Today we will look at what games have done to enhance the power of their stories. We will then investigate what films can take from video game storytelling to improve in the future.

Game Storytelling

Over the past few decades, gaming has greatly expanded what it is capable of, both technologically and narratively. Take cutscenes for example. Often the default method of gaming story delivery, cutscenes are essentially movie clips rendered in the game’s engine. However, even this crude form of game storytelling has improved thanks to the more serious treatment of plots and characters. Games like the Red Dead Redemption and The Last of Us series have placed great importance on creating well-developed primary and secondary characters to involve us in the story. As well as building plots that are emotionally and viscerally engaging.

Beyond writing better narratives and characters, using background environmental details to tell stories has proven hugely successful. Think of the Dark Souls series. Aside from a handful of cutscenes, these games’ stories are primarily told through background details that you can see and interact with. This allows players to investigate the story at their own pace. Making them feel instrumental in the storytelling process. It also gives the impression of a bigger world existing outside of the narrative.

Of course one of the best ways video games handle story is by linking it to the game’s mechanics. Think of Bioshock and Spec Ops: The Line‘s stories. Which use game objectives and the gamification of war to make searing statements about the gaming industry and medium. Making the medium crucial rather than incidental to the narrative experience.

Films Meet Games

So, is there anything films can learn from video game storytelling? Some short films have already taken inspiration from gaming, using the Unreal Engine (Bioshock and Spec Ops: The Line) to generate their visuals. Additionally, while some debate surrounds it, the use of VR to enhance an artistic experience is something both mediums are exploring. But what can a non-interactive medium take from interactive storytelling beyond CG and viewing peripherals?

Firstly, games prove that films shouldn’t fear using major and minor background elements to tell stories. Usually, films heavily emphasise background story elements to indicate their significance. But video games have shown people are willing to pore over every detail of a story’s world to be immersed. They just need the opportunity to do so. Something that’s very hard with constant cutting, dialogue and directorial decisions that foreground only “crucial” things at the expense of everything else.

Also, there is often debate surrounding movie length, however, games show if you are invested in the world because of good characters and worldbuilding, length won’t matter. David Lean’s epics are great filmic proof of this point.

Finally, films must centre the medium’s possibilities again. Games and TV shows are currently experiencing a golden age because high-profile creations are using each medium’s uniqueness to their advantage. Games have been experimenting with how to engage audiences in interactive stories. TV shows have pushed the possibilities of pictorial long-form bitesize storytelling. Meanwhile, with higher profile movies, examples that focus on the medium’s creative presentation of images and which are unique, complete experiences are shrinking. Many popular recent films are franchise properties that adhere to strict presentation parameters. Experimentation and completeness should be encouraged in all aspects of the film industry.

Conclusion 

We have seen a huge rise in the immersive storytelling possibilities of video games over the last few decades. As technology improves we will likely see more films utilising technology associated with games to create and deliver their stories. However, the biggest thing the film industry should learn from gaming’s story-driven success is that there is no substitute for engaging character-driven stories, detailed worlds that enliven the story and its universe and creative decisions that remind audiences of the medium’s importance.

Also Read: Five Video Games That Need To Be Made Into Films

Also Read: Adam Sipione Unravels the Inspiring Story of Shenmue In His New Documentary

The post The Rise of Video Game Story Telling appeared first on Big Picture Film Club.

It’s no secret that the film was loosely inspired by true events, or that it wasn’t exactly historically accurate, but you may be surprised by the extent to which artistic liberties were taken. Exactly how much was different, and why does it matter?

Colonial History 101

By the seventeenth century, much of North America was still undisturbed by outsiders. Unfortunately, all good things come to an end. A group of English colonialists under the Virginia Company of London landed in current-day Virginia in 1607 to form Jamestown, England’s first permanent settlement in North America. The first expedition to the settlement included Captain John Smith, a soldier who later became one of Jamestown’s first colonial governors. The settlement was off to a rocky start with insufficient supplies and rough seas, but their fate turned around with tobacco. In 1608, the English merchant John Rolfe landed in Jamestown. He introduced the Orinoco strain of tobacco from Trinidad to Virginia, which became a profitable cash crop.

Pocahontas

The main thing which the Disney film got right is the fact that Pocahontas was the beloved daughter of the paramount chief of Powhatan, a network of tribes in current-day Virginia. Beyond that, the facts get very muddy. First of all, ‘Pocahontas’ was only a popular nickname, her two official names were Amonute and Motoaka.

John Smith

The love story between Pocahontas and John Smith was a purely Disney invention, created in the hopes that a Romeo-and-Juliet-esque storyline would capture audiences. That being said, it’s probably for the best that there was no real romance. In the movie, they met as adults. In reality, Pocahontas was only ten or eleven and John Smith was in his late twenties.

The dramatic scene in which she rescued Smith from execution is impossible to confirm. All accounts of it originated from Smith himself, and it is likely to be a gross exaggeration. Nonetheless, Pocahontas did become a mediator between the English and the Powhatans, helping to smooth relations as the two groups began to exchange goods. In her mid-teens, Pocahontas married Kocoum, a fellow Native American, likely of the Patawomeck tribe. In the film, she was evading a forced marriage to Kocoum, which is an incredibly unfair depiction of their marriage. Kocoum died only a few years later, allegedly around the time of Pocahontas’s kidnapping.

Yes, kidnapping.

John Rolfe

In 1613, Pocahontas was kidnapped and held for ransom by the colonialists to force negotiations with the Powhatan chief amid the then-strained relations over resources. The plan worked. Afterwards, Pocahontas remained close to the English, eventually converting to Christianity and learning their ways. During this time, she met and married the also widowed John Rolfe. By most accounts, they genuinely fell in love. They had one son, Thomas, and stayed in Virginia for two years before travelling to England.

The Virginia Company of London funded this trip to promote trade and settlement in the New World. Pocahontas was presented as a “noble savage” to prove to the English that even Native Americans could be moral, educated and groomed. Disingenuously marketed to the English as a “princess”, she was introduced to polite London society. She fell ill on the voyage back to Virginia in 1617 and died on arrival, aged only 20 or 21.

Implications

It can’t be denied that Pocahontas was a fun film, and fun films sometimes require tweaking of the facts. However, its makers must have known the effect of creating a huge-budget production that was so far from reality. Many people still view Pocahontas as a one-dimensional character in a love story, but she was so much more than that. She was equally a political mediator and a political pawn. She died far too young, with her legacy shrouded by the biased accounts of people who took advantage of her.

Artistic liberty should, perhaps, have its limits. One can view this as just a children’s film about a woman who died over 400 years ago. Alternatively, one can recognise that this is one of thousands of stories that feed into the colonialist-hero trope which has slowly but surely watered down the harsh realities of what the British imposed upon North America.

To tell a story is to shape reality. What reality are you creating?

Also Read: Time’s Up for ‘Steamboat Willie’: A Shift in American Copyright

The post Straying From The Truth: The Historical Facts Disney’s ‘Pocahontas’ Overshadowed appeared first on Big Picture Film Club.