NOT CARS: A bit of PanchoVillenueve's life story

"PanchoVilleneuve ST" (PanchoVilleneuve) 02/29/2016 at 16:57 • Filed to: None

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Everyone is talking about the Oscars right now, and that would have been me, 15 years ago. I was in my second year studying film at Columbia College Chicago (a school I chose because Janusz Kaminski, Spielberg’s cinematographer of choice for the past 20 years went there. Seriously, he is the guy who decided to shoot Saving Private Ryan as if it was filmed by war correspondents. He’s a god.) when I got home from State Street Toys R Us with a copy of Grand Theft Auto 3. I had always been a big proponent of games as art, growing up during the 90s PC gaming renaissance that is still influencing the medium to this day, but when I got back to my dorm room and popped GTA3 into my PS2, my whole worldview changed. Movies and games had, until that point, been different ways to tell a story, with neither one being superior than the other in my mind. But this game changed it all. I was learning how to tell stories, and this game came out of nowhere and showed me that the future was in creating a new world where people could live another life.

It was at that moment that film died for me as an art form. I immediately stopped caring about my education and immersed myself in games. Two things resulted from this: I still believe that videogames are the ultimate artform, and my immersion into games led to me really, really getting into Gran Turismo, more than I ever had been (and I was so into GT that I rubbed dust into my eyes to fake an eye infection to get a day off from high school the day GT2 came out), making me the horrible car nerd that I am today.

So basically, film is shit we should probably stop taking seriously, games are amazing, and cars are really awesome.

Nibby > PanchoVilleneuve ST 02/29/2016 at 17:02

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Have you thought of making your own games and digital experiences?

RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht > PanchoVilleneuve ST 02/29/2016 at 17:05

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If it weren’t for a sense of responsibility and need to earn money for my broader family, I’d have seriously considered film school or at least picking up a minor. I love practical effects and the technical side of the industry, but also the art as an art. Not saying you’re wrong to abandon film in favor of video games, of course, just that film and the more film-like qualities of video games have a lot of power.

Agrajag > PanchoVilleneuve ST 02/29/2016 at 17:11

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games are amazing, and cars are really awesome

I’m with you there.

film is shit we should probably stop taking seriously

...

Is it not okay to like multiple art forms?

shop-teacher > PanchoVilleneuve ST 02/29/2016 at 17:12

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Coincidentally, GTA3 was the last game I played before I lost interest in video games completely.

I’m not much into films either. I like building physical things myself.

PanchoVilleneuve ST > Nibby 02/29/2016 at 17:15

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I have been working on a game of my own in Unity for the past couple years, but sadly, as masturbatory as it sounds, I’m a better artist than I am a technician and the whole actually making my ideas function have been difficult.

I have, though, become the DM of my D&D group, so I’ve been using games to tell stories in a more analog fashion. Running players through a dungeon full of crates, where the first crate they try to open is a trap that goes off no matter what, and all the other ones tick and click with the sounds of meshing gears and other tightly-wound machinery, only to find in the end they were hired to steal the deed to a clock factory and all their paranoia was imagined and they had scared themselves out of loot will do that.

RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht > Nibby 02/29/2016 at 17:17

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Pro Games and Pro Game accessories?

Goggles Pizzano > PanchoVilleneuve ST 02/29/2016 at 17:20

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film is shit we should probably stop taking seriously.

45 years would make a terrible game, yet it has real value. It tells a story of the human experience.

ttyymmnn > Agrajag 02/29/2016 at 17:22

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No, it’s not okay.

Agrajag > ttyymmnn 02/29/2016 at 17:25

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SVTyler > PanchoVilleneuve ST 02/29/2016 at 17:31

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Have you played The Last of Us? That’s, to me at least, the ultimate ‘video games as art’ moment; no movie or book has profoundly affected me on a personal level as much as that game did.

Galileo Humpkins (aka MC Clap Yo Handz) > PanchoVilleneuve ST 02/29/2016 at 17:31

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As a former film student at Columbia College, I agree, people take films way too seriously. However, they are still important to a lot of us, myself included.

unclevanos (Ovaltine Jenkins) > RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht 02/29/2016 at 17:41

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I tell you hwat butane is a bastard gas.

PanchoVilleneuve ST > RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht 02/29/2016 at 17:42

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I was the guy in high school who did really poorly at things like math and the sciences but really excelled at art, history and English classes. I had recognized this early on and had become obsessed with the Romantic movement of the early 19th century and things like the French Revolution and all the other historical events that resulted from it, and I had decided that my narrative is that of the artist, the poet, the romantic, the revolutionary, because all the logic and science and math does nothing to separate us from the animals, and we are special because solely because we can express ourselves.

It was a mixture of middle class privilege and the burning soul that moved people like Lord Byron, Percy Shelley, Wordworth, Emerson, Keats and Beethoven that led me to feel like it was my duty to devote my life to art. It was that moment where I played GTA3 for the first time that I had realized that I had backed the wrong medium.

I agree that a lot of what made games powerful for a long time was how they brought the same experience that film did, only better, but they have been able to show more and more that they are, in their own unique way, superior to all forms of artistic expression.

