anderson infuses the story with his own brand of obsessive observation and the result is a mixed if enjoyable bag. The stop-motion animation is a throwback to the stiffly animated kiddy shows of the past such as the old Wind in the Willows show – it makes Wallace and Gromit look positively realistic. I found this to be charming, but heaven knows what anyone born after 1990 would think of it.

Some of the scenes may be a little talky for young children and a lot of the humour is wry rather than slapstick gags. Also, identifying with the main character is fairly hard, the film does not shy away from showing Mr Fox’s flaws. This makes for an interesting plot, but I doubt we will see Mr Fox’s face showing up on kids lunch boxes.

It is actually quite hard to see who Fantastic Mr. Fox is aimed at – it doesn’t have the universal appeal of Wallace and Gromit, nor can I imagine teenagers really liking it. If I was paranoid I would suspect it was aimed directly at me.

Recommended if you like this sort of thing.

A Better Boost Book

 Computer  1 Response »
Apr 022010
 

Boost is a excellent resource for C++ programming, but suffers from inconsistent documentation and a daunting array of sub-projects. Trying to make sense of it all is a fairly serious undertaking. I tried to get my head around it by writing my occasional series of boost blog posts, but now I see that somebody has done a much better job.

The Boost C++ Libraries is a free book that clearly explains some of the more generally useful boost libraries, with lots of useful examples. It even covers advanced libraries like ASIO in an approachable way. I highly recommended bookmarking it if you do any C++ programming.