Gallery: 5 Film-School Violations in Videogame Cut-Scenes
01enter-late-leave-early
Videogame storytelling has made some astounding leaps over the past few years. Powerful narratives like Red Dead Redemption and Uncharted 2 have helped show the world that games can be just as meaningful as any other form of art. But there's one element of interactive storytelling that designers just can't seem to get right: the [cut-scene](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cutscene). Some exceptions exist, but these control-free cinematic sequences often prove uncomfortable if not downright embarrassing to watch. While they are almost always packed with gorgeous eye caramel, games' cut-scenes usually drop the ball when it comes to effective storytelling. This is because many cut-scenes don't follow the time-tested rules of cinema that have made Hollywood so successful. Gamemakers abide by their own rules, packing their cinematics with wanton expositions and explosions. But cut-scene designers would do well to learn from the past century of film and its storytelling practices. Mantras like “less is more” could do wonders for the way cut-scenes work today. Here are five cinematic rules that every cut-scene designer should staple to the back of his or her brain. __Above:__ Enter Late; Leave Early ----------------------- Like its predecessors, Japanese role-playing game [Final Fantasy XIII](http://stag-komodo.wired.com/gamelife/2010/10/final-fantasy-xiii-postmortem/) is notoriously gratuitous with cut-scenes, throwing its gorgeous, prerendered cinematics at your eyeballs every few minutes no matter how much you might object. If you think these scenes drag on and on, you're not alone. They tend to violate an important Hollywood rule: Start a scene as late as possible and end it as early as possible, leaving the rest to viewers' imaginations. Look at the FFXIII scene embedded above, where protagonist Snow proposes to his girlfriend, Serah. It opens with a whopping 40 seconds of nothing but scenery and random characters, the type of establishing shot that a competent director would handle in five seconds at most. Snow doesn't even reach Serah until about the 1:30 mark. The scene could have been exponentially more engaging without all that needless dead time. The end of the scene is just as brutal. After the important parts — Serah saying "yes" and revealing her plans to tell her sister that she has been cursed — we suffer through another two minutes of Snow and Serah riding around in some hover vehicle thing for no reason. When I start wondering if anything else is on TV, you should have exited a long time ago.
02avoid-endless-exposition
Avoid Endless Exposition ------------------------ ”Skill in exposition means making it invisible,” writes teacher Robert McKee in his book *[Story: Substance, Structure, Style and the Principles of Screenwriting](http://www.amazon.com/Story-Substance-Structure-Principles-Screenwriting/dp/0060391685)*. “As the story progresses, the audience absorbs all it needs to know effortlessly, even unconsciously. In other words, dramatize exposition.” If only McKee could force game designer [Hideo Kojima](http://stag-komodo.wired.com/gamelife/2009/03/of-the-worlds-t/) to write that quote on the blackboard a thousand times. Kojima might be a brilliant designer, and his Metal Gear Solid action/espionage series might rank among the best game experiences ever, but boy does he have a thing for long, plot-building rants. What if Kojima had left out some of the mission briefings in [Metal Gear Solid 4](http://stag-komodo.wired.com/gamelife/2008/07/mgs4-review/)? What if some had been delivered during more dramatic moments? What if some information was left to the players' imaginations? Better yet, what if we had to discover that exposition through our choices as we play the game? There are quite a few options for how it could have been handled, but plot-packed speeches are the worst of the bunch.
03only-show-whats-necessary
Only Show What's Necessary -------------------------- Forget the painful, unbearable awkwardness — [Infinite Undiscovery](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinite_Undiscovery)'s infamously terrible “dinner dance” scene (above) is poorly crafted because it doesn't need to exist. A good filmmaker knows that every scene should serve one of two purposes: advancing the plot or characterizing the protagonist. The best scenes do both at once, giving the protagonist tough decisions to make in the face of the near-insurmountable obstacles that lie in the way of his or her goal. While screenwriters can usually get away with extraneous scenes if they are exceptionally funny or engaging, this one is neither. It winds up saying two things: A) Heroine Aya is interested in leading man Capell (which we knew already) and B) It's time for everybody to go to dinner (which could have been delivered in a single line). Leaving the whole thing out could have prevented a lot of cringes.
04every-second-matters
Every Second Matters -------------------- ”Every scene, like a sequence, or an act, or an entire screenplay, has a definite beginning, middle and end,” writes screenwriting guru [Syd Field](http://www.sydfield.com/). “If you break the components of the scene down into beginning, middle and end, you can establish the bits and pieces of action that are visually effective.” Same goes for cut-scenes. But designers have the tendency to think about them as means to an end, ways to get the player from one level to another. Cut-scene directors are not nearly as careful about time and structure as their filmmaking counterparts. Charming platformer/RPG [Super Paper Mario](http://stag-komodo.wired.com/gaming/gamingreviews/news/2007/04/gamereviews_0427) is hardly the worst of gaming's offenders, but its cut-scenes can overwhelm players with sluggish verbosity. Remember, less is more. Nuance is a good thing. Not everything needs to be laid out like a Wikipedia article. For example, the introduction of Super Paper Mario states: “This prophetic book was a mysterious tome full of stories of future events.” Um, duh. What else would a “prophetic book” be? In film, every second you shoot could potentially cost the studio millions of dollars. Gamemakers don't have the same sort of incentive to keep things snappy, which is a real shame, because some structure and thriftiness could do great things for cut-scene narrative.
05dont-violate-the-180-degree-rule
Don't Violate the 180-Degree Rule --------------------------------- It's a simple principle and one of the basic rules of cinematography: Characters should maintain the same spatial relationship no matter how many different angles your camera uses. If one character is on the left and the other is on the right, they should stay that way. In order to pull this off, filmmakers will picture an imaginary line that bisects the two characters and try to avoid crossing that line with the camera. Though there are quite a few exceptions, cinematographers generally don't break the rule, for fear of nauseating or confusing their audiences. Sadly, this rule is violated multiple times in one of the final cut-scenes of [Mass Effect 2](http://stag-komodo.wired.com/gamelife/2010/01/mass-effect-2-review/), Bioware's excellent sci-fi RPG. Because the camera jumps around from angle to angle with no regard for the [180-degree rule](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/180_degree_rule), characters' heads spin all over the place. It's jarring and not particularly fun to watch. Bioware usually crafts its cinematics quite competently, and Mass Effect 2 is packed with great cut-scenes — but cinematography is a complicated art, and its rules exist for a reason.
