sammi needham : cogitate

Ocean Recon is a project that i have been working on for the last 12 months or so. We started planning this project just after i started at Visual Jazz. Trying to get a Submarine project off the ground is a process that had taken place a few times before and now we’d finally found an approach that everyone was happy with.

To show what life is like on a submarine is not an easy thing to do. It’s pretty hard to get on board one, and they’re not the easiest things to photograph in their normal state (underwater). So we set on a 3d approach for the sub and a whole lot of motion work to get a 1/2 sky/water look to the majority of the scenes.

The planning stage was meticulous. We went back and forth for a long time with actual Submariners getting the plans to construct the sub in 3D, getting the scripts right for the scenes and making sure that all of the details were accurate. This was really important as we wanted to give as realistic as possible interpretation of actual operations on board.

Here are a few examples of the kind of details that we adhered to, all based on facts:

• The sub tilts to 10 degrees as it surfaces
• The uniforms were real and displayed correct rank
• The dolphins sequence was taken straight from footage on board the HMAS Rankin
• The equation used to calculate a firing angle is the same trig that is actually used

…and a heap more.  But anyway, there were a lot of details that we paid attention to. It really helped us learn more about what goes on and how, so that we could then communicate that during the site’s presentation.

We incorporated 8 ‘activities’ into the site that intersect the scenes at poignant moments, they’re like little mini-games, but i think activity-points are a better description of them, as they’re not really games. These were also very true-to-life, or as much as possible given the simple interactions that we wanted them to have. Not designed to be sticking points for users, moreso to make sure that people are paying attention and to further explain the details of what is going on in a more interactive way.

Tomma from VJ, in one of the diving suits, getting extremely hot very quickly as i continually instructed him to climb ladders and jump off boxes. He was a sweaty, horrible, angry mess at the end of it, but his enthusiasm and awesomeness was never in question. Props.

Doing the sound mixing with Tristain at BangBang! Studios in Port Melbourne, these guys were really great to work with and always came up with the goods.

And here’s me, showing off the site at the media launch like a proud dad.

At the end of the day I’m really happy with it, but as always, there are things that i’d like to add and change. I’m working towards some of those things now. Stay tuned.

ps. Step it up.

I’ve been playing this Terminator Salvation International Twitter “Game” since i first heard about it, which was just after launch, i believe. I use the term game quite loosely as really it’s just about sending messages to everyone that follows you on twitter when you’re told to by the elusive @resistance2018.

@resistance2018 has ended up with 2963 followers. So that’s officially almost 3000 people ‘playing’ this thing, which is ok for a pretty obscure concept, but sounds a lot less impressive when it’s supposed to be targeted at an international audience. I’m really not sure how i would have found out about it had i not been in a social media-connected industry and read the press about it’s launch. Perhaps it’s also linked off the main Terminator Salvation site somewhere.

This was my favourite points update. It almost made me want to stop right here.

It’s goal was to turn players into mini marketing machines, as the only way t earn points was to tweet or retweet something at given times which sends messages to everyone that is following you, naturally. If you don’t tweet much this makes you look pretty obsessed by the Terminator franchise. If you’re following it closely you’re tweeting a few times a day about john connor, or the resistance, or the machines or death row, which sometimes did come across as quite morbid. But i suppose it achieved it’s goal as i don’t have too many followers (around 100) but i reckon i must have posted about 80 messages relating to this game during the course of it. Better than a kickinthenuts, 80*100 = 8000 messages to people about Terminator Salvation. Take out the spammers that follow me, that’s maybe 4000 messages to people that i know / know of This makes the total touch points of the 2963 playing the game into a much more impressive number of people exposed.

The instructions for this game went like this…

1. Follow Terminator Salvation on Twitter (@resistance2018)
2. Log In on 2018blog.com
3. Watch for tweets from @resistance2018
4. Send answers via @replies with hash tags to @resistance2018 or RT through the blog
5. You will receive a direct messages in Twitter with point updates

and the details of how to actually do it…

Tweets will utilize abbreviations to identify message types. Resistance Assignments will begin with RA: followed by the specific message type abbreviation, as in:

• RA:WM
• RA:TR
• RA:PT

Next, an action command and the question, as in:

• RA:WM Decode “OHJN”
• RA:TR “What is the last name of the leader of the Resistance?”
• RA:PT Complete “_O_N _O_NN_R”

You will likewise be required to reply with a set format:

• @Resistance2018 JOHN #RA:WM
• @Resistance2018 CONNOR #RA:TR
• @Resistance2018 JOHN CONNOR #RA:PT

Sounds pretty straightforward, and it was. What it wasn’t is fun, which i generally prefer games to be.  But i was hooked, and when i received bonus points for being one of the first to reply, i was chuffed.

