Display MoreAD has made a nice little discovery! It's a Wing Commander IV preview and Mark Hamill interview from the October 1995 issue (Number 81) of VideoGames: The Ultimate Gaming Magazine (real title, not made up). What's neat about this one is that it includes some set photos that we haven't seen anywhere else! It's always great to look back in time through this sort of media; I wish we could explore the Wing Commander IV sets at a modern resolution. There's so much detail that didn't capture in the final footage! The article also previews a PlayStation game called Agile Warrior: F-111X which I have never heard of; the Wikipedia describes it thusly, in full: "Agile Warrior is a F-111X flight simulator with several missions." Neat.
A Tale of Two Video Game Shoots
This is the story of two very different upcoming videogames with one big thing in common: full-motion, video footage (FMV). Origin’s Wing Commander IV and Virgin Games and Black Ops’ Agile Warrior: F-111X will soon be released for the 3DO and Sony PlayStation respectively, thanks to the. efforts of not only top-notch game programmers, but top-notch Hollywood filmmakers as well. VideoGames’ own Dan Vebber visited the Hollywood sets of the aforementioned games to see how much work goes into capturing the perfect FMV footage.
Wing Commander IV
Holy mackerel! Watching the filming of Wing Commander IV, I felt like I was on the set of a Star Wars movie—due in no small part to the presence of lead actor and all-around nice guy Mark Hamill (see sidebar.) It may not feature Banthas, Ugnaughts and Ewoks, but the Wing Commander series is still epic in its scope, chronicling a long-standing intergalactic war between the Terrans (humans, the good guys) and the Kiirathi, a race of snarling, alien lion creatures. Like Wing III before it, Wing IV will incorporate a tremendous amount of FMV—about 15 hours of it. Essentially, you watch the movie for a while, then enter into playable space combat situations that determine where the story will go.
Production costs on the latest game in the series were well into the millions, and it was easy to see where that money was going. For starters the sets were incredible! Entire sound stages were souped-up and decorated to resemble futuristic starship environments. Whole crews of carpenters, electricians, gaffers and grips were all working over time to ensure that the sets would be ready right on schedule.
Costumes for the majority of the human cast consisted of drab blue jumpsuits and combat boots, but the Kilrathi were far more impressive. I got to watch an actor transform from a normal guy into one of the eight-foot tall felines by donning mounds of padding, decorative robes and a formidable-looking mask. Neatest of all was that the mask’s facial movements were entirely mechanical, computer controlled from offstage and synchronized to prerecorded dialogue.
Unlike many FMV games before it, Wing Commander IV was filmed on 35-mm film instead of video—a more expensive technique sure to lend a more cinematic feel to the finished product. Of course, hiring well-known actors like Hamill, Malcolm (Clockwork Orange) McDowell and John (Sliders) Rhys-Davies doesn’t hurt. Director Chris Roberts (also the game's designer) seems to have a prodigious feel for the right balance between movie and game, and his groundbreaking techniques are playing off for release this holiday seas. Wing Commander IV will likely be the new standard against which other FMV games are measured. Roberts may also direct the mega-budget, bigscreen Wing Commander movie, currently in preproduction.
AGILE WARRIOR: F-111X
Arriving on this much smaller set, I immediately could tell that it was a very different production from Wing Commander. Agile Warrior will feature just 15 minutes of FMV, in the form of mission briefings and military aircraft footage. The game’s premise is that you’re part , of an elite squadron of pilots operating out of a high-tech portable operations tent, sent to various world hot-spots to diffuse dangerous situations. Most of the game will consist of first-person flying shooter gameplay, similar to Shockwave or Shadow Squadron but far more vast in size and with several unique features.
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Because of Agile Warriors “briefing-to-mission” structure, filming the FMV sequences only required one set, that of the special ops tent. But though the shoot was significantly shorter than the nine weeks spent on Wing Commander IV, Agile Warrior's cast and crew seemed every bit as efficient and seasoned in the film industry, and every bit as committed to getting a quality movie in the can.
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- Dan Vebber
Mark Hamill
Yes, he played Luke Skywalker once, but that was years ago and this versatile actor has other fish to fry these days. Mark Hamill’s participation in the Wing Commander series is the latest example of his penchant for picking cutting-edge projects in every medium, from comics to cartoon voice-over work to whatever the future has to offer.
VideoGames: Who is your character in the Wing Commander series?
Mark Hamill: His name is Colonel Christopher Biair. He’s sort of this war-weary veteran of a 20-year war with the Kilrathi. It was interesting to me that I was picking up this character, who had already been established in Wing I and II, in midstream because I was intrigued by the story. It’s about the intrigue that exists when a society goes from a military-led situation back to a peacetime situation. After more than two decades, there’s a plot going on to extend or re-ignite the skirmishes to keep the military in power. It reminds me more of The Caine Mutiny or A Few Good Men than it does any other space combat situation. There’s much more-going out on reconnaissance, trying to figure out who the traitor is, landing on bases and sneaking in and getting things out without being discovered—than it is just facing off against another pilot in outer space.
VG: Do you feel that your experience in sci-fi films, in front of blue screens or what-not, have readied you for this project more so than some of the other actors involved?
MH: 1 would say probably yes, but at the same time, I don’t see that any of the other actors have been hindered by it at all. Each of them might come in with a preconceived notion of what it would be like, but most of them quickly realized that it’s more like conventional filmmaking than it is unlike it. I suppose in Wing III, when the sets weren’t even there, that might have been tough for some people, but it doesn’t take you very long to get into the swing of things. Mind you, the background isn’t there when you’re shooting, but as long as you stay on top of any special effects project by visiting the art department and looking at storyboards, you should be okay.
VG: Do you play the game at all?
MH: No.
VG: Not at all? Haven’t you ever attempted it, at least?
MH: I need an upgrade on my computer, and my priorities are such that between my family and my other projects I’m working on, I haven’t had the time. In London they had me play a little bit for the press, and I was so inept that some of them must have thought! was kidding.
VG: Do you notice any differences between people in the video-game industry and people in the film industry?
MH: This is just a general impression, but it seems to me that people in the video-game industry aren’t quite as jaded as people that are exclusively filmmakers. There was an excitement and freshness working on Wing Commander with Origin that made me think of Hollywood in the ’30s, when there weren’t focus groups and filmmaking by committee. They’re much more excited about it than somebody who’s been in the business for 25 years. And I like that. It’s good to have that enthusiasm and hold onto it for as long as you can.
- D.V.
Caption: Wing Commander's fully operational bridge set.
Caption: Chewie?
Caption: Wing Commander's Confederation meeting room, under construction.
Caption: Photo by Joel Sussman
