Future iNCITE!: To your knowledge what was the first game to use cinematics as a way to impart information to the player and why was this important?

Marty Stoltz: In the early days of PC gaming, cinematics were pretty much used as rewards in games. Even today we still design cinematics for the same purpose; to reward the player that they have progressed in the game. My own personal experience would be the 1st Fallout where you were given the history and background of the story in a 2D cinematic form and later on, depending how you played, were given one of a variety of cut-scenes to end the game.  There were also games such as Dracula AD that were basically live action movies that had a variety of clips that could play depending on the decisions made during game-play, although that did not seem to catch-on because the results were very linear. The old Lucas Arts game “Full Throttle” had a variety of cinematic types that were quite well done and set-up the game-play and mood.

Fi!: What is a Cinematic Director?

MS: A Cinematic Director is responsible for the vision of all the cut-scenes for a video game. They work closely with the Art Director, Lead designer, and Audio department to make sure the games cut-scenes are consistent and support the game. Over the years my role of Cinematic Director has shifted more from art to the game design side. The enhancements of real-time cinematics or machineama that are much shorter and more immersive in the game have been given a greater role in storytelling.  Some cinematics now are just one or two shots and need to be tied in closely with what action the character is doing in the game so the role is expanding.

Fi!: How and who does a Cinematic Director interface with on the design team when a game title is being produced?

MS: In the beginning stages or pre-production I will have frequent meetings with the writers or narrative team to learn about the story or script for the cut-scenes. This is where we get a rough idea of our minute count and how much content of CG action we need to provide. From there I’ll meet with the Art Director to get an idea of the style of art that is being use in the game. The meetings with the Art Director will continue throughout the entire production because it’s vital that the game look matches the cinematics. The Art Director will pay attention to the lighting, mood, and effects as well as try to provide specific looks to scenes that may be needed in the story.

Also in pre-production I’ll meet with the design lead or specific designers that are working on various components in the game and try to make sure that the cinematics support the game-play, but also how they will cut into the game as seamlessly as possible. Somewhere in this mixture I’ll work as well with the character lead finding out what models are ready for preproduction animatics and try and determine how close we can get to their faces with the camera.

During production I’ll continue working with the design team to see if there are any changes to the game, but also to work on small scale cinematics or vignettes as we call them. These are moments where you lose control of the Character and quite often letterbox bars come in to the screen and a triggered event-of-camera happens. Most of my time at this point is also working with the lead animator. The animation to me is the most important part of the production phase. This will include facial animation and lip-sync of the characters. The one exception to this was “Star Wars the Force Unleashed” where we did not have an animation lead so I would work with about 15 ILM animators directly. Finally the focus will shift to audio and I will provide the audio director pre-scored animatics to give them an idea of the emotional rises and lows in the game.  After audio rescores the music and adds FX we will then work with programming to plug the movies into the game.

Fi!: In your presentation, along with Richard Rouse, explaining the concepts behind Cinematic Design in games, you mention such iconoclastic filmmakers as Orson Welles and Stanley Kubrick. But do you also take inspiration from other forms of art, such as graphic novels and or classic paintings in terms of composition and color? If so, why do you feel this is important and why aren’t younger media makers making use of this resource?

MS: For me personally inspiration can come for any form of art. I have gotten cinematic inspiration from comics, graphic novels, books, TV commercials, and music and of course other games. I think this happens in moviemaking as opposed to other forms of art because the process of bringing so many different elements into a film or cinematic such as music or photography is more prevalent than other forms of art.  I always stress to up and coming cinematic directors to study the classic directors from different genres and different cultures. Learn the rules of moviemaking and when and when not to break them. Learn why they did certain shots and edits, and learn the culture and history of the world around them when they made the movies. I can’t explain why more media makers aren’t looking at the classic directors and movies. My guess is that many media artist grab a camera or non-linear editing program and just start shooting. This is good in the way in that this is the only way to develop a style but it’s bad in that this type of artist tend to not follow the rules of filmmaking and take their bad habits with them over the years. If you go to good formal film school for an education they more or less force you into learning from the masters.

Fi!: The role of Cinematic Director is relatively recent in the field of game design; what attracted you to the role as opposed to being a “traditional” filmmaker?

