Uncategorized – Page 3

Producers in Entertainment Technology

In the next 15 weeks, I will be investigating producers in entertainment technology. In particular, I am interested in the industries of film and gaming. There are many other areas of entertainment technology such as theme parks, location-based entertainment, et cetera, but I figured I’d start small.

I will be updating this blog with things I’ve learned from reading both “The Game Producer’s Handbook” by Dan Irish as well as “The Complete Film Production Handbook” by Eve Light Honthaner.

Moreover, I’ll be looking to interview producers at various positions in these industries, either alumni of the ETC or friends of friends.

ETC 4th Semester

Musings, Uncategorized

Looks like it’s already my fourth and last semester at CMU’s Entertainment Technology Center. This semester I’m out at the ETC’s Silicon Valley campus in Redwood City, CA. The fun things to talk about this semester will be:

A) Being a Producer on my ETC Project, Bravura, about creating an app that makes people ages 8+ realize that creating music is easy and fun.

B) My mandatory class, Current Issues in Entertainment Technology and Design, in which I will be doing two things:

1) Researching and reflecting on various company visits and guests speakers.

2) Doing an independent study on Producers in film versus Producers in gaming.

C) My elective class, Entrepreneurship in Entertainment Technology, where me and a team of peers will learn the ins/outs about starting our own hypothetical startup company.

Cross-Cultural Communication

Musings, Producing, Uncategorized

Something interesting happened on my project today, which both took me by surprise and completely made sense to me, and that was the coming to light of cross-cultural communication issues on my project team, particularly between the American students and the Chinese students. It turned out that the Chinese students were not speaking up about things they did not understand during meetings and had to look them up later, thus falling behind during meetings themselves, and this became something that another teammate was very interested in remedying.

On the one hand, I actually completely understand what is happening. Having spent the past few years overcoming my own upbringing in a Chinese family, I know exactly what the Chinese students are feeling. Half of it is respect: Too much respect for someone who knows more than you and the fear of interrupting them. The other half is ego: The Chinese have a strong cultural respect for appearances, and just as you want to not interrupt someone else’s time to change, you want to “save your own face;” you don’t want to appear uniformed or embarrass yourself by asking questions about things that everyone else seems to already know.

On the other hand, this phenomenon on my project team took me completely by surprise. While I know many of the international Chinese students, and sympathize with the awkwardness of adjusting to American culture, I’ve never worked with any of them during my two previous project experiences at the ETC. And thus, in the context of how I expect a project to go, I didn’t even anticipate this problem. I guess I had already compartmentalized what I expected out of different contexts.

Ok, so enough about my reaction. What do I recommend? For anyone who is dealing with this problem, I will give my personal opinion of what would have helped me when I was on the other side of this cultural divide. I doubt all Chinese students are feeling exactly the same way that I did, but my conversations so far imply that a good number of them are.

So, when I was a very shy and respectful but also self-conscious culturally Chinese young man, back even recently in undergrad, what would have helped? Well, the first thing that stopped me from speaking up was feeling inferior to the other person and not wanting to waste their time. However, I sure talked a lot about ALL of my concerns to friends one-on-one. Those two factors really helped me open up, and I feel that international students often do the same when I approach them under similar circumstances. So my first recommendation for helping culturally Chinese students speak up is to approach them one-on-one as a friend. Now, this isn’t a solution to the speaking up in a group problem, but I’ll admit that even I haven’t completely overcome that myself; that just requires that person to build up a rapport with everyone in the group and that takes time. That brings me to the second thing, which was the self-consciousness of being afraid of asking a stupid question. People can say that there are “no stupid questions” but that alone is not going to convince anyone to stop judging their own questions. My second recommendation for this is actually to let it play itself out. Being self-conscious for me was my ego’s way of protecting itself in light of all the things that I wasn’t good at, but it was still ego. Eventually, I realized that not asking questions because my ego was afraid of getting hurt was still hurting me and my productivity and that internal realization is the best catalyst for change.

