Bloodspell

[purplecat]

Bloodspell is a machina feature film that was released yesterday afternoon. To be honest, if I hadn't met cairmen, who wrote, directed and produced the film while I was in Edinburgh I doubt I'd have the first clue what Machinma was. In short its the use of computer games' engines to produce animation - this is why cairmen could make Bloodspell for less than five thousand pounds.

Since B. has rigged our TV up to run through a computer we opted to watch Bloodspell on our widescreen telly, drinking wine and eating popcorn at the same time. I was a little worried that the resolution wouldn't be high enough but actually it was fine, I downloaded the high-res Quicktime version from the Bloodspell website which took about half an hour over our broadband connection, the only problem was the occasional glitch where the picture stopped, this happened about twice in the course of the film and B. blamed it on Quicktime being unable to process the decompression codec fast enough.

Technicalities aside we liked the film. It was billed as a "punk fantasy". I assumed this would either mean it had a punk visual aesthetic or that it had an overt anarchistic/iconoclastic message. Either that or it would be needlessly icky and violent. In the end I don't think it had a particularly punk look or theme: it looks like a fantasy computer game (well obviously) and frankly rebelling against evil authority is such a fantasy staple its hard to view this as a particularly anarchistic message. In fact Bloodspell is rather careful not to bill either the authoritarian church nor the demonic underclass as mindlessly evil*, so in many ways the message was considerably less anarchistic than in less thoughtful films of the fantasy genre (and lets face it this is not a genre over-endowed with thought-provoking films). I think maybe it had a punk sound-track. Now, I wouldn't know a punk sound-track if it danced naked down the street whistling "Anarchy in the UK" but this certainly wasn't a cod-medieval sub-Clannad soundtrack and the juxtaposition of modern music in a fantasy setting worked surprisingly well here (much better than in Ladyhawke, for example) without turning it into a post-modern joke (e.g., The Knights' Tale). If this was a punk soundtrack then maybe I should actually check out some punk music because it was really good.

Aesthetically the film was never going to compete with the sort of animation you get from Pixar - after all they have a limited number of polygons available. Mostly this wasn't a problem and some of the sets, in particular the approach to the Cathedral were extremely pretty. The only place where the limited animation really jarred was during character interactions where the limited facial expression available made the acting appear rather wooden. Possibly this was because the voice actors weren't quite good enough to make this believable (and some of the bit part actors weren't that great although the leads were all good as was cairman's cameo (which Bill spotted but I didn't)). It seemed more likely that machinima is a sufficiently new technique that the grammar for conveying emotions hasn't properly developed or wasn't well enough understood by us, the viewers. After all Thunderbirds and its like demontrate that puppets can convey emotions and they give you much less to work with than a 3D head with a face mapped on to it. Since the problem appeared to reduce as the film proceeded it might well be that we got more accustomed to the conventions as we watched.

The plot of the film is your basic young man probably does the right thing for all the wrong reasons (or at least motivated entirely by hormones). But then he is portrayed throughout as a talented and good-hearted idiot. Bill says he even had an "idiot accent" which may be true - this is a Scottish film after all. Most of the other characters were competent and engaging although their motivations were occasionally a little obscure. The world was well-realised and the macro plot held together surprisingly well although some of the details along the way didn't bear close scrutiny after the fact. No plot-holes were visible as we watched however. As fantasy films go, it was pretty intelligent, although I might have wished that the women's costumes made a few more nods towards practicality. It was also well-paced and gripping with some stunning set-pieces and it left you wanting to know more about the world and the people within it.

So, if you like fantasy, I would recommend downloading and watching Bloodspell and since the makers are relying fairly heavily on "viral marketing" if you like it, blog about it.

* although, it must be said that the "big bad" did appear to have no redeeming features but we actually learn very little about the big bad and the religious organisation build around it did appear to be serving a useful purpose, if possibly unethically and over-zealously.

Comments

[cairmen.livejournal.com]

Great review! Thanks very much - that was a very interesting read. Sorry to hear about your technical woes.

The "big bad" -

WARNING. SPOILERS.







I must admit, I think that the Angel is a fairly reasonable character from its own lights. You're right - there's more that you don't learn about it, which was something we were saving for a sequel (and we should have fixed that when we worked on the feature). However, the important thing is that, well, it's not human - it needs the "fire" (the magic - which was actually stolen from the Angels, in the backstory), and there's nothing unreasonable to it about taking it from the people who currently have it. They die, which is unfortunate, but it's not like they're - well, Angels. Just men.

Oh, and the soundtrack is indeed very, very punk, in a variety of flavours of punk, from pop-punk to alterna-with-a-punk-ethos.

[purplecat]

I must admit, I think that the Angel is a fairly reasonable character from its own lights.