It came long after my conversion to the GAMES ARE EVERYTHING way of thinking, but just look at the games that came out in 2012. You had Journey, which told an amazing, beautiful, universally human and spiritual story without saying a single word, The Walking Dead, which connected the player to what truly makes a surivival story interesting and important, difficult decisions and their consequences, and made the player make those choices and deal with their consequences, and Spec Ops: The Line, a modern warfare shooter that used the conventions of the genre to deconstruct, critique and condemn modern warfare shooters.

The only thing holding games back is the tools. Steven Spielberg once said something to the effect of that with technology making the shooting and editing of film accessable to everyone, the greatest film of all time will be made by an 8-year-old girl, and I firmly believe that. The creation of games just haven’t been democratized to that degree yet.

PanchoVilleneuve ST > SVTyler 02/29/2016 at 17:48

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Naughty Dog is an amazing developer. They understand better than anyone the importance of quiet moments in games being everything. The giraffes in TLoU and the whole walk through Tenzing’s village, with the soccer ball and chickens, were the highlights of their games, outshining all the spectacle the rest of the experience provided.

PanchoVilleneuve ST > Galileo Humpkins (aka MC Clap Yo Handz) 02/29/2016 at 17:50

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My most memorable moment was from my first day, when I was in my intro to film studies class and the teacher asked us all what we thought the greatest movie of all time was. Everybody took it as an opportunity to outdo everyone else with their artsy, pretentious, I KNOW FILM MORE THAN YOU! choice. I was honest, and I said the greatest movie ever made was Raiders of the Lost Ark (because it is, it’s perfect, there is something for everyone there). Everyone looked at me like I just pissed on the Pope.

RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht > PanchoVilleneuve ST 02/29/2016 at 17:51

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I never struggled with math until college. Man, calculus will make ya reconsider an engineering career if it can, I tell ya what. I was more literarily inclined on the *fun* side of things, though. Insofar as The Idea is a human touchstone, I think expression *only* through the arts qua arts is a little bit of a narrow view, and that sometimes the difficulty or the technicality of a thing can play strongly into how it functions as an expression. So, put me down as on board with lowering the bar to entry, but with those who don’t mind further steps on the staircase. If you would.

PanchoVilleneuve ST > RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht 02/29/2016 at 17:54

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It comes from how all animals, really, try to understand their world so they can survive. Humans are the only ones who attempt to improve it. Art is the purest form of that desire to improve the world.

Galileo Humpkins (aka MC Clap Yo Handz) > PanchoVilleneuve ST 02/29/2016 at 18:03

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I don’t think that is necessarily people taking film too seriously (though they probably did/do) I think that’s them taking themselves too seriously. I like your approach better. Whenever I was asked what my favorite movie was, I was honest too, Halloween. I ran into a lot of people who would pull the most obscure film they could think of as say it’s they’re favorite because of very vague, very obscure reasons.

My most memorable moment, or at least one that is interesting, was in my ‘science’ class. Called something ridiculous like “Animals in Film” or something maybe a little more scientific sounding. The syllabus was handed out and I quickly read it over, all we were dong was watching movies that had animals in them - Jaws, Jurassic Parks, etc. Then occasionally we’d learn about how correct or incorrect the animals were compared to their real life counterparts.

PanchoVilleneuve ST > Galileo Humpkins (aka MC Clap Yo Handz) 02/29/2016 at 18:09

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The Academy Awards were created by the studios as a way to promote films that weren’t the crowd-pleasing blockbusters that netted them the majority of their money. This isn’t me being a cynical dick, this is fact. That’s why they exist at all.

My most memorable classes during my two years at Columbia College Chicago were Peace Studies, a class about relaxation taught by a man who wrote a book about the “marijuana consciousness” and a class about the history of the American city taught by Dr. Cornel West, that was a mixture of urban planning and cultural pollination and listening to jazz that was probably the best class I have ever taken.

Galileo Humpkins (aka MC Clap Yo Handz) > PanchoVilleneuve ST 02/29/2016 at 18:22

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Can’t argue that, I’ve never been a fan of the Oscars anyway.

That Cornel West class sounds pretty great, I definitely would’ve taken that.

PanchoVilleneuve ST > Galileo Humpkins (aka MC Clap Yo Handz) 02/29/2016 at 18:23

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It would have been better if I could actually finish it. He vanished halfway through to act in the Matrix sequels.

SVTyler > PanchoVilleneuve ST 02/29/2016 at 18:42

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That’s why I’m so looking forward to Uncharted 4, Bruce and Neil are some of the very few people in the industry who understand that. Even just some of the ten-second aside conversations you have with Ellie and Sully are just so far beyond what I’ve ever seen another developer do.

And I’d argue everything post-giraffe scene in TLOU was arguably the greatest spectacle in the game. Never before and not since have I played a game that’s been able to weave such desperation and humanity into a single act so convincingly. Like you said, Naughty Dog is something special.

PanchoVilleneuve ST > SVTyler 02/29/2016 at 18:46

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The Last of Us did an amazing job of making you feel like hell for the shit you did. You had to remove a small bit of your humanity to excel in it. It was amazing.

SVTyler > PanchoVilleneuve ST 02/29/2016 at 23:34

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Definitely, it was one of the very few games to emphasize how terrible the characters’ decisions were and kind of left it up to the player to decide whether they were justified or not instead of telling them. Made for some really interesting cognitive dissonance in some parts of the game, especially the ending (particularly the final conversation).

Also please tell me you played the Left Behind DLC.