Black Hawk Down

I liked the film Black Hawk Down, it was a little hard to understand what they were attempting to do in the film but from what I understand is that the U.S soldiers were trying to catch two people in Somalia. The mission in which should have taken just 30 minutes went into an ongoing war for over 18 hours. Basically all that is shown throughout the course of the movie is guns blazing, violence, blood flying everywhere, and the sounds of helicopters etc. One thing I liked about the movie was how the director Ridley Scott drew out every single scene of the film and how accurate each one looked when viewed while watching the actual film. He basically only used a magic markers and highlighting pens to make the purposed scenes.

It’s really surprising that it is based on a true story; the mission starts with the trying to track down and get into the building to capture the two men. This starts at around mid-day to evening and goes on right through the night to early morning the next day. Some of the scenes were very gory and can really strike a lot of fear into anyone planning on going into the army, or just even tells you about what soldiers in the past have faced and the horror of how some of them have been severely injured and even died. One thing that was good about the scenery was the landscapes, buildings and objects around them. It was very dark all the way through the film, and at night it was very green as if we were watching the Matrix or something. I guess the green sort of gives the impression of night vision through the eyes of a soldier fighting at night. Some of the perspective views were really nice to watch when they in a helicopter, from the sunlight of the day time to the night then back to the early morning. They captured the scenes really well and the set that they used was made to look like they were really fighting in Africa.

They found some of the buildings of what they wanted to use in the setting for the film. They had to slightly edit some of the set like the buildings and the base camp for the soldiers. In the extra parts of the DVD they went on to explain how they carefully selected different parts of the areas they were looking at for the scenes and editing them to get them to blend in with the setting more for the film, some of them they thought were okay just use as they were like one particular building that looked like it was being constructed but was just left the way it was. In the DVD they even said that people would actually think they were filming in Somalia, when in fact they weren’t. It was just the time they spent adding the detail, planning everything and adding accurately capturing everything Ridley Scott had draw. It sort of tells you a lot of how what goes into the production of film making but at the same time it can all be related to game production to with the scenes and the artwork, the times and deadlines, and film capturing with the cameras, it’s quite like watching the DVD extra’s for The Lord of the Rings and they way they would find locations to use as backgrounds and imagery for their film, the costumes that they would create and repeat over and over again getting different sizes and such. They wanted to make the film look authentic and it honestly did look like they were engaging in battle within the streets of Somalia.

In The Lord of the Rings movie they knew the task at hand was to re-create a great historical piece of English folk law from a book into a movie. Not an easy task , but the time they spent on it and seeing all of the details of what went into producing them films can really be appreciated when watching behind the scenes footage just like Black Hawk Down the task was to re-create a real life event, so when they pick a deadline for such a film they really have to not stop working. People sometimes only watch films because of the actors and like to see how they perform in the roles they are given within the film which is definitely one of the most important parts, in Black Hawk Down they gave the roles to hundreds if not thousands of different people from different countries and cultures from all over the globe. It seems like a lot of effort but it’s actually a good way of making it more authentic, but the more authentic a piece of work is the better it pays off or at least should pay off in the end. They way Ridley Scott had produced so many sketches/story boards of the timeline between start and end of the film seemed like a lot but actually seeing his works produced as accurate as they were in the actual movie was amazing, what I found even more amazing was how he had just produced them with the magic markers, they weren’t exactly spot on perfect every time, but they at least 95 percent there every time. The cinematography in the film was great, from just imaging and knowing what all the scene in the movie were going to be like Ridley knew almost instantly which angles, zoom and placement of the camera he wanted them all to be at. This converted into game production would be knowing possibly where a level starts and ends, what do you see first, what do you see during the game play, what you see at the end, what do you see in the cut scenes and even what kind of interface you see when you even load a game and the menu screen comes up, or even when the game is paused. The aesthetics are all important just as much as the way something works and plays weather it would be in film or game etc. Getting a good grip of the story and were it wants to be set is what is basically needed first to then go on and then make the important decisions as to how it’s all going to look, like an Art director would etc asking the questions of “Is it this or that, which works better? For this type of situation.”

I can see why the Artists in general are paid more than game designers, because there’s so much to think about but overall and they are responsible for the biggest proportion of how everything looks in the final finished asset. Just like what we’re learning in game production it you’re always thinking about what your designing and texturing, where the lighting should be, what angle should the object or scene be viewed from for the best possible outcome, presenting what it is your looking at and how you’re sort trying to sell what it is to the audience to make them impressed with what you have worked on and achieved and of course make tons of money out of it (Ha-ha). The people that all behind the making of films and game are the most important, because it wouldn’t all be possible without them in the first place cause let’s face it a professional game or film couldn’t be made with just actors and voice actors now could it? The ones who come up with all the ideas should take most of the credit although the actor did produce good quality roles and made it really believable that they were U.S army soldiers with the way they handled the situations they were in, some of the funny parts of the film, in and around the camp and the connection between them and the story line itself was just as authentic as the settings produced which really adds to the movie as a whole making it more believable as if this is the way it would happen in reality, like the way we would make something in 3D and we’d render it over and over to portray how it would look in reality. I think it’s about the way we’d interact like creating a setting/background and the way we visualise it and ask the question of “How does this make us feel?” just like when we’re watching the film, playing a game or even painting a picture, there always some sort of connection there, like the feel, the sound or even the scent of it, which we have get right in order to get as many people into what has being produced. Even things like trailers for films and games are important because that’s what can catch people onto wanting to play or watch something and that’s sort of what I’ve learnt about watching this film.