Game of Life

In short, after four months of all of our 'Hollywood' efforts, Viktor and I proudly present a science fiction short film based on "Game of Life", a cellular automaton game invented by John Horton Conway in 1970. Actually, this is the first episode in the potential series we called "Flares and Fireflies". We hope you will enjoy watching it at least as much as we enjoyed making it, and—this is important—please keep in mind that we are not really educated filmmakers or talented actors and that this is pretty much the maximum what we could do with all of our knowledge and modest technology we used, to say the least. If you like it, after the movie, later in the post, is the story of how and where we made it, the entire script, some blooper stories, and behind-the-scenes photos.
First of all, I hope you like our film, and for further understanding, what I would say about the core of its script is that it tells a story about a young boy who's following a glitch in the system, presented in real life as a firefly, through numerous portals to the place where he meets a man with the final orb, the artifact that seems to be a way in for full understanding of the life itself, its origin, and the rules it is built on. Just like in Conway's simple two-dimensional game, life itself could be the same—just a set of rules in some artificial zero-player game that, on a quantum or molecular level, provides results of interactions of main ingredients.
That was about the "Sci" part of the "Sci-Fi" genre. The fiction that follows the story is in the fact that life might be fully artificial in origin. In other words, the film explores the rules of evolution that are not intended to be seen or understood by everyone. Even those chosen to dive into the game by random case or by complex rule outcome are not able to understand the principles at once. If you are asking now how the game of life really looks from the inside and behind white-green wireframes, well, you will have to wait for another episode. But is there going to be another episode? The honest answer is that I don't know. I really don't. So far we only have ideas, and from there to the final file is a long way. We'll see.
This long way with the first episode started with the script. Believe it or not, the first draft and the final scenario were not too different. It slightly changed, but only because of technological restrictions and improvisations. Ever wonder what a script looks like for short films like this one? Here it is in full:
02. Wakeup 2 - Light appears. Goes through the door.
03. Getting out of bed, following light.
04. Following light upstairs.
05. At the balcony. Light and mild explosion. Artifact on the table.
06. Examining the artifact. First portal appears.
07. Light goes into abandoned house.
08. Appearing in abandoned country house.
09. Following light.
10. Second artifact. Goes through second portal.
11. Ending in the sea. Getting out on the beach. Stealing dry clothes.
12. Wandering dirt road.
13. Entering lighthouse site. Following light.
14. No artifacts here. Watching the lighthouse.
15. Seeing multiple flashes on the horizon over the site.
16. Site reappears in white wireframe only. People too.
17. Standing up in wireframe.
18. Checking a man who's reading Kindle.
19. Looking wireframe hands.
20. Kindle man: 'Everything is white. Isn't it?'
22. 'Did you see it too?'
23. 'No. But I saw it once before. Different lighthouse though.'
24. 'Where? When?'
25. 'Long ago... When I was about your age...'
26. 'But... What does it mean?'
27. 'I beleive it is a game. Not everyone can see it.'
28. 'What kind of game?'
29. 'I never found out really.'
30. Reaching for the backpack. Taking out the final artifact.
31. 'But maybe you will. I think this belongs to you now.'
32. Taking the artifact. It starts glowing.
33. Going back to beach.
34. Going back to abandoned house.
35. Going back to balcony.
36. Wakeup 3 - Realizing it was a dream. Going back to sleep.
37. Sleeping. Zooming hand. Hand is going wireframe.
38. Back to normal. Light on the hand.
39. Light goes to the clock table.
40. Artifact appears.
In the end, "Game of Life" is composed out of 50 scenes filmed on four major locations. Two of them are Viktor's room and our living room, decorated with green screens for the occasion. The adventure starts and ends in the main character's room, and the only dialog is filmed in front of a green background and merged with the coastal background we took in Greece. Unfortunately, technologically speaking, this is the weakest chain in the movie, and not only because of our lack of efforts. "Chroma key" software within Adobe's "After Effects" didn't cope too well with the modest laptop I have used to run it through. It failed and crashed too often during rendering, and it got the last nerves out of me. If you add to all the struggles that the consumer dSLR (Nikon D5200) we used to film is not perfect for audio capture without an external microphone and the fact that we had to record audio separately, I have to say that I am not really satisfied with the dialog scene, but in the end I'd like to think that this is the best I could do with editing that part of the film.
Revelation of Life (Game of Life sequel):
https://www.mpj.one/2020/10/revelation-of-life-part-one.html
Game of Life graphic novel:
https://www.mpj.one/2017/03/gol-graphic-novel.html
Refs:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway_Game_of_Life
http://www.mpj.one/2015/12/is-life-zero-player-game.html
http://www.mpj.one/2016/08/cyclops-of-peloponnese.html