About a month ago, we did an Intifada video - basically cheating in every way we could in order to show the game as it will appear by the time we ship. It was really good, but something kept bugging me - There was just something wrong with the feel...

A couple of days ago it hit me - We have a lot of Hollywood crane shots in the video... Nothing too fancy - something like this:



All well and good. But the story of the game is of the player as a journalist. This means a dirty, down-to-the-ground feel. Crane shots communicate Hollywood to me, hence no go....

So I've decided that we 'shoot' all cutscenes with a 'handheld' camera. This is fun to make. So far, I'm using various forms of Perlin noise - one on the camera position, andother for the camera direction to get that handheld feel. If the camera is moving or rotating, I increase the noise to simulate shaking hands. After the camera comes to rest on its new target, the noise fades down over time.

For the main rotation, I use a spring-damper based system - tweaked to overshoot a bit. So if the cameraman has to turn 120deg to capture a new person, the camera will overshoot a bit & get lots of noise.

The final idea is to use the camera as a dramatic element - when we want to communicate an intense situation, we turn up the amount of handheldness. The final part is the editing... That's gonna be hard. The expression I'm really looking for is lots of short shots, overlapped like mad - trying to capture what's going on in this confusing world... Sort of putting the cameraman at the same job as the player. To communicate the confusion, getting it out through all possible channels.

Really looking forward to seeing how it all comes together... No idea how to handle the positional audio though... Need to study some movies that have this editing style...