14 - Sam Barlow (Immortality game designer)

Sam Barlow is the designer of the acclaimed independent games Her Story (2015), Telling Lies (2019), and Immortality (2022). Often cited as reviving interest in live-footage games, Barlow takes the cinematic underpinnings of his earlier titles to new extremes in Immortality, which tasks the player with assembling rushes, behind-the-scenes, and rehearsal footage from three incomplete films in order to piece together the fate of their enigmatic actress. To create each of these movies, Barlow enlisted writers Allan Scott (Don't Look Now, The Witches), Barry Gifford (Wild at Heart, Lost Highway) and Amelia Gray (Mr. Robot, Maniac).

On the pod, Barlow and Screen Slate editor Jon Dieringer discuss the cinematic legacies of unfinished films, the influences of filmmakers like Peter Greenaway and Krzysztof Kieślowski, the complex writing and production processes of shooting—and dicing up—three period genre pieces, and how “auteurism” functions in the games industry.

Hosted by Jon Dieringer. Audio post by C. Spencer Yeh.

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Episode Transcript

Sam Barlow (00:00):
For me, I love it if you watch a movie, and you get
to the point in the credits,where the score stops and then
the pop record drops. Imentioned this on Twitter and
someone else, someone called outThe Fly. I had never, I wasn't
even aware of this.
When Cronenberg did the fly, themovie company were like, oh, for

(00:23):
this to be a big hit, it shouldhave a tie in pop record. And
I'm not gonna be able toremember in this who it was, but
not the record the Cronenbergwould have necessarily picked.
I think Cronenberg used it inthe background in a bar scene.

(00:45):
But someone recently tweeted outthis, this fly single and it was
based on again like just the wayall these people's minds work.
The original movie The Fly, theCronenberg was very loosely
adapted, has a line in it that'slike, "Helped me, I'm scared" or
something, which apparently wasthe famous line everyone

(01:06):
associated with it. Yes. To thismusician. Yeah. And said, write
a song called "Help Me I'mScared" or whatever. So they
wrote this kind of very poppy,late 80s track called "Help Me,
I'm Scared" or whatever. Likehere you go, Cronenberg. He's
like, thanks. Yeah, it's like,but I just love that bit in

(01:26):
credits where you you kind ofdeep in credits land and then
they just drop the pop. Yeah, alittle pop single in there.

Jon Dieringer (01:40):
You are listening to the Screen Slate Podcast
covering the independent filmscene in New York and beyond. I
am your host, Jon Dieringer. Andthis episode's very special
guest is video game designer SamBarlow. This is someone who
needs little introduction topeople who follow indie games,
but his work should holdincredible interest for anyone
who is even remotely interestedin the relationship between

(02:02):
cinema and gaming and newnarrative possibilities.
Barlow started working in themainstream gaming industry in
the early 2000s. But the workthat he's best known for started
after he went independent in2015. With the release of Her
Story, the game tasks the playerwas searching through a computer
database and policeinterrogation footage that
gradually reveals a slippery,sinister mystery narrative. It

(02:25):
was released to major fanfareand is now regarded as one of
the essential modern gamingexperiences. It was followed in
2019 by Telling Lies, asimilarly acclaimed title also
based on live action footage,this time with a larger cast and
more ambitious narrativestructure.
His new game Immortality nowrounds out a trilogy, and I
think it might be his magnumopus. His earlier games are

(02:48):
compared to cinema, but this oneis totally steeped in it. As the
player you've received a cacheof footage comprising brushes
and outtakes from threeunfinished films during the
disappeared actress MarissaMarcel. As you pieced together
these films one shot at a time,you also discover the meta
narrative around them that helpsyou understand the actresses
spate to weave his most complexnarrative yet, Barlow enlisted

(03:11):
the talents of Allan Scott bestknown for his many
collaborations with NicolasRoeg, including the classic
Don't look now, the greatfiction and screenwriter Barry
Gifford who co wrote LostHighway and Wild at Heart and
Amelia Scott, writer from Mr.
Robot and Maniac.
Sam and I talked on September 6,one week to the day after
Immortality was released twooverwhelmingly positive reviews,

(03:34):
I wanted to talk to him aboutcinema. His influence is the
details of mounting three filmproductions to produce a single
game and the relationshipbetween autism in cinema and
interactive entertainment.
Before we begin, I want to shoutout to our Patreon members for
making the podcast possible.
Screen Slate is a nonprofessional operation, but
we're able to pay honoraria towriters and editors Thanks to

(03:56):
our supporters. This includesnot just this podcast, but our
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(04:18):
Every show says it and in ourcase, it could not be more true.
We literally cannot do thiswithout your support. So thank
you to everyone who makes itpossible. You are totally
poggers.
Yeah, it's been cool to see likepeople seeing still engaged with
Orson Welles like his I feellike he's taken on a new life is

(04:40):
kind of like a meme. You know,you see people.

