“Leaving the Game," produced by Method's VP of Media & Entertainment John Gilles, in conjunction with the American Film Institute, will debut in 3D at AFI’s DigiFest. AFI DigiFest is a yearly new media festival that showcases innovative commercial, experimental, and independent projects. This year, DigiFest takes up residence at the Mann 6 Theater in Hollywood from November 6-7, 2008. An atypical conference, the event emphasizes the showing of actual work - from new media producers, filmmakers, musicians, game developers, and other creatives.
Developed in 2007 in AFI’s Digital Content Lab, "Leaving the Game" was produced using a game engine to help create dynamic storytelling. The 6-minute pilot episode can be rendered on the fly, allowing playback to be completely personalized to the viewer, in real time. In the series, Amber is an assassin turned civilian who is being chased down by former employers. A unique viewer experience is created with product placements on the sets, the language the characters use, and adjustable maturity rating. Even integrated brand messages such as product placements can be swapped dynamically. The sets used in “Leaving the Game” were built in the Half-Life game environment where they can exist for use and re-use depending on the nature of each episode. The team collaborating on this machinima project included representatives from IBM, Cartoon Network, Method, and Microsoft. Kuma Games did all of the model development and animation.
"Leaving the Game" was recently recognized by the Academy of Machinima Arts & Sciences (AMAS) for Best Technical Achievement at the 2008 Machinima Film Festival.
VON DUTCH ARTIST-IN-RESIDENCY ONLINE
John Gilles also contributed to the development of Von Dutch/AFI Social Media collaboration "Planet Illogica." Planet Illogica, the Von Dutch Artist-in-Residency (AIR) Program, embraces more than 50 artists across a wide spectrum of disciplines – music, theater, photography, filmmaking, animation and more. Like many organizations made up of diverse creative populations, the VON Dutch AIR program wanted to find an easy online solution for sharing ideas, resources, and feedback with one another and with the world. John served as a Mentor and Strategic Advisor for the project, which identified a suite of solutions for the program. The results will be shown on day two of the conference.
