Berita
Twin Mirror is now available! Dive into this psychological thriller and learn about the cinematic aspect of the game right here!
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Andrew Desmond - Cinematic Director
"Twin Mirror" is a psychological thriller and a narrative experience with players embarking on an adventure in the small town of Basswood, West Virginia to uncover its secrets… I won’t go into details about the story here because I don't want to spoil anything as the game just released, but I would like to share with you my experience as a film director on the project.
One of the main things that attracted me the most to working with DONTNOD is their capacity to create very visual and immersive worlds within a narrative frame with a cool and enticing storyline and strong characters to go with it. This was definitely the case with "Twin Mirror" and there was a real opportunity for me to help them tell a story, only slightly differently than the way I usually do.
The first major difference with a movie is that it's an interactive story where, depending on the choices you make as a player, things will evolve slightly differently creating several outcomes and different possibilities. This complexifies things and changes the way I work as a director on many levels. The whole experience and process has thus allowed me to work with an insanely talented team of animators, writers, graphic designers, storyboard artists, writers and also camera and lighting artists with whom it is not only a joy to work with and to learn from but also to convey the ideas I have in mind when it comes to staging and directing scenes for a psychological thriller.
This of course translated visually through the use of various different camera angles and lenses, tracking shots and dark, moody lighting, all classic codes and conventions of the thriller genre and which are always effective. I personally found the fact that you are working within a virtual space to design shots very liberating considering you have the possibility to place the camera almost anywhere you like without having to ask yourself if it's physically possible or not. This is therefore even more fun to do when working within the genre where you can allow yourself to go to greater extremes from a visual standpoint!
Working with actors on a video game was also a new experience as it mainly involved motion capture shooting sessions (which I had never done before and during which I learned a ton of things!) as well as voice recordings which came afterwards. Not only do you have to greatly use your imagination for these sessions but they also demand you to be extremely precise when it comes to what the actors must do and where they need to go. Also, depending on each outcome designed for the player, their reactions and emotions had to be different although relevant to everything going on until then which I found equally compelling.
In the same way, a great deal of work has been done in terms of sound design and music in a very similar way to a film only with a much richer palette. I have therefore been working closely with talented sound designers and mixers as well as a composer who also comes from feature films (more news to come soon about him...)! One of the main differences as well is that when it comes to video games you're led to work even more as a team than on films and I was therefore brought to collaborate closely with the content team members of the game (including the Game Director, Narrative Director, Art Director, level designers, etc.) and dealing with issues that are both very different and yet somewhat similar to those you come across in the filmmaking. Ultimately the main goal is to tell the best story possible and offer the player the most engaging and emotional experience throughout.
In short, the whole thing has been a very thrilling and eye opening experience and I personally hope to be able to continue working on other video games like this one in the future and in parallel to my feature film projects.
I hope you will enjoy your time with Sam and all the other characters in our world of Basswood, West Virginia!
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