How-to play the comic book option game

Recently a buddy of mine, Riley Rossmo, the artist for Cowboy Ninja Viking, had the option rights for the comic purchased by Disney First of all, congrats, Riley works really hard at his craft. I met him at a regular meet-up of local artists at the Kensington Pub here in Calgary when his main project was Proof. He always had a number of creative properties on the go and had a keen sense that Hollywood was always looking around for something new. He was in talks with a number of studios that were all trying to find the next big hit for the film industry. Proof was the first experience but Cowboy Ninja Viking eventually made the deal. This isn’t anything new, in the past few years, comics have increasingly become a place for the film industry to look for creative properties. Next to the stack of scripts on the desks of the entertainment industry is another, shinier pile of graphic novels and trades.

There are some good reasons that comics and graphic novels are there on that pile. They all have a fully formed stories, lots of characters to fill up the story landscape and, more importantly, they’ve already been seen by thousands of people. One of the biggest challenges to the film industry is trying to figure out if the movie they are making is going to be a hit or a miss. If a story already has a fan base and a ton of positive reviews, chances are they’re onto something good. Most of the people making decisions about funding really don’t know anything about their prospective audience. With a large fan base they’ve got a lot of feedback that the audience loved the comic and they are hungry for more. The funders don’t have to rely on a single opinion that may or may not be informed. So basically, if you’ve got a story that works in a visual format you’re lowering their risk that they’re going to fund a bomb at the box office.

There are some other elements you should consider as well. Comics, as a medium, give you a lot of room. You can vary a lot of things in the narrative such as story structure, art style and characters. You can do it in a lot of unconventional ways and play around with narrative because the cost of your comic bombing at the store aren’t that high. If things don’t work out you just start up another concept. The cost of failure in movies is much higher and as a result they tend to play it safe. This means you follow a standard three-act structure that can follow the conventions of a film script. This can be a bit challenging with a long running series as they don’t really have a structured start and ending. In Riley’s case, they brought in the script writers from Zombieland to put it into a standard format that can actually be filmed. It is something that you need to think about if you are looking at your story moving into a different media. Have you built it so that it can move into film? Or is is something that is going to take a lot of work to fit into a standard format that runs for 80 minutes? The easier it is for a producer to see the transition, the easier it will be to get their interest.

Now comes the next steps, someone finally offers you an option on that comic title you’ve poured your soul into for the past year. An option isn’t an outright purchase, they are basically buying the exclusive right to buy the rights to your creative property in the future. It is a producer’s way of buying some time while they try to get writers involved to polish up a script, line up some name actors and get the financing in place to actually film the movie. It is usually 12-18 months, if they haven’t been able to pull all of that together in that time period, they probably never will. At this point you’re not going to get the big Hollywood windfall, options will only pay out a few thousand dollars. The option agreement will usually define how much you’re going to actually make if the film moves forward. If all of that comes together and the producer moves the film into production you can look forward to the big pay-off. This might be in the form of a cash settlement or it might be a piece of the profits from the film, each option agreement can be different.

One last piece of advice, get someone you trust to review the option agreement. I’ve known a few naive writers who agreed to take back-end points on a film, thinking they were getting a share of the profits. What they didn’t realize is that they only get paid after all of the debts for the film are paid off. Just so you know, it is in the best interest of the owner of that film (often the film distributor) to make sure that film never makes any money on paper. The end result is that you will never make any money even though your film ran for 6 months at the theatres and sells out every Christmas at BestBuy. There are a lot of pitfalls and you need to be well educated to make sure you avoid them all. If you don’t have someone who knows all this stuff it is worth it to hire a lawyer who does. You’ll be happier with the results.

Ubisoft’s Convergence of Film and Video Game

UbiSoft has released a new short film, Assassin’s Creed: Lineage,  in preparation for the release of their game Assassin’s Creed 2 on November 17. It is the first part of a three part trilogy.

The short film is part of an ongoing effort on the part of UbiSoft to bring creative properties to multiple platforms. The goal is to engage gamers in as many entertainment mediums as possible. They have been strategic in their approach, acquiring Canadian special effects firm Hybride in order to produce quality films. Hybride was the company responsible for green screen epics such as 300.

After watching the film I would have to say it is the first Italian Renaissance ninja film I’ve ever seen. I think Italian ninjas are better dressed than their Japanese counterparts but their acting range seems to be about the same. The film itself has beautiful cinematography but I think they missed an opportunity to really create a different kind of narrative for the game.

Ubisoft has stated that they are doing these films as part of a campaign to create a more immersive experience for the gamers who are playing Assassin’s Creed. Games, especially first person shooters, or in this case, first person stabbers, aren’t very good at narrative. The cut scenes are limited in the depth and scope and most are quickly skipped by the players so they can move onto the next challenge in the game. Here was a chance to build on the strengths of film and work on mood, atmosphere, exposition and character. Perhaps they were just creating an action genre film for the demographic they had identified for the game. I’m not really sure how much interest those kinds of hardcore gamers have in film, even this one.  I had just hoped that when game and film started to converge, they would have let each approach the story from a completely different direction. Instead of playing to the strengths of each medium, Lineage becomes a great looking film that looks like gameplay. Everything I’ve seen in this first film could have been achieved by cut-scenes and voice-overs within the game itself. I’ll withhold final judgment until I see the final two installments of the trilogy, perhaps this is all going someplace even I don’t expect.

Screenwriting and cross-media

Writing a script for an ARG is very much like writing a script for a film. The narrative has to be engaging and cohesive and tell a story. The major difference is that you are not always thinking visually about how that script is going to be implemented. When the story development is written up in blogs, emails and text messages you need to think about the story from the perspective of the character themselves. You still need to be aware that whatever is created needs to be able to tell the story, not provide an explanation of the narrative. Whatever is written needs to speak for itself and allow the viewers to develop the narrative themselves.

In many ways the writing is more intimate and confessional in nature. Although many ARGs have video and audio segments, they also rely on original writing from the characters themselves. Rather than having the narrative interpreted and edited they are relying on the original source material for much of the story itself.

The script outline will need to be taken and broken into scenes that can be accommodated within the structure of the ARG. Once this basic breakdown occurs, the script can be written into a full 90-120 page script. The contents of the script will reflect the affordances of the media that will be used to cover that segment of the script. For example, a personal narrative of a character could be captured in a vlog or amateur video. The nature of that media would need to be reflective of the storytelling approach being taken by the ARG. If the project is meant to be told exclusively as a first person perspective of the story, there would be no professionally shot footage of those scenes.