8BIT is an independent documentary about video games, art, and music directed by Marcin Ramocki and co-directed/produced by Justin Strawhand. I got a chance to interview Justin about the project just before it premiered Saturday night at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
First things first, how did you come up with the idea to make a documentary about video games?
The original concept for the movie came from Marcin Ramocki, who is credited as director. He runs a very cool new media art gallery in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and for almost five years has had this group of musicians who use hacked Nintendo Gameboys to make music performing there. He became very friendly with them, and they had a discussion at a local bar one night about documenting this totally new and unique scene.
Marcin approached me (he was my professor in college at New Jersey City University) about doing the film, which we thought would be a short expose on this Gameboy music scene.
As we started production, we began to realize that this phenomenon, of artists who use video games as a tool of expression, or who reference video games in their work, was really quite expansive, and Marcin, being a keen observer of art history and its developments, began to realize that this new "8 Bit" scene was really the development of what is perhaps the first genuinely unique artistic movement in the last 20 odd years. So, the film was made with a sort of snowball effect, as we were turned onto more artists and practitioners of this video game art.
I see you used a DVX100a to shoot with. What led you to pick this camera over others?
I chose the DVX100a after a lot of sweat and research. I had shot extensively on both the PD-150 and XL1 previously, and while I like both cameras for their different capabilities (the PD-150 gives a very cinematic image, I think, and the XL-series is the past, current, and future king of low-cost ENG) I was really intrigued by the customization capabilities of the DVX, as well as the whole 24p thing. We planned from the beginning to treat this project as something that would be a success, that would go to the theaters, and come hell or high water, we went ahead with that goal in mind. So, I shot it in 24PA, with an anamorphic adapter, and had to fix the framerates for the 60i stuff, much of which was archival footage, as well as various grabs of games, artworks, and demos going back as early as 1950.
See the trailer after the break.
How much did the film cost to produce and how did you raise the money?
It's hard to say at this point exactly what the film cost, because whenever you answer a question like that you leave out the non-paid people-hours. I spent hundreds of hours in the studio (perhaps over a thousand), scratching away at the material, hunting down resources, corresponding with people around the world to find arcane images. The crew was completely volunteer, as well (outside of the occasional slice of pizza and a very rare beer.) The crew was entirely composed of alumni and students from my alma mater (where Marcin still teaches interactive design, and where I teach an occasional DVD authoring class) who donated their time, equipment, and expertise to the production. This also doesn't reflect in the bottom line of the film. So, real costs of the film, although under the $15,000 range, don't really reflect all of the hard work and donated time that went into the production.
How long did it take to shoot and edit?
We were in production for a little over a year. This was relatively sporadic, as we would uncover new people who fit into the narrative of the film. When we finished, we were left with around 25 hours of interviews, and around 10 hours of concert footage.
After we assembled the rough-cut of the voice track (which took a LOT of time) the real work began. I was left with basically an hour and a half of beautiful, intelligent, talented talking heads, and had not the first idea of how to cover them. The musicians were easier to do than the others, because we had the concert stuff. But I was left with very long stretches of video that needed to be populated with imagery. For example, at one point, Ed Halter, an author and film critic, gives a brief (and wonderfully idiosyncratic) history of video games, which lasts about 2 minutes. His history is painted in pretty broad strokes, but I knew that I didn't want this segment to be so didactic, so although the seed of the imagery is found in Ed's speech, there are a lot of inside jokes and things going on with the pictures (the first video game, made by Willie Higginbotham, is superimposed onto an old radar screen; a very goofy video game ad plays, with a kid doing a sort-of He-Man pose.)
So, the real meat of the editing was a brute-force kind of thing, but also one that had to be informed and nuanced. When someone talks about Commodore 64, you can't show Amiga or Atari, even if the game was ported to different systems. I tried to keep the visuals with as much integrity as possible.
Short answer: start to finish, 2 years and change.
What was the biggest challenge in getting this film done?
The biggest challenge in getting the film done... To be honest, it was at times a grueling, infuriating, overwhelming experience, but we never hit a brick wall. I may have had to spend four days in back and forth exchanges with some obscure German collector of digital arcana, but we always got the right image for the job. So in terms of production, I think it was a simple, if not easy, task.
The hardest part was integrating Marcin's very complex art-historical perspective in the body of the narrative, and in building a structure that would effortless introduce concepts that most people never heard of (from the demo-cracking scene in the early 1980's to object oriented programming.) After awhile, you start to lose your ability to critically observe the film, and when you are dealing with concepts as complex, original, and arcane as this film does, you have to walk a very fine line between entertainment, edutainment, and overwhelming the audience with too much information. Luckily, the nature of the subject in many way solved this problem for us.
Was this your first documentary? What else have you done in the past to lead you up to this point?
This was both of our first feature documentary, although I had edited a feature about 5 years ago. Marcin comes from the art world, and is a practicing artist, curator, and programmer. His level of expertise was not, however, in film, so there was a learning curve for him as director. I have been cutting professionally for almost 7 years, and did the whole film-school thing (NJCU MEDIA ARTS DEPARTMENT SHOUT OUT) and have produced and directed a bunch of shorts, as well as industrials and not-for-profits, so I think I made the transition for Marcin much easier. Since I was behind the camera not only as DP but also as Producer and Co-Director (and later editor) I had to keep an eye on the frame as well as on the bottom line information, but all in all I think that we did a good job of keeping things in line and in order.
I imagine a film like this has a lot of in game footage, how did you go about recording that?
I used a lot of different tools to get the video games into the movie. For a lot of stuff, we just ran RCA into the DVX. Other stuff had to be emulated, mostly the arcane old demos and stuff (I currently have a working Amiga operating system installed on my Dual G5!) I used a software called Snapz Pro X a ton. I'm not getting paid to plug them, let me say that first, but I love that software, although it is a bit tricky to get high FPS stuff correctly. We shot a little stuff directly off of monitors, but only when seeing the player was important. I didn't experiment much with shooting stuff off of my LCD screen, but now that I think about it, that may have worked out the best. But everything looks good regardless.
With sites like YouTube and MySpace, how have these new forms of distribution helped you get the word out about your film?
Youtube was an important place for us to host the trailer for the film, I think most importantly because of the way it has standardized distribution. Anyone with a little saavy can get youtube to work. The people at iFILM contacted us about putting the trailer up, and we had like 4000 hits in a few days. The website was obviously important as well, and it's amazing to watch how the information flows. Metatagging, social networking sites, the whole gamut of what the corporate people call Web 2.0 really empowers a couple of nobodies like us to get the word out, and I hope it all stays as relatively honest and accessible as it is now.
When will there be a DVD?
We're starting to get offers on the film, but haven't made any firm decisions yet. We'd love to show it in a few theaters first. This thing is part rockumentary, and we want to make those Dolby systems melt. And of course, I lament the end of the theatre-age (George Lucas just shot a few nails into the coffin yesterday, I hear.) So as for a DVD, we're not sure yet. We want to see what the demand is for public exhibitions first. We're getting many many requests to show in art museums / universities as well, so whatever happens, I think that our film will have some legs and hopefully the people who want to see it will be able to.
Finally, what is your favorite videogame?
My favorite game of all time is an old game for the Commodre 64 called Bruce Lee.
You may have missed the premiere screening of 8BIT at MoMA, October 7th, but there are additional screenings being planned.
