How to Make a Movie Using Dragon Age Animations

Somebody asked me: "How can I make a movie using Dragon Age animations?" The honest answer is: "I have no idea!" However, I seem to have the undeserved reputation for being an expert on how to make animated movies, and all because of my older hub "How to Make an Animated Movie."

The first thing to find out in trying to answer this question is: What is Dragon Age: Origins? Apparently, it's a single player role playing game with unusually realistic looking animated sequences. If you want to see what it looks like, watch the trailer I've embedded below. Keep in mind that this is a game for adults and is not suitable for children.

The video above looks just like a movie trailer, and it's hard to tell from viewing it that it's a trailer for a computer game. What's the difference between a movie and a game? The core essence of each has remained the same, but the edges are beginning to blur. It used to be that watching a movie was completely passive, and it involved seeing a story written and acted and directed by somebody else unfold. It used to be that playing a game was mostly active, and if it was a role playing game, most of the action had to be imagined.

There was a third thing that I especially liked to do when I was little, and that was neither watching a movie nor playing a game. I used to like to play dolls. When I played dolls, I was the director, the writer, the producer and all the actors. Playing dolls was just like writing a short story or a novel or a play -- only without the writing part.

I used to frown on D&D players, whose games were governed by the throw of the dice and whose plot was partially canned and partially prepared for them by a Dungeon Master. But in the newest version of role playing games, they are a little like watching a movie, a little like being a character in the movie, and also a little like being the director.

How does that work? Well, in the case of Dragon Age: Origins, you get a Toolset that helps you manipulate the game. You get to prepare the scenery, set up the props, put together the characters and dress them, and you can even make the action unfold.

How do you do this? Search me. I don't even own the game, and I understand that it wouldn't run on my computer, because it has very high technical requirements. But there are two ways to find out. We could read the Toolset wiki, or we could watch some instructional videos prepared by the makers of Dragon Age: Origins.

Don't you just love the calm, reasonable voice in which the developers of the game discuss bloodshed and mayhem? This is how geeks relate vicariously to violence.

In any event, you can select a location, an area way start point and the direction in which you will be facing when the game begins. All this appears to be something you do while working in a window that looks a lot like our familiar browser windows.

Placement of enemies is another stage in preparation of the game. Apparently, enemies are called "creatures", because by reducing their place in the animacy hierarchy, players are able to kill them without feeling bad.

Props are called "placeables". You name each placeable. Placeables include doors.

The quest giver is a non-player character. You can customize his looks.

The following video shows how to make conversations and provide dialogue for non-player characters. The dialogue is tied into the plot, and different dialogues play depending on which condition is set as "true" during the game. This will be problematic for us if we simply want to make a movie. We don't want any input from the viewer as to how the plot works out.

The next demo attempts to show how the game works. The player accepts a quest, makes choices, engages in combat and receives rewards. But for our purposes, if we want to make a movie using these Dragon Age animations, the whole concept of the "player" needs to be done away with. We don't want a player. We only want non-player characters. We don't want to give the viewer choices. We don't want to pause the action while someone makes a decision.

In researching this article, I visited one of the Dragon Age bulletin boards, where aficionados of the game were engaged in a furious debate concerning why they liked to play it. Somebody had posted this provocative question: "Does anybody play this game just for the slash & hack?" Somebody else replied with: "Does anybody play this game just for the storyline?"

Not being a player at all, I found this exchange quite revealing. Apparently there are two quite different aspects of the game that represent two conflicting motivations for playing it. Some players simply want the vicarious experiences of hacking and slashing their way through a bloody battlefield, interspersed with the occasional love scene. Others are very much into the sword and sorcery plotline, and they play through the slash and hack portions because they want to find out what happens next.

If you have bought Dragon Age: Origins with the express purpose of using it to making animated movies, your motivation is completely different. You are not looking for vicarious experiences and you are not interested in watching somebody else's story unfold. You want to use this program with its toolset to tell a story all your own, a story somebody else may want to see.

I think the key to making a movie using the Dragon Age: Origins software must be in mastering cutscene compilations.

Remember, the game is composed of two aspects: the vicarious experiences that a player has while using inputs to control his character, and the overall storyline, which, except for a few minor variations, remains the same no matter who is playing. To make a movie, you need to bypass all the tools that relate to player input when a game is in progress. If we do that, what do we have left? The answer is "cutscenes." What are cutscenes? They're those little mini-movies that run after you get to a certain level in a game. Or, if you do not like my off the cuff definition, I can just quote the Dragon Age wiki on the subject:

"Cutscenes can be stand-alone cinematic sequences that are triggered by scripts in the course of the game, or they can be inserted into conversations in place of the simplified cinematics that conversations can automatically generate."

Let's forget about plot scripts, because they contain conditional statements, depending on what the player has done. We're making a movie, so we don't care what the player has done. There is no player. There's just a viewer. All we have to do is create cutscenes that tell our story, then string them along in a cutscene compilation.

To create your own unique, one of a kind cutscene, open a blank cutscene window. How do you do that? Well, first press "file" at the top left hand corner of your window. Then click "new", and under new, select "cutscene", and open the resource file type of your choice.

You will have to give your new cutscene resource file a name and you will need an art layout, to be assigned to the cutscene . You will have to pick an area where the cutscene will take place, or you can create a "stage" which will allow you to preset certain camera angles.

You will need to control both the "viewport" and the "timeline". You will control placeables and characters. You need to know everything about how the toolset relates to your cutscene, but you need  to be much less concerned with how the game will access it.

Making cutscenes is extremely technical. It's not like playing a game. It's not like writing a story. It's more like producing a movie. You have to place your characters, create the dialogue, select your cameras and camera angles, and keep correcting every minor deviation from your own controlling vision of how things should be.

Have I ever done this? Well, of course, not! I don't even own the game. But if you've got this game, and you've downloaded the free toolset, and you want to make a movie, this is the skill you are going to have to master. If I were you, I would start small. Maybe I'd even leave out the dialogue and just create a short series of scenes that might serve as the visual for a music video. Once you've done that, you'll be ready to build a whole movie, scene by cutscene!

Good luck!

(c) 2010 Aya Katz