I guess these recommendations might not seem very helpful because I’m saying to treat the issue with respect and let it sort itself out most of the time, but that’s because that’s how it worked for me. People don’t change their personality just because an external force is pushing them; if anything that makes them resist more sometimes. What really causes change is an internal realization / force and that process itself is also very gradual.

EDS End of Semester Reflection

Art, Musings, Portfolio, Producing, Uncategorized

My Fall 2012 elective, Entertainment Design Studio, is over. I’ve finished what was essentially an independent study in Fight Choreography and Filmography, and throwing myself right in to it (literally) has shown me a lot. Even at the beginning of this semester, I knew that one semester of coursework would provide me no mastery in this field, but I do feel like I have seen a lot and become aware of the processes and considerations that a producer of fight scenes needs to be aware of.

Designing

Designing for your actors is essential for them to pull off a convincing performance and stay safe, but you need to know them almost as well as you know yourself.
The best fights fit in a larger universe. What do they characters want other than to hurt each other? How did they end up in this situation? Et cetera. Barring all of that, it’s still possible to design a technique-ly impressive fight.
A fight is a physical altercation; pick a location first and incorporate its space.
Pacing a fight and creating “phrases” of combat is the same as creating any plot/interest curve.
You will run up into many issues: costuming, lighting, sound effects, etc. Know they exist, know what your team is capable of doing well, and make clear what you are not.

Performing

Because images cannot show depth (except for 3D film now), stacking a strike and its intended target along the line of sight of the camera without the two actually meeting is still the best way to fake “contact.”
Stunt performers are actors foremost. They might get “hit” for 4 frames, but they need to sell that hit for the next 24 frames or so. Being able to exaggerate a reaction to something that never happened will make or break a fight scene faster than an incorrectly thrown punch.
Practice a fight scene like a kata or even better like a dance. It’s controlled chaos; at every moment, people need to know where they should be and where everyone else should be. More importantly, they should know when something is wrong and when to stop if their partner misses a beat.
Previous combat experience therefore can be a detriment to a fight performer. Instincts to not give tells or exaggerate, instincts to break the opponents rhythm, and instincts to always keep one’s guard up all work against the aforementioned good practices.
Always have a third eye watching a performance, because the performance will eventually have to look good to a camera, and that point brings us to:

Filming

There is an intimate relationship between filming and performing a fight scene. It’s almost impossible to find the best camera angles without being able to constantly move around the constantly moving performers, and vice versa, to perform properly to the camera if it is not there. Specifically, because strikes and their targets need to stack relative to the camera as mentioned above, all three (attacker, victim, camera) all need to move together to avoid revealing “dead air.”
The 180 degree rule holds in shooting a fight scene for the purpose of continuity when editing. There are however plenty of opportunities to let the action dictate when the 180 degree line will change.
In the same shot, film the actions before and after whatever is being showcased. E.g. recovering from the previous punch, doing the complete backflip kick, and getting ready for the next kick. You need this to be able to cut on an action to show rapid continuity while editing.

Editing

Editing a fight scene and its surprising number of shot angles is a stylistic art itself. Long master shots to show off the performance. Rapid close-ups to emphasize the emotional intensity. When to switch between them and how to emphasize them. You will have a preference; the editor will have a preference; the director will film to a preference.
Speeding up the performance for more impact is subtle and tricky. Simply speeding up film can feel gimmicky and weird if done for more than fractions of a second or if the performers did not also do certain actions slower. Removing single frames in places can help at key moments but it is exact and time-consuming. What I found was best for compressing time was cutting on actions. Perhaps performer A delivers kicks slowly but if you cut from one shot of A preparing their kick to a different one of B receiving the kick, you can lose that second in between and the audience still fills in the gap. Note: This can keep the pace of the fight up, but it will not remedy performer A looking slow whenever they are on screen.

And to end on, here are selected bloopers from the semester:

Capital Games Personal Post-Mortem

Games, Musings, Portfolio, Producing, Uncategorized

The Fall 2012 semester at the Entertainment Technology Center is over: Food Quest has been handed off to the client as well as into the ETC archives, and the Capital Games team is officially disbanded.

