The Film Directing Game
THE FILM DIRECTING GAME is a social physical game played in the physical world. It’s part of a series of experiments that look into the unique potentials and limitations of play and experiential games in college-level media education.
How To Play
First – as part of all creative collaborative efforts, we establish teams and roles. In this iteration – playtested during the first day of classes at the Film and Digital Media Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz – twenty-six undergraduate students participated.
To select someone who is or wants to work on being a leader. The Director will be leading the cast and the crew in efficiently producing a work of creative merit that would be impossible to create as a single individual.
In turn, now the Director and Producer have a brief couple of minutes to hear out the other team members voice their role preferences and perhaps discuss their relevant abilities or experiences. Then, both Director and Producer assign the remaining roles of Cinematographer, Actor 1, Actor 2, and Crew.
SCENE CARDS: Each Scene Card contains a two-page scene of one script – in this case, the Scene Cards are all from the script of the play ART by Yasmina Reza.
At this point, the teams line up to begin pre-production – excluding the actors who have taken the SCENE CARDS and moved on to the Production Set to begin to practice their lines.
PROP CARDS: Each Producer draws two PROP CARDS.
FRAME CARDS: Each Cinematographer draws one FRAME CARD.
So, now that there are teams and roles, preproduction begins. The “preproduction river” (modeled after traditional team-building exercises such as "Hot Chocolate River" or "Lava River") represents the somewhat tumultuous, yet inextricably collaborative, process of preproduction.
The objective is for the team members (excluding the two Actors who are busy working on their scene) to work together to cross the preproduction river by stepping only on “Planning Milestones," represented here by paper plates.
There are several simple rules to follow, though mainly what matters most is that if a player touches the floor or any object except the plate or another teammate, this player must go back to the start.
The first team to cross the river proceeds to the Production Set. When a team arrives on set, the members assess their PROP and FRAME CARDS, and:
This game asks: Can play be activated as a pedagogical framework to generate collaborative media-making and creativity in the college classroom? The goal is to create a short filmed scene as a team that has creative merit, and the game presents a structure to accomplish this even if the players have never done so before.
How To Play
First – as part of all creative collaborative efforts, we establish teams and roles. In this iteration – playtested during the first day of classes at the Film and Digital Media Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz – twenty-six undergraduate students participated.
- Each team consists of six players, the roles are: Producer, Director, Cinematographer, Actor 1, Actor 2, and Crew
- The first six students to arrive to class are designated as Producers
- The remaining students (in this case, twenty) simply count from one to six to determine their team membership
To select someone who is or wants to work on being a leader. The Director will be leading the cast and the crew in efficiently producing a work of creative merit that would be impossible to create as a single individual.
In turn, now the Director and Producer have a brief couple of minutes to hear out the other team members voice their role preferences and perhaps discuss their relevant abilities or experiences. Then, both Director and Producer assign the remaining roles of Cinematographer, Actor 1, Actor 2, and Crew.
SCENE CARDS: Each Scene Card contains a two-page scene of one script – in this case, the Scene Cards are all from the script of the play ART by Yasmina Reza.
At this point, the teams line up to begin pre-production – excluding the actors who have taken the SCENE CARDS and moved on to the Production Set to begin to practice their lines.
PROP CARDS: Each Producer draws two PROP CARDS.
FRAME CARDS: Each Cinematographer draws one FRAME CARD.
So, now that there are teams and roles, preproduction begins. The “preproduction river” (modeled after traditional team-building exercises such as "Hot Chocolate River" or "Lava River") represents the somewhat tumultuous, yet inextricably collaborative, process of preproduction.
The objective is for the team members (excluding the two Actors who are busy working on their scene) to work together to cross the preproduction river by stepping only on “Planning Milestones," represented here by paper plates.
There are several simple rules to follow, though mainly what matters most is that if a player touches the floor or any object except the plate or another teammate, this player must go back to the start.
The first team to cross the river proceeds to the Production Set. When a team arrives on set, the members assess their PROP and FRAME CARDS, and:
- The Producer takes on the responsibility of acquiring all necessary props, and
- The Cinematographer takes on the responsibility of figuring out how the scene will be shot such that -- when it ends -- it does so with the same visual composition that is on the FRAME CARD. In other words, the FRAME CARD illustrates the visual end point of the scene.
- The Crew assists in every way necessary
- The responsibility of the Producer and Crew is to keep track of the time, the set, the furniture, props, slate, to recruit extras if necessary, to record sound, and to assist the Cinematographer.
- The responsibility of the Director is to understand the dramatic meaning of the scene and to assist the actors in figuring out their intentions, their motivations, and their blocking.
- The responsibility of the two Actors is to know their lines and to work with the Director on their characters’ intentions, motivations, and blocking.
- The responsibility of the Cinematographer is to visually compose the scene, making sure to end on the designated framing, and to assist the Director and the Actors.
- To cover some basics: this is the first day of class – much like there is also a first day of production on the set. The game seeks to communicate – experientially – that it’s necessary for everyone to quickly realize that this is a collaborative space. Bonding will be required. Team members will need to lift each other up. Not one person has all the skills, competencies, and behaviors necessary to accomplish this, but working together it can all come into place.
- To encourage assertiveness: the game seeks to construct a quote/unquote magic circle or conceptual space that is safe and encourages players to talk about their director’s vision.
- The goal of the game is to create a collaborative creative short filmed scene, and the game presents a structure in order to accomplish this even if the players have never done so before.
- To gesture towards some realities about the film industry. For example, filmmaking is often a physically demanding endeavor. The preproduction stage of the game attempts to convey this. However, a take-away for the designers is to work on this because – within the "magic circle" – it can exclude some players. Another example of an industry reality is that Producers cannot be late (they should be early, in fact). Yet another example – this being a DIRECTING class – Directors need to learn to negotiate creativity with ethical behavior and with efficiency. Production sets are often high-pressure environments where everyone needs to be safe, included, and respected. Projects need to be delivered on time and are almost guaranteed to never quite be the perfect reflection one’s creative aspirations.