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Hollywood, This is How You Make a Game-Based Movie

By - Source: Dan Trachtenberg (Twitter)

This is the way a game-based movie should be done.

Maybe instead of allowing Hollywood studios to take control of game-related IPs, chew them up, and spit them back out in big steaming piles of garbage, perhaps game publishers should turn to actual fans to make movies based on their popular titles. Take the recently-released Portal: No Escape as a good example: it may only be seven minutes long, but those seven minutes are way better than a few agonizing hours some unnamed game-based movies have forced us to endure.

Portal: No Escape stars Danielle Rayne as the female protagonist, and was made by Dan Trachtenberg, a 30-year-old commercial director and co-host of the pop-culture video podcast The Totally Rad Show. According to Trachtenberg, the filming was actually completed long before Portal 2 was even announced: around one and a half years ago. It took this long just to assemble a visual-effects team and finish post-production.

So far the unofficial Portal mini-movie has been viewed 921,646 times since it was uploaded to YouTube on Tuesday. Heck, even best-selling author William Gibson called it "brilliant."

Portal: No Escape

There are 45 Comments.
Top Comments
  • 14
    captainnemojr , August 25, 2011 9:30 AM
    That was awesome. I'm still waiting for a Zelda or Half-Life movie to come out.
  • 14
    bustapr , August 25, 2011 9:48 AM
    fk awesome. Really did justice to Portal, needs a bigger movie, with the same actress.
  • 12
    Nnymrod , August 25, 2011 10:42 AM
    agreed. cool vid. make one 18 times longer?
  • 14
    sceen311 , August 25, 2011 12:15 PM
    What I don't understand is why the game industry needs hollywood at all, why can't don't they just make a movie themselves, it's just a long ass cutscene.

    Just higher a director, writer and a producer say here are some animators, sound guys, couple of engineers and say "don't suck"
Other Comments
  • 14
    sceen311 , August 25, 2011 12:15 PM
    What I don't understand is why the game industry needs hollywood at all, why can't don't they just make a movie themselves, it's just a long ass cutscene.

    Just higher a director, writer and a producer say here are some animators, sound guys, couple of engineers and say "don't suck"
  • 14
    bustapr , August 25, 2011 9:48 AM
    fk awesome. Really did justice to Portal, needs a bigger movie, with the same actress.
  • 14
    captainnemojr , August 25, 2011 9:30 AM
    That was awesome. I'm still waiting for a Zelda or Half-Life movie to come out.
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