The team achieved a great deal this semester and I’m very happy to have been their producer. My team really stepped up to every challenge and obstacle we encountered along the way. I hope they’ve learned a lot, and as for myself, I feel like I learned a few things about producing as well:

From my advisors:

I met with my faculty advisors twice over the course of the semester for individual performance grades and evaluation, and they told me a good number of insightful things about me as a producer. There are there main things I need to work on:

Leading the team:
I’ve normally got a passive personality, and that’s pretty apparent to anyone who meets me. While the faculty sees me as doing extremely well with the administrative and clerical duties of producing, I’m not yet a figurehead. This is something that I need to work on and I believe I can; I came to graduate school to improve what I’m not good at, not to continue to do only what I am good at.

Growing the team:
I’ve got personality quirk that isn’t a problem for me, but is detrimental to those around me. That personality quirk is that I’m pessimistically optimistic: I like to talk about how bad things might be so that we can make it turn out better; this is how I internally motivate myself to work harder. Turns out that constantly lamenting how terrible the project is going to turn out is not the best way to motivate a team and help them get in the mood to work hard. It’s fine if I keep the pessimistic optimism for myself, but externally, I need to show more optimistic optimism.

Pushing the team to achieve:
My normally passive personality towards others makes it simple for others to get away with the “easy way out” in their work, and I need to recognize that and know not only when to retreat from challenges that are too big, but push my team towards challenges that they can overcome. For Capital Games, the team took a bit of time to hit our stride at the beginning and could have arguably hit it a little sooner if we hadn’t let ourselves be so daunted by our project initially.

From Anthony Hildebrand:

Anthony was our Writer and Sound Designer on the team, but he plans to be a producer as well. For our project, he wanted to be able to look at the producer from an external role so that he could learn from me and I could learn from him, and it worked. As the producer on a team, I’m the “go-to guy” but it helped for me to sometimes have someone else I could “go-to;” moreover, having someone else to help evaluate and criticism my actions and decisions really helped me to grow and develop.

One thing that Anthony helped me with was my communication. In my circles, I’ve never been the social leader-type, but around the time I started graduate school, I realized that most skills aren’t innate, they’re practiced, and so my communication is something that I’m actively trying to improve during my time here at the ETC. Anthony helped point out a lot of my shortcomings and how to solve them:

One thing was to be aware of falling back on certain words too much and “cheapening” them. For myself, I too often use the word “definitely” when I want to sound confident: “X will definitely happen” OR “I will definitely do that.” While being confident is important, I was using this speech tick too much as a crutch.
The biggest thing, though was my lack of control in a conversation. My default personality is the passive nice guy and I can be afraid of controlling a conversation because it feels selfish; Anthony explained that as a producer, it is important to let others have their say, but to then bring it back into the larger picture to show that you always know what’s going on. One particular thing he suggested I practice as well is to end conversations on “a button” – when I know a conversation is ending, I should take control and leave an important takeaway that I want everyone to remember as well as finish with a definitive phrase that ends the conversation.

The biggest thing he helped with was helping to facilitate communication with the client. On Project Xense, the client was more hands-off than here on Capital Games, but Anthony had dealt with a more responsive client on his own previous project at the ETC, Pixel Pushers. He gave a lot of great pointers about how to help the client understand what the team was and wasn’t capable of, but moreover on how to make sure to address the client’s concerns while suggesting alternatives. It can often be easy to push back aggressively against unexpected client demands, but one really needs to dissect the meaning of those demands. If you understand what the client needs relative to what they want, you can come to a compromise that is acceptable to their values and your own schedule.

And of course, he kept my confidence up and made being on the team a fun time, and that’s an even more important characteristic of a good producer.

ETC 3rd Semester

Musings, Producing, Uncategorized

I’m now starting my third semester here at CMU’s Entertainment Technology Center – the first semester of my second year. There will be lots of fun things to talk about: In particular, I hope to publish some thoughts out of my journal about experiences this semester in:

A) Being a Producer on my client project about educational games.

B) My elective, Entertainment Design Studio, in which I plan to study Fight Choreography and Filmography.

Look for posts about these during the semester (hopefully), or definitely by the end of the semester.

