Mt. Discernen Trailer

[delta_echo]

Hey all,
This isn't my film but rather a buddy's (I think he's registered on here as LP3media). Anyways, here's a trailer to his latest production: http://www.mountdiscernen.com/video.html . Feel free to ask questions or post comments. I'll do my best to get him on here to answer them. Have a good one.

[iCEbLuEORbitZ]

looooks tight. great use of cranes and stabilizers. seems like insane thinking went into this. i mean, how many different routes are there? and you have to film a seperate story for each outcome and path you take. excited to see the final product.

[JARHEAD]

That trailer looks really good. I like the shot done on the crane. All the other shots look smooth and the music goes well with the video. I'll be checking out your website next year to see how to final copy looks!

[Gyro]

So... it's like the interactive, choose your story Goosebumps books?

[Lawriejaffa]

Yep its cute but ive got to admit i don't think its necessarily a great idea. It's fine for interative DVD's (you would be surprised how often this formula can be used for things like corporate dvds or educational stuff.)

The problem with this is the same problem faced by interactive game stories (The role playing books that Stave Jackson and Ian Livingstone made for example amongst others.) Is that while they can be entertaining they can be a proper story, because the story is directed by the viewer. This means that the story itself is always relatively thin compared to the quality that a singularly crafted work can achieve.

That said i think your idea, shooting and premise looks promising, its just not a 'real' film tho, but something akin to other interactive medias, and is certainly not a 'film where the audience get to decide' *cough cough*

[Moriarty]

Hey Delta,

Nice idea - liked the trailer and the mystery surrounding who's responsible for the death in the woods. I think you have to be commended for your efforts - I can only imagine that once the story creates the 'fork in the road' effect it would've been harder to keep track of all the branches created by the decisions made by the viewer.

I used to love the Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone books - Death Trap Dungeon and Firetop Mountain are still up there amongst my favourites. Sure, the idea became repetitive and waned after a while - but I hate to use the word gimmick but I'm gonna have to - this gimmick is due a comeback, I feel.

Although Lawrriejaffa's concerns regarding the plot are justified, hopefully the 'branched' off sections will each have a powerful narrative and engage the viwer relentlessly throughout.

Do you have a number as to how many different routes the viewer can take? I'd feel cheated if by the end of the sotry all the branched decisions resolutely come back into one or two final endings...

[Ornsack]

I actually got really excited watching that. Something I fail to do a lot from proper movie trailers these days. Really nicely put together (other than the vocal audio suddenly cutting abruptly on the second shot)

I like the interactive idea too. Not only does it show a bit of creativity, but it's nice to know that the whole thing is going to be well planned out!

[lp3media]

Thanks delta_echo for starting this thread. There are some posts that have brought up some valid points. From the beginning, we knew that an interactive story could not be crafted in the same way as a film narrative. With that in mind, instead of creating a whole bunch of individual subplots depending on the viewers choices, we came up with one central conflict (the stolen gear) that runs through all the routes. Additionally, many of the events in some routes are interconnected to events in other routes. Watching through with a certain set of decisions may reveal what a character does, but watching through with a different set of decisions may reveal the background of why a character does something. Each combination of decisions reveals a different piece of the puzzle. After watching all the different combinations of choices, the viewer should have a good idea as to what really happened on that mountain and why.

Having created many interconnected events, there definitely is some overlap where a couple different choices might end up taking you to mostly the same end. There are even routes that are completely different from each other for the whole time except the end where the main characters safely get off the mountain in both routes. We tried to make it not about the ending, but about what happened along the way. Hopefully viewers will not feel too cheated by this approach. Currently, there are about 11 different route variations, each about 10-15 minutes long.

Thanks to everyone for all the comments so far.