Nestled near the beach, barely a stone's throw from Hollywood, the video game mogul Electronic Arts has refashioned the way LA thinks about video game studios. Consistently beating out Hollywood profit margins and setting trends in "the biz," the game industry is a dominating force. In a land of corporate and Hollywood giants, EA reigns supreme. Here, the people who brought us “Command and Conquer: Generals” are hard at work on “Lord Of The Rings: Battle For Middle Earth,” a real-time strategy game based on the popular movie trilogy.
 
Electronic Arts was kind enough to let me visit their new home and take a peek around. The studio's glass walls and slanted architecture is impressive as I drive up. Past a myriad of BMWs and Porsches, valet parking greeted us with a smile and showed us the way up the elevator to the third floor. Valet parking?! That's just the beginning! Karen from PR greeted me and gave us a quick tour of the studio.
 
A gym, swimming pool, basketball courts and state-of-the-art workstations are just some of the "standard" features you get to enjoy working at a studio like EALA. Inside the open air environment all the artists sit together, separated only by octagonal partitions that are intricately knitted together to promote creativity in the workplace. Lining the walls is concept art from “Battle For Middle Earth,” level designs, schematics, model sheets and maquettes. Sticky notes and pinned-up drawings line the artists’ cluttered personal spaces. "This feels more like a movie studio," I think to myself, "but where is all the action?"
 

Watch this interview in Quicktime format!(below right)

Just then, the "Medieval Fight Club" that meets Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays during lunch came walking by excitedly wheeling their foam swords and shields after what appears to have been a supreme battle. I and my then-awestruck cameraman are escorted into a state-of-the-art room featuring dual plasma screens, a conference table, video cams and even mics in the ceiling.  It made me think of a war room you might see at the Pentagon in one of those spy movies. I try to get my bearings again, "This isn't Disneyland," I tell myself, "and these aren't your toys." Karen brings in the first of four to be interviewed, none other than Richard Taylor, film industry veteran turned video game cinematics director.
 
This guy directed the special effects on Tron!  What else do you really need on a resume in this field? Sure enough, Richard has a whole collection of awards for his 30-year tenure in the commercial, broadcast and film industry to boot. Meeting Richard was a real treat, and indeed, he is a charming man. His presence as an artist is made obvious by his warm personality and the way he carries a conversation. He appears eager to talk about the project and EA, so we quietly set up our cameras and start chatting. Join me for Part One of four in our series as we sit down to chat with Richard about games and film industry and the merging of two giants.
 
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Tell us a little bit about your background and how you ended up here at EALA.
 
I have been a director of commercials for almost 30 years. [I] started at Robert Abel and Associates  doing early 7-Up  commercials and  ABC's on-air graphics. Then I got involved in features. I designed the  miniatures for the original Star Trek feature, the Enterprise, Vulcan shuttle and such. I directed the effects for Looker and  I was special effects director on Tron, the feature film that introduced the world to computer simulation. So I've been involved in computer animation since its earliest days and have watched it evolve for the last 20  years. It's been a long and interesting  journey.
 
I evolved into the game industry because it's the new edge of where extreme visuals are being created. I just found it exciting and found that there was a need for people like myself with real film production experience to evolve into this business. It was a natural evolution for me to come here and direct cinematics, help stage scenes, and help create the look of the projects.
 
As the cinematics director on "Battle For Middle Earth," what exactly are you responsible for?
 

Richard Taylor

It's like being a cinematographer in a game. Essentially, I'm a cinematographer in the digital world. So I'm making decisions about where to position the camera, when and where to move the camera to create interest and to tell the story. There are several types of cameras in a game. There are the cut scene cameras and there are game play cameras. Primarily I work with the cut scene camera, but in some cases I am helping design the game play camera’s POV. I also help design the opening films, and the trailers that advertise the game. 
 
What can you tell us about the new Lord Of the Rings project that you're working on?
 
It's an RTS game, and  it's the next step in the evolution of that type of game. We are pushing the envelope all the time, that's our job, that's EALA's intent,  to make  games  better and more exciting than they've ever been.
 
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There wasn't much more he could really say at this point about the game itself. It's based on  the Lord Of The Rings trilogy, has thousands of characters and will be a real-time strategy game.
 
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What is a typical day like for you here at EALA?
 
We usually have a production meeting with all the departments. The game is divided into different categories. There are the game designers who think up the strategies, the game play and the story. There are engineers that write code. We have an art department that creates all the models, and we have an animation department that creates all the animation for the characters in the game. All these departments have to communicate and work together as a whole. So there are lots of meetings in this kind of production process. 
 
Frankly, having come from special effects in feature films, I think this is a lot more difficult. Here you're creating  the game over a long period of time and you have to make the artwork and the engine work together while a player interacts with it, and this all has to work at a frame rate that allows it to be certified. It's very complex and difficult stuff so you need really bright and dedicated people to pull it off. It's all day every day for the last two to three months. Eventually, the game has to work in real time without crashing and that's a lot more difficult than finishing scenes and putting them into a film.
 
So we have production meetings in the morning, and then each department goes off and works on their pieces. I basically have a team of five people who work with me in the cinematics department. I have a basic idea of what I want in a scene so I work with the team to lay out the scene, block it, light it and choreograph the camera. It's an ongoing and interactive process that's a lot of fun and a lot of work. Every day we come across new problems. But I really don't mind, because to me life's interesting if you're learning.
 
What kind of role do the filmmakers have in making the game?
 
They aren't really supervising us in any context. We pay homage to the films. Obviously, we're trying to create the same quality, the same feel, the same ambience in the game that's in the films. We're not dealing with real actors, we're dealing with CG characters. Everything we're doing is totally created by the computer. We look at the films a lot. We use them as guides for lighting, the general kinds of  camera angles and such. I'm not just flying the camera around at will. I'm trying to make the camera emphasize what it is we're trying to do in the game. All scenes should have a beginning, a middle and an end. So the camera should be trying to amplify the emotion of ascene.
 
So at certain stages of the game New Line might look at the game and let us know if they like it, or if something offends them at all. In the end they are the final filter because the own the rights to that particular property.

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So... where do you get your motivation? And if you could, just talk about your creative process a little bit.
 
Being a director and having directed lots and lots of commercials, I'm also a director of photography. So I understand cameras and camera movement. If you're a DP, just like if you're a painter, you study the art form your involved with all the time. When I go to see feature films, when I'm watching television, I'm always looking for the latest trends in camera movement, photographic stylizations, film speeds, and new ways to stylize the world through a camera. So I'm learning all the time about cinematography and photography.
 
In doing something like "Lord Of The Rings," I'm  trying to emulate the look of the films. I design the camera movement around what the scene needs to communicate and I do all I can to keep it interesting. What we want to do is make it so you can look at a scene many times and not get bored with it. I try and make it remind you of something you've never seen before.
 


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