The Angel certainly never did the "I'm eeeeevil just because mwa, ha, ha" thing on the other hand all I picked up about it (from one viewing so there may be details I didn't pick up on) was that it wanted magical people and had constructed a relgious organisation pretty much entirely on the basis that it should provide it with said magical people. It appeared to have little interest in or concern for the organisation or its members beyond that or for the wider society and had enough of a vindictive streak to single out one specific magical person for sacrifice in place of others. So in the absence of anything to fill in the blanks about motivation I judged it on the two character aspects we saw: manipulative and vindictive neither of which constitute a redeeming feature. But I was aware we learned nothing about motivation which leaves a big blank in terms of judging a character.

[stormsearch.livejournal.com]

That's very interesting. I didn't see the Angel's pursuit of Jered as being vindictive; I interpreted it more as a logical (and total un-human) proceedure. Jered's power is obviously very strong; since the Angel needs the magic, it makes sense (in a purely logical context, devoid of human emotion) to request a better source of power, that you've already "tasted", as it were, than to have the itty-bitty versions of other peoples.

A (not very good) analogy might be chocolate; there used to be a Very Good Chocolate shop in Edinburgh. Instead of popping to the local coffee shop, many people would go quite some distance to have the hot chocolate at the Very Good Shop. Perhaps, to the Angel, his request is no different, particularly if he doesn't have any grasp of Human emotions, or any empathy of them.

(Disclaimer: Given that I'm involved in Bloodspell, possibly this is based less on the film, and more on my own knowledge.)

[purplecat]

I don't want too much to be taken from this because I thought one of the real strengths of the film was that it didn't spend ages EXPLAINING EVERYTHING CAREFULLY in a ponderous fashion. I can't think of single conversation from the film where two characters carefully explain things to each other that they both already know. Pulling that off in a modest length film with a detailed world and back-story and yet still making the basics easily comprehesible was a real achievement.

Of course the risk with this approach is the way the audience may fill in the blanks unexpectedly. Jered is clearly talented but the Master, for starters, would wipe the floor with him in seconds (OK, special case) and I wouldn't have rated his chances against Gad if Gad had known what to expect*. Furthermore Jered had not been through an initiation which I got the impression was supposed to increase the power. So my assumption was that Jered was good, but at the level of promising initiate and the church had all those really tasty morsels up on the Spire (assuming of course the Angel knew about the Spire).

I was aware, when I wrote the review, that I had so little information about the Angel that it was difficult to draw judgement but there was no evidence within the film itself that suggested the Angel had any redeeming features, nor was there any real suggestion of ambiguity. Contrast say with the treatment of the Church and the Blooded where we see a number of members of both sides who are sympathetic, clearly honourable and sincere, and members who clearly are not (actually not so much on the church side - nearly all the church characters we learn anything about are sympathetic). We see the church persecutes the blooded but Gad explicitly acknowleges that they have prisoners he would not like to see released. So its much clearer that you are dealing with the full spectrum of people who find themselves in this world where there is this opposition between the blooded and the unblooded and the story is partly about how they deal with this world. All we see of the Angel is that he has manipulated this situation to his own advantage and there is little suggestion that he is, for instance, incomprehending of human emotions (quite the opposite I would have said, to have created the church). I don't think the film suffers from this, in fact, if you do make a sequel, the option to subvert assumptions about the Angel is a useful tool in the box: show a world in which there is no organisation to curb the excesses of the blooded; show that, perhaps, the church exploits the Angel as much as the Angel exploits the Church (already suggested in Bloodspell) perhaps even that it was the church that set up the system we see and co-opted the Angel into it rather than the Angel appearing with a divine message which inspired the founding of the church... whatever; perhaps the Angel is trapped; or a child. You've got all sorts of potentials open.

* and I so couldn't decide which of those two should have been played by Sean Connery - Gad I think.

[gominokouhai]

Well, at least it made you think. And there are a lot of moral grey areas in adventure stories.

A lot of the points you raise would have been answered by a Bloodspell II, which I gather is now not going to happen. But I'm not going to spoiler you until Hugh confirms it.

> I thought one of the real strengths of the film was that it didn't spend ages EXPLAINING EVERYTHING CAREFULLY in a ponderous fashion

I'm glad to hear you say that; I thought it was handled really well. This despite the fact that the name for Captain Benedict on the set was Captain Exposition.

> which of those two should have been played by Sean Connery - Gad I think

Heh. Gad was originally written with a braw Scots accent. We went with the Liverpudlian because Alan (wot plays Gad) is just so fantastic with his natural voice.

I could have had some fun doing the Master as Connery, though. The Angelsh deshide who ish innoshent....

[cairmen.livejournal.com]

Oh - your BloodSpell link is broken.

[purplecat]

*swears* - fixed now.