Disney Inspire Days 2012

Musings, Uncategorized

Got selected along with 9 other ETC students to partake in Disney Inspire Days this year. We flew out on short notice from Pittsburgh to Burbank for the Thursday, March 29 event (Same thing ran on Wednesday as well).

I did sign an NDA so I can’t say much more than what is already out there, but:

The upcoming feature film “Wreck-It-Ralph” looks like it’ll be quite fun.
The short film “Paperman” that Disney has been quite secretive about is extremely impressive.

Overall, the large group setting and tight scheduling of course implicitly limited the depth of the experience. Nonetheless, I really enjoyed the atmosphere and the employees came across as very fun and casual; as to their level of work otherwise, I’m sure there’s little doubt about that.

GDC 2012

Games, Musings, Producing, Uncategorized

This was my first time at a conference, let alone such a big one like the Game Developer’s Conference. While I wasn’t as outgoing as I probably should have been, I still really appreciated being able to hangout with all my ETC friends in a setting outside of class and the ETC building.

As to the conference: It was quite something. The amount of expertise being crammed into a two-block radius was palpable, and I can’t wait until the GDC Vault opens and I can watch all the great talks that I had to miss to listen to other great talks.

Now, I’ve made great improvements in learning the names of people I see everyday, but I’m still terrible at the names of “well-known” people so I won’t drop any here, but they certainly said a good number of things that other people and sites have taken note of.

I will say that I did learn quite a bit about producing, which has encouraged me to be more proactive with my project this semester, as well as about animation and portfolios, which has discouraged me from thinking that my knack for 3D art last semester is such a big deal. I also met a considerable number of random people, though I found that many of them did not seem so interested in talking (trying to network with the big wigs? or perhaps that’s the characteristic of game developers? OR maybe I’m really not that interesting?!?)

Global Game Jam 2012

Games, Musings, Uncategorized

Global Game Jam 2012 ended earlier yesterday. The Pittsburgh International Game Developers Association held their event at the Entertainment Technology Center, right in my backyard, and there were about 100 Jammers who came.

While I wasn’t actually a Jammer, I did volunteer to help and I don’t regret it. I got to hang out with cool people while having time between events to go back to my project room and do backlogged work. Admittedly, most of the work was setting up and cleaning up food, but as someone who is interested in producing, I respect the fact that these things have to be done so that the more awesome game-making can get done.

The jam theme was the Ouroboros, and there were a lot of cool games here in Pittsburgh: Some were simpler and casually fun; others tried to make you really think about the idea of biting your tail.

There was “Hebi Hanabi” made by the ETC stars Scott Chen, Brian Lee, Zero Liu, and Kaiyang Zhang. They took the classic “Snake” game about eating eggs to grow longer and added two-player combat with the cool mechanic of actually having to bite your own tail to launch projectiles at our opponent. A novel re-invention of “Snake,” their game was quite polished and aesthetically clean. They, in fact, won the Judges Award and Player’s Choice Award.

Another game worth mentioning is “Super Ouro Bro.s” which, despite the gimmicky name, had a really neat mechanic. This game was made by Jing Li, Michael Lee, Dan Lin, and Felix Park; the latter three are of renown for their ETC project called “mindful xp” about meaning, expression, and games. The mechanic was that every level a new enemy was introduced and the AI for that new enemy did something both predictable and frustrating: It did exactly the same actions that you took in the previous level! In the end, you were fighting yourself; now that’s “biting” yourself in the tail.”

I enjoyed quite a few of the other games that my friends made and would write about all of them, but it is 2AM and I have a project advisor meeting tomorrow; look for the games here:

http://globalgamejam.org/og/games/17034/list

And don’t forget to check out some of the other cool games that other people all around the world made.

Project Xense

Musings, Uncategorized

So I’m one week in to my first project semester here at the ETC.

Projects move and feel much much stranger than BVW, especially because of the slow scheduling and the administrative/branding things we have to do. I really can’t wait to get in to the meat of the project itself once our project plan is fully scheduled and our posters and website our designed.

You can find out more about my project at its own website here:

http://www.etc.cmu.edu/projects/tatrc/