INTERVIEW | Guillermo Del Toro, Part I: Videogames, Transmedia and Here's His E-mail - via indieWIRE

via indiewire.com

Excerpt from an interview with Eric Kohn:

"In this first part of a two-part interview, Del Toro spoke with indieWIRE about why videogames and transmedia figure into his career almost as much as movies. Stayed tuned for the second part of the interview later this week.

EK: In addition to your various film projects, you’re also developing a videogame project called “Insane.” How does that fit into the other things you do with your time?

GT: I’ve been working on it for almost a year. I put a lot of work into it. It takes up a large part of my day. Sometimes, for days in a row or weeks in a row, I’m involved in working on this. I’m trying to learn everything I can about different media, because I’m a firm believer in transmedia. I think it’s a mistake to assume that since I know how to make movies, I know how to make videogames. However, I approach this videogame from the point of view of a very immersed gamer. I essentially grew up with videogames. I had the first videogame ever, the “Pong” game, and I’ve owned every console known to man since then. So I approach it as a medium that seems similar to film in some ways, but it’s actually very different. It has its own rules of language and storytelling. In this case, it’s not a passive audience. They’re far more active. I must say, in the past year, I’ve learned a lot working on “Insane,” which is good for me as a filmmaker. To me, videogames are a huge component of genre filmmaking in the future. You will always have Jim Jarmusch and Terrence Malick—there will always be quirkier independent films, but for the next big step for genre storytelling, videogames will be a major component.

EK: A lot of people think videogames are cinematic, but that can have many meanings. Some games are cinematic in the atmospheric sense, while in other cases the comparison has more to do with an internal connection to the events in the narrative. With that in mind, what sort of experience are you going for with “Insane”?

GT: We talked a lot about different versions of the game. We’re trying to do things that have not been done before, both in the gameplay and the devices that we use. We’re creating stuff that, at least for now—knock
on wood—hasn’t been done before. We’re trying to make it as immersive as possible...."

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