Free Pixel

I am not sure whether this is the first time around somebody did that but here is the trailer that Jordan Mechner did to pitch his Prince of Persia film project to Disney and Bruckheimer. He recently posted about it on his blog. The first thing I found interesting is what the trailer is about - a man, a woman, a dagger, in Persia, fighting and jumping - and how easily we make the jump from blocky PS2 footage to widescreen cinema in our head. By now we are far enough down the road that any Disney exec can replace a polygon hunk with a real hunk in her or his mind and see the possibility of countless acrobatic fight sequences.

Second thing was to compare the pitch with the (first?) film trailer released by Disney. Before I looked at the original film trailer and the film’s site I was a bit disappointed by Mechner’s pitch reel. Given the livelong interest of Mechner in making Hollywood action movies, the trailer is a bit fragmented and to me there were more bones and beef in the game than the pitch reveals. But then again: this is not about content revelation but about evoking emotion and excitement in Jerry Bruckheimer and compared to the Disney version, I have to say that his pitch is actually not too bad. It is also twice as long - so that might be the reason I get more out of it. Still, Mechner’s version uses more (and better) music then the Disney one, which adds some breadth to the admittedly not too complicated premise presentation. It also has way more locations, which basically does the same: add value and visual variety. Especially this second point clearly plays to the strengths of machinima. We can create a new film set far easier and cheaper then some full production. Basically, this comparison highlights Hugh’s points on what machinima does well: scale, learning the trade, action, speed, and cheap production. It is also a bit of a trap, though, because maybe we expect this set variety in the future of video game movies. Maybe these strengths of machinima are not only blessings for their entry to Hollywood but set new expectations that are hard to meet by “real” film production?

Overall, the machinima version carries pretty much the same appeal as the film version, which might say something about the film project as a whole but also indicates that machinima IS really capable of swimming with the big fish here. The action is better, it has some unique camera references (no slo-mo in the Disney movie? - the Mechner version at least alludes to it)), the characters are pretty much the same overall, and the mood is presented better (mainly through music and sets).