MS: I have been a cinematic director for 14 years but I actually started as a texture/FX/background painter in the game industry. The team I was working with at DreamForge Intertainment was trying to do some simple edits on a cinematic and having a difficult time of it. I gave some suggestions using my filmmaking background that worked and in about two weeks I was directing cinematics…sort of the way it works in this industry. I still work in the traditional media and am currently shooting my own documentary so I haven’t given up on traditional filmmaking. I believe what attracts me to digital filmmaking in games is that you can do various roles on a cinematic team as opposed to working in the movie industry were you are locked into a certain role during that production. Also the technology and the way cinematics are being integrated into games are starting to get more and more complex. I think motion pictures have reached that certain peak in storytelling but games’ method of telling stories and entertaining people is just beginning. The drawback to all this is that a game’s development is far more complex than the development for a movie so this means more headaches as well.

Fi!: While no one can accurately predict the future, would it be possible at a later time that as game character AI and gaming systems becomes more powerful, that designers will be able to design games like an actual film director in real time?

MS: I think that the tools for game development are getting much easier and will be much easier for developers to make more and more changes on the fly. The offset to this is that as things get to be easier to change things also get more complicated because the system can do more. As things get to be more complicated the chance of the system breaking becomes more likely…it’s a vicious cycle.

Fi!: How many games have you worked on to date? Which ones?

MS: The title that I am currently working on at Big Huge Games will be my 17^th game title. Here is a list along with the developer and year.

Star Wars: The Force Unleashed	2008	Lucas Arts
John Woo Presents: Stranglehold	2007	Midway Games
Mortal Kombat Armageddon	2007	Midway Games
NBA Ballers Phenom	2006	Midway Games
Mortal Kombat Shaolin Monks	2005	Midway Games
Area 51	2005	Inevitable Games
Unreal Tournament 2: The Liandri Conflict	2005	Epic Games
The Suffering: Ties that Bind	2005	Surreal Software
Mortal Kombat Deception	2004	Midway Games
Psi-Ops: The Mind-Gate Conspiracy	2003	Midway Games
Werewolf the Apocalypse (Unpublished)	2000	DreamForge Intertainment
Warhammer 40,000: Rites of War	1999	DreamForge Intertainment
Sanitarium	1998	DreamForge Intertainment
War Wind 2: Human Onslaught	1997	DreamForge Intertainment
War Wind	1996	DreamForge Intertainment

Fi!: What’s been one of the more challenging projects you’ve worked on, and what life lesson did you take away to apply on the next game?

MS: Stranglehold was a very tough project to work on. What was difficult is that we were dealing with a movie license. The license had, of course, to protect their property, and had a lot of creativity on the game as well. The problem is that many movie people don’t quite understand the drawbacks of changing something in the game as opposed to changing something in a movie. For example if your character is fighting a boss on an open level there is no way to predict where that character death will take place. This makes staging the boss death cinematic in a specific location almost impossible. There are tricks in cinematics and game design that you can work around to fix this…they don’t necessarily understand those tricks if they are only familiar with a live action medium. In fairness I don’t know if a bunch of game designers would work well shooting on location of a movie set were everything is fast passed and it’s physically hard demanding work.

I think every project had its own problems in some way or another, but was important for me is that it gave me experience to deal with each problem but also gave me more insight to see the problems ahead of time.

Fi!: What makes a good Cinematic? A bad one?

MS: As the way games are made and the inclusion of real-time cinematics dominating the industry brings up a difficult question…what is a cinematic? Is it the pre-rendered opening that features a massive battle that cost the publisher a million bucks? Or is it the tiny warning cinematic that we did in Psi-Ops having a guard getting shocked to warn the player to be cautious in a corridor. The easy answer is, does the cinematic entertain the viewer or not, but that is not always the case. The cinematic first has to support the game-play and then also be entertaining to the viewer.

Fi!: How would you encourage new media makers to become Cinematic Directors in the game industry? What skills do they need?

MS: Too many animators and artist think that they can just be directors by knowing the software and looking at a few movies.  This usually results in cinematics that don’t have a professional feel because they don’t know the ground rules of what works in good cinematography or editing. I would highly recommend getting a formal training in school in film production and learn the basics of cinematography and editing. Being good at Photoshop doesn’t make someone a good painter, but having good design, composition, color and painting skills will make someone a good painter…the same holds for cinematic directing.

The other thing is to keep making cinematics and movies. When was growing up it was quite expensive to make movies because all that was available was film, so it was difficult to shoot and develop a style, but with digital cinematography and digital movies being so accessible and cheap, it’s much easier nowadays… so the best thing I can advise is to start creating. The more you do the better you will get.