practice in your local area
TRANSCRIPT
Creative Industries: Business PerspectivesActivity 2: Identify a Preferred Practice in Your Local Area
Runaround Films
Runaround Films mainly provides rental equipment for local cinematographers. Digital cinematography has become in-creasingly popular with the introduction of the affordable RED camera (Fig. 1) in 2005 (RED, n. d.) The digital camera and personal non-linear editing software, like Apple's Final Cut, provided the grounds for a digital revolution in Film and Television. Today many film are shot partially or entirely in
digital. It is much cheaper today to access high end technology but it still remains a significant investment for a small company. For small studios it is always better to rent the equipment. Sometimes there isn't a studio at all. Many Advertisement companies would hire an in house editor but they would outsource production talent like Directors of Photography (DOP) and equipment. That is where Roundabout Films focuses it's business strategy. They hire equipment for such small productions.
Creative Industries: Business PerspectivesActivity 2: Identify a Preferred Practice in Your Local Area
June 21, 2015
Carlos Villarreal [email protected]
For this activity I have chosen companies and individuals within the games industry and also in the local Film industry. After becoming a freelance artist I have found myself doing more work related to Advertising or Film and I feel that this could represent future opportunities.
Fig. 1 Runaround Films, Untitled (2015).In this image we can see an operator with a RED digital camera on a RIG.
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Motion Graphics artists are also often hired on a contract basis if the project requires it. I am myself a Mograph Artist and this is where I see a business opportunity.In recent months i have been searching for a shared office space, preferably with other artists and creatives, and I found Roundabout Films. When I found out that they are renting offices for other artists I intermediately took this opportunity and I rented a space from August.I feel that this is could also represent a good opportunity for Roundabout Films. They mentioned that collaboration be-tween artists in the office is very common and I know from personal experience that cinematographers are often in need of CG
artists.Coincidently Runaround films was founded the same year that RED Cinema Camera Company, 2005, by two local cinematog-raphers, John-Erling H. Fredriksen Torkel and Riise Svenson. Both artists are DOPs and they had many years of experience in the local industry before attending the Norwegian Film Institutes . They founded Roundabout Films after finishing their stud-ies (Runaround Films, n. d.) Their structure is very flat and each member of the team needs to be flexible to help with anything that might be required.
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Fig. 2 RetroFlux, Ultrablast (2009) iOS Game.
Osman Keskin
Osman Keskin is a local game developer who runs his own one-man studio called RetroFlux (RetroFlux, n. d.). Keskin is an engineer and in recent years he has been focusing on building a game engine. I believe that this is mainly a pastime and a passion for Keskin because the games-en-gine market is becoming as saturated as the casual games industry. But working on a game engine is not a bad idea either.
Many small teams have opted to create niche technologies that later were bought by other bigger companies in order to be integrated in their own engine. Often the engineers and artists were integrated to the company along with their product.I don't know if this is his plan but what am certain is that Kisken remains pas-sionate for games. Through his company, RetroFlux, he developed and published a shoot-them-all game for iOS in the Apple Store: Ultrablast (RetroFlux, n. d.).
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Fig. 3 Red Thread Studio, Dreamfall Chapters: The Longest Journey (2014).
Keskin did not used his 3D engine during development but he did used proprietary technology. Keskin created the game by himself with minimal support for art (Fig. 2).Keskin also used to be employed by Funcom. The Norwegian game industry is very small and most people that you will meet had worked at some point of their career for the biggest developer in the country: Funcom.Keskin also runs a bi-monthly game devel-opers meeting (Keskin, n. d.) I have been attending these meetings regularly myself and this small enterprise is an important an encouraging venue for upcoming de-velopers to find out more about the games
industry and meet other professionals.The meeting is not exclusively dedicated to video games, designers also bring prototypes for board games to be tested among the crowd. I myself presented my project idea for this MA recently, Through the Andean Sky, and I received valuable feedback from the attendees.Osman Keskin operates RetroFlux as a small company much the same way I do my own. Meaning that he is responsible to everything in the company, form promotion to development and hiring additional talent.
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Red Thread Studio
Founded by ex-Funcom employees, Red Thread Studio is currently developing an episodic Adventure Game: Dreamfall Chapters (Fig. 1). The IP belongs to Funcom but the franchise is currently being devel-oped at Red Thread. This independent
studio is a perfect example of the thriving Norwegian Games Industry. The Norwegian Government has put forward different incentives to boost Norwegian developers and Red Thread has won a fund from the Norwegian Film Institute, although most of their funding comes from a crowd-fund-ing campaign through Kickstarter. The
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campaign attracted over 21.000 supporters and generated over 1.5 million US dollars (Red Thread Studio, n. d.), which almost doubled their expected goal of 800,000 US dollars. I believe that Red Thread is utilizing their resources efficiently. They are developing their game with the third party engine Unity, which is accessible at a affordable price, and they have multiple release dates following their release model for the game. An episodic game is like a series of novels in the same storyline being published one after another. In fact each of the five parts that constitutes the entire body of Dreamfall Chapters is called a Book.This strategy releases tension from the final stages of production and allows for multiple releases. Most studios will hit crunch time in the final months of development before one single release date.I think that this strategy is smart but also
not free from risk. Multiple release dates can also represent multiple crunch times and after each release popularity of the game can variate.Both book One and Two received mixed reviews from critics but overall the game had a positive score of 82 at Metacritic (Metacritic, 2014)Red Thread was founded in 2012, Dreamfall Chapters is their first game but after having a positive response and encouraging funding they are working on a new unannounced title.Read Thread Studios operates with a bigger and tighter structure. Being a small team means that each individual still needs to be flexible to ware many hats, but each member of the team will specialize in one or two areas of production.
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BibliographyKeskin, O. (no date) Game Developers. Available at: http://www.meetup.com/Game-Developers-Oslo/
[Accessed: 21 June 2015]Metacritic (2014) Dreamfall Chapters Book One: Reborn. Available at: http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/
dreamfall-chapters-book-one-reborn (Accessed: 21 June 2015)RED (no date) RED Digital Cinema - 6K, 5K, & 4K Digital Cameras. Available at: http://www.red.com/
[Accessed: 21 June 2015]Red Thread Studio (no date) Kickstarter >> Dreamfall Chapters: The Longest Journey by Red Thread
Games. Available at: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/redthread/dreamfall-chapters-the-longest-journey [Accessed: 21 June 2015]
RetroFlux (no date) Available at: http://retroflux.net/ (Accessed: 21 June 2015)Runaround Films (no date) Utleie av RED Scarlet og Carl Zeiss Compact Primes CP.2. Available at: http://
runaroundfilm.no/ [Accessed: 21 June 2015]
List of ImagesFig. 1 Runaround Films, Untitled (2015). [image online] Available at: https://www.facebook.com/runaround-
film/photos/pb.335933186522585.-2207520000.1434909791./676748112441089/?type=3&theater [Accessed 21 June 2015]
Fig. 2 RetroFlux, Ultrablast (2009) iOS Game. [image online] Available at: http://www.retroflux.net [Accessed 21 June 2015]
Fig. 3 Red Thread Studio, Dreamfall Chapters: The Longest Journey (2014). [image online] Available at: http://redthreadgames.com/games/chapters/ [Accessed 21 June 2015]
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