We have already spoken in these pages about conventional actors (and often well-known ones), who are gradually experimenting with the possibilities that the digital world offers them to practice their art and work.It was the tip of the iceberg.At the press release of the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II that took place recently in Amsterdam, apart from technical explanations and about the history of the game, there was something that added an extra layer of depth: a round table in which four of the actors who participate in the game told their experience at the time to face the challenge act in a video game They played a clip showing two musket-clad snipers crawling across the battlefield.It was one of those moments of intimacy that action games encourage before confrontations.A dialogue was heard from the protagonist of the mission (played by actor Elliot Knight, 32 years old), who spoke through a headset with a CIA agent played by Rya Kihlstedt (52 years old).
It was dialogue embedded in the type of dialogue that these types of games usually have, but it worked and carefully.They talked about the character’s favorite weapon and, in a very good work of voice and intimacy, they talked about the etymological meaning of the word “sniper”.“It’s funny,” Elliot Knight said between surprised and fascinated after seeing the video, “to hear a conversation we never really had.” It is understood.Since the dialogues are optional based on the decisions made by the player, each actor records his part and it is the game itself that is responsible for splicing the sentences into a kind of (effective) Lego dialogue.At the same table, Knight talked about working with motion capture, about how “you can’t hide: there’s not a flicker that the camera doesn’t record, there’s not one camera to turn to or give your best.
profile to”.British actor Barry Sloane (41 years old) spoke of a way of acting that feels “vibrant, creative, in which you learn every day and which escapes the something official that’s what you live when you act in series or movies”.Glenn Morshower (63 years old), a colonel in the game and known for his performances in films such as transformers and series like 24, He talked about the “challenge” of working with the motion suit, the inconvenience of “having to wear the damn helmet with cameras” and, more interestingly, how “you dive into the depths of what you are able to create as an actor”.Basically, they all refer to the same concept: the feeling of acting in a new way, participating in a way of expression that develops in real time.Everyone (like the writers, like those who work with the graphics engines) said that they feel like pioneers, like settlers in the Wild West.We recently talked here about immortality.
We have omitted the virtues of the game in its video game quality, but perhaps the quality of the product as a cinematic work was not entirely clear.The clips we used in-game to unravel the mystery of actress Marissa Marcel (there’s no such category, but it’s no exaggeration to say that Manon Gage might deserve an Oscar for playing her) were filmed in the real world: clips of three movies.(one medieval, detective and a thriller modern), as well as fake interviews, meetings, parties after the premieres, and so on.The game does not have a single gram of 3D technology: everything was shot by an artistic and technical team in a state of grace.There are many hours of filming and work behind something like this immortality.
They are two brush strokes, basically, of the technological possibilities that the art of video games can face.It’s curious.The great cinematic phenomenon of the rest of the year, Avatar: The Water Sensewill repeat the formula of its predecessor and give most of the plot to digital characters, reversing the path traveled by immortality (and by the way the creative logic): real actors play flesh characters in a video game while other real actors play digital characters in a movie shown in traditional cinemas.
Is it the new evolutionary step in the field of acting, a sin for purists, or the only use of creative possibility? Maybe all of it.And perhaps, much more: the redefinition of the artistic framework based on the technological leap.What creatively exciting times we live in.And what is left to us.
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