Prince of Persia movie pitch trailer
In my GDC China keynote about Prince of Persia’s 20-year journey from game to film, I showed a 2-minute trailer I made six years ago to pitch the movie to Jerry Bruckheimer and Disney execs. I’m posting it here for those who are interested.
Why did I cut a new trailer, instead of using one of the existing game trailers Ubisoft had already produced to market the Sands of Time game? Because the game marketing trailers were very specific about certain story points that weren’t in the movie (freeze, fast-forward, sand monsters, visions). Co-producer John August and I didn’t want to confuse the execs by showing them a different story from the one we were pitching.
It took me a week to cut on Final Cut Express, in late 2003. Assembling a trailer from existing PS2 game footage was an editing challenge, because key scenes, locations and characters from the movie didn’t exist. So rather than attempt to explicitly tell the story of the movie in the trailer, I set out to convey the kind of movie it would be. (Don’t worry, there are no spoilers — the trailer reveals nothing about the plot of the movie beyond what’s in the game.)
The sound mix is rough — I didn’t have the proper elements or the time to do a professional-quality mix — but it served its purpose of selling the pitch. Hope you enjoy it.
Prince of Persia movie pitch trailer (2003) from jordan mechner on Vimeo.
The gear I use
About two years ago, I started carrying a notebook around with me so I could sketch when the urge struck. My friend Alex Puvilland gave me my notebook number two, a Moleskine sketchbook, which is the kind I’ve used ever since. I’ve filled seven of them.
Moleskines are kind of the iPhone of sketchbooks: They’re ubiquitous, pricey, and their marketing is so blatantly geared toward making you feel like possessing one will make you a cooler person that I feel a vague sense of embarrassment at having succumbed. But I keep on using them anyway, because they’re just so well designed.
Nifty features: The pocket in the back is just right for holding airplane boarding passes and scraps of paper you don’t want to lose. The binding doesn’t fall apart no matter how much you kick it around. And there’s a ribbon to mark your place.
The paper is really thick. At first, I found it almost intimidating (as if it required a worthier drawing than just a casual scribble), but I got over that. It’s thick enough that I can draw on both sides without it showing through, which makes the book last twice as long.
It’s not good for watercolor; the paper is so smooth that the water just beads up and rolls off the surface. It will accept an India ink wash, like this sketch I did in Union Square. Watercolor pencils also seem to work OK.
Moleskine does make a watercolor notebook; I used one for these watercolor sketches, but I haven’t really gotten comfortable with it.
The pen I use most often is a Staedtler pigment liner, black, 0.3 nib. It’s not perfect, but it’s waterproof, and cheap enough that I can buy them by the dozen and always have an extra handy when I lose one (or when the cap gets lost, which happens a lot, as it tends to fall off when I stick it on the back end). I’m still looking for the perfect pen. I’d also love to find a brush pen that uses indelible India ink cartridges, but can’t seem to find one. Suggestions welcome.
Speaking at GDC China
I’ll be giving a keynote at the Game Developers Conference in Shanghai. The date is October 12, I think. If you happen to be in Shanghai and are interested in attending, the official GDC website has details. Looking forward to it!
Gamasutra analyzes Last Express
A thoughtful article by Tom Cross on Gamasutra about The Last Express and immersive game worlds:
Unfinished Last Express Prequel
Browsing through my storage room in an attempt to avoid working on my current project, I stumbled across this printout of an unfinished screenplay I’d started, then abandoned, back in 2002.
Entitled Red Serpent, and set in 1904 Paris, ten years before the events of The Last Express, it would have been an early adventure of Robert Cath (still in medical school) and his best/worst friend Tyler Whitney (upgraded in this version to Cath’s half-brother — a change I don’t think I’d make today).
The plot bears a more-than-slight resemblance to The Da Vinci Code, which would be published the following year. No plagiarism was involved. I’d guess that Dan Brown and I had been reading the same pseudo-historical “research,” including Holy Blood, Holy Grail by Baigent and Leigh (who did, in fact, sue Brown for plagiarism, and lost). Whereas Brown treated their theory seriously, my approach was more tongue-in-cheek.
I’ve posted it here in case it interests anyone — as a glimpse into the early, rough-first-draft stages of the creative process. Mostly, the stories we read are ones that survive all the way to completion. This one, for many reasons, didn’t.
Rereading the screenplay fragment today, I can see why I abandoned it. There are things in it that I like, but it’s not really of a piece with The Last Express. It’s more fluffy and lightweight. It can’t quite decide whether it wants to be a movie in the Indiana Jones/Da Vinci Code spirit, or a spoof of that kind of movie. And, while I enjoyed the two main characters, I can’t quite see them growing up to be Cath and Tyler as Tomi Pierce and I originally conceived them.
Also, in 2002, Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (the game) was gearing up production at Ubisoft Montreal, and my excitement for that project was growing while my sense of conviction on this one was dwindling. Ultimately, I dropped Red Serpent to give me more time for POP. It was the right decision.