Cracking the 1000, joining the sub squadron

The other part of the game was losing points. Occasionally you would be ‘harvested’ which means that you automatically lose a percentage of your points. There was seemingly no reasoning for the timing of this, and no way to stop it, awesome.  It happened now and then to me, maybe 6 times during the course of the game, generally on the weekend. Odd, annoying, but it shook things up a bit when someone high on the leader board got harvested as you would climb the ladder for doing nothing. It could have been a bit better to be able to do something to avoid it though. I’m sure people would have gone to great lengths in marketing this film to their friends to avoid harvesting. Maybe if you got a tattoo on your forehead you could avoid being harvested?

I ended up scoring 1210 points, which has left me in the ‘submarine squadron’. Quite fitting as i’ve been at work all night for the last few weeks watching this game progress while working on a site for submarines. The idea of squadrons was a good one as it really did give you a focus and motivation to get to the next level. Mind you it would have been nice to receive something via email for reaching a new rank. A making of docco from the film, a coupon code for the previous films on blu-ray, unreleased shots from the production or something? Surely that wouldn’t have been too hard.

John Connor is very lonely in his squadron

At the end of the day I thought it was ok. As as a concept it is quite interesting and innovative, it’s potentially the first of it’s kind, although there are a few other Twitter “games” around, none of them are very compelling (neither is this one). Twitter wasn’t really designed as a gaming platform though, and the word ‘game’ is really just a cute way to disguise the fact that you might give away some prizes worth very little to a bunch of people that will use word-of-mouth to talk about your blockbuster film for a while.

So now i suppose i wait to see if there was anything to it apart from being part of the marketing machine. I cant find references to prizes for finishing it / scoring highly. I’d think that it being an ‘international’ game target to an international audience that getting in the top 30 might award me something, but i’m not really holding my breath.

A few final notes…

• It was all pretty simple, but also very repetitive, i think i must have tweeted the term “john connor” about 6 times during the course of the game.

• The word scrambles doubled and tripled up, which made them much easier to decipher the second and third time. Dumb. Surely there are 100s of words unique to that franchise.

• no one actually made it to the top squadron, which required 1500 points.

• I did learn a few things about the film though and now feel like i understand the characters roles a lot better. Mind you, i’m assuming that it’s a bit of a mindless action movie that really isn’t going to be too profound or hard to follow.

• It ended very abruptly

• I’m really glad it’s over. But to be honest, i was friggen hooked, and i still don’t know why.

Awesome, but why?

As if Crackdown on it’s own wasn’t awesome enough, it’s about to become a whole lot more useful, when the Halo 3 BETA is finally released.

It’s just been dated for release on the 16th of May, runnung less than a month. Finishing up on the 6th of June, it’s not nearly enough, but maybe that’s a sign that it might be out fully fledged before a predicted November launch.

Quite simply, this whole Wii thing can suck on a fat one next to the latest Halo release. It’s simply not worth comparison. Sure, i was pretty syched for Gears Of War, and that was friggen Unreal, but come on, this is Halo. Needless to say, i’m eating a fair bit of shit about it right about now.

I’ve finally joined the Wii revolution. I’ve been very interested in the console, the new tech, the virtual console and just the utter nintendo-ness of the whole thing. A few mates had picked them up and were raving about them, a couple of these mate’s had kids, and so i kind of thought that maybe it was just a bit of a toy, but console party games are really the new board games of our era, so it did sound pretty fun in that regard. Being a big fan of the Sing Star phenomenon, especially given some booze and mates, i’m pretty pumped for Guitar Hero 2′s release on the 360 after hearing nothing but good things about it, but this Wii thing had sort of slipped me by. I hadn’t tried one yet but read and heard a lot about it.

Saving money for a trip to Spain hasn’t really allowed me an excuse to pick up a 2nd next/new-gen console, but a quick credit card points check provided the solution. There was enough for over $500 of David Jones vouchers, and so my Wii experience began. There were none available in the city store, but David Jones in Chadstone had stock.

After a little big of set up time getting onto the wireless network, then downloading a software update (that seemed AGES), downloading the internet channel and the everybody votes channel, i finally got some game time in on the new Wii. It was pretty fun and the cow racing game on the Wii play disc was just unreal. I’m yet to delve into Sports or Excite Truck yet, but they’re not far away.

I do have a bit of a gripe in that my tv sits about 2.5 metres away from the couch in the lounge, and the Wii complains a bit that i’m too far away from the sensor bar. Now i wouldn’t think that 2.5m was an unusual distance from a decent sized TV these days, but it certainly makes a noticeable difference if i move 1/2 a meter or so close to the screen. So that shits me a bit, but maybe there’s a solution out there. I haven’t really looked yet.

I can’t believe how crap the friend code system is. Maybe they have a strategic position on this sort of thing and maybe it’s to wean out child predators or something, but it’s utterly ridiculous and archaic. Actually it’s not even archaic, because there isn’t even any precedent for being this un-user-friendly on a games network. It’s just crap. But i suppose it’s all we’ve got on this platform. So hook me up, my *stupid* friend code is 4715 3659 5631 6773.