The SST Film Project: Information

A fan film of The Dig.

INTRO
First, it must be made clear that this film project currently involves about 5-10 active participants. Also, since most of us are just finishing high school (the School of Science and Technology, hence, the title SST) at the moment, our ability to work on The Dig is extremely limited. Let us not assume that work is not being done on the project, because it is. The issue is that the project is taking a VERY LONG time to finish. Because of this, we're happy to recruit dedicated fans into the project, as long as they can produce some sort of work which helps the film along. Of course, unless you live near where the majority of the group is - Oregon, USA - the only form of communication possible is really just the Internet. Strangely enough, some people don't seem to mind this sort of thing.

THE SCREENPLAY
The idea is to maintain the integrity of the storyline of the novel. Our screenplay is an exact, verbatim adaptation of the novel until scenes are trimmed down to make the movie less than 3 hours. The conclusion is still an issue of debate, as it seems too unrealistic to be believed. We'd like a more powerful ending, but we have no idea what that could be.

FILMING
Unfortunately, we have not yet begun filming - even after a year of, shall we say, pre-production work. The group is currently pooling money together to afford a digital camcorder. Possible filming locations include San Francisco Bay, the Oregon Coast, the Columbia River Gorge, and, perhaps various other places in the Portland Area.

COMPOSITING
We hope to create and implement a new method of video matting for compositing live actors into computer-generated backgrounds. It uses special images called "trimaps" to calculate and remove the background of a filmed subject (i.e. People). This allows us to place people in outer space, and on non-existent alien worlds. This method is much nicer looking than any "keying" tools provided in programs such as Final Cut Pro, Adobe Premiere, or Avid Xpress.

STORYBOARDS
A few concept camera shots have been drawn up already from various scenes of the film. Initial storyboarding on the first scene is nearing completion. As soon as my scanner is fixed, I can upload some frames.

CASTING/ACTING
Due to the limiting nature of our project, we've generally assumed that we, ourselves, would be acting the parts of the main characters from The Dig. Wow, don't we have control? As for our acting talent, at least one of us possesses a great interest in theatre and a philosophy on how acting should be done. In addition, I've been able to memorize 2/3 of Ludger Brink's dialogue from the novel in a few hours. The only major issue is age. This is one of our greatest downfalls - that we are too young to accurately portray the characters. But, keep in mind that this is a fan film. Given the unknown timeline of the film production, we could well be in our thirties when this gets finished! One can hope otherwise, though.

THOUGHTS ON PROPS
There's been a little discussion on props for The Dig. It seems that a lot of the book, The Dig, deals with alien artifacts which do not exist in reality. This makes for some rather interesting props, some of which are very difficult to create. Take life crystals for example. One idea is to fill a container with a glowing, green light, and composite out the container, so we still get the emitted light. This would allow us to insert in the CG life crystal which looks much cooler!

COSTUMES
Let's assume that we wanted to imitate the costumes from the game. Unless we make them ourselves, costume hunting will be hell. Orange pants are just that hard to find. Space suits are even worse. We hope to solve these problems with creativity.

MUSIC
Most of us who are involved in the project have a great interest in music. One of us plays on a keyboard, another plays piano, and I create music with my computer. I have been using a program called Acid Pro for about 2 years now, and my composition skills have increased. I've spent the past year experimenting with different themes and songs for The Dig. None of them really match up to the work that Michael Land did for the game. Like countless other fans, I found the game soundtrack to be emotional and evocative of the very environment of Cocytus. It would be a nice dream to have him do the music for our film project. If that's impossible, I hope we can create something just as nice. It should also be noted that game music does not always work well in film, because it does not fit the timing or action of a scene. Original work is also more rewarding. We'll do whatever works best for the film.