Sam Barlow (04:42):
Oh, that yeah, that little memes where he'll be a
raconter.
Yeah, well, it's funny becausewe were talking about the peas
advert just as like the briefsoap advert in Immortality and
be like, oh, let's pretend thisis Orson Welles, but I feel like
that peas advert he did it hasgot this incredible life, it's

(05:03):
constantly been recycled as areference and a meme. He has so
many unfinished movies to hisname.
And they may or may not havebeen great movies. At that
point. Yes, I desperate.

Jon Dieringer (05:23):
It's also fun to imagine that they were you know,
everyone makes the story of likean unfinished film

Sam Barlow (05:29):
I was obsessed. I really loved the novel dead
calm. So knowing that OrsonWelles was originally going to
adapt dead calm, and then laterhe sold the rights and that's
the Nicole Kidman, Samuelversion.
But I loved that. I like toimagine that's like, a last
classic. But then when you lookat the actual footage you shop
for it doesn't look that great?
Yeah. Yeah.

Jon Dieringer (05:53):
I also love like, you know, if sometimes if you
look through old trademagazines, like old issues of
variety, you'll see ads formovies that were never made like
David Cronenberg isFrankenstein, or like, you know,
unwaged Andrzej Zulawski who didpossession was going to do a
movie about a killer tiger withDolph Lundgren that there's like

(06:14):
ads floating around for and it'sjust yeah, it's so fun to like,
think about what that stuffcould have been. Yeah, there's
so many interesting what ifs.
Actually, I should also mention,I don't know, if you have
feelings about how spoilery weshould get, if that's something
you want to like, avoid, or wecould just totally get into it.

Sam Barlow (06:33):
I'm like, I'm, it's been interesting, because we
did, we were doing play testing,like we're getting people to
play the game. And they were,they knew very little. And we
have seen people's reactions tocoming in and discovering
certain things. And that'sreally cool. So then we're like,
okay, we should try not talk toomuch. But on the other hand,
compared to the previous game,like we're telling lies, it was

(06:53):
actually really hard. Because wewere trying not to talk about
certain things with this one. Iwas like, Oh, well, we can talk
about, like, 75% in exhaustivedetail.
Movies, and the characters inthe movies and the movies
themselves. And I guess, yeah,some of the spookier aspects.
It's been neat seeing peoplekind of discover those. So

(07:15):
that's where I might getslightly.

Jon Dieringer (07:17):
Okay. Yeah, well, we can kind of keep it a little
vague or also provide, you know,the caveat that people want the
100% pure experience, proceedwith caution, but it's a multi
layered game in terms of thenarratives you have these three
films that you're rediscovering.
And I wondered if you could justtalk about the genesis of that
structure like at what point didyou decide that it would be a

(07:39):
multipronged narrative

Sam Barlow (07:44):
It's probably lots of things colliding. Like I've
always loved, weird structuresor slightly more complicated
structures. Like when I firststarted being creative, I was
more of a painting guy thananything else. And so like
triptychs, and just like, youknow, that kind of neat little
mathematical exploration of somekind of theme or story was

(08:05):
always cool. A hardcore like,Krzysztof Kieślowski fan. So
like, you know, the I don't havethis like hubris, like the guts
to come out and be like, here isa thematic trilogy, right? Sure.
Yeah. You know, and but at thesame time, I love how freeing
that kind of structure can be asan artist, so like, my favorite,
my favorite Peter Greenawaymovie is, is that into knots.

(08:28):
And like you see him talkingabout a movie. And he's like,
Oh, well, once we decided thealphabet was important. I sat
down with the DP and came upwith the 26 different ways you
could like a scene, right? Andthere's, there's some kind of
fun thing when you create thatsort of structure that can be
quite, you know, artificial. Butit lets you play within it. So I

(08:50):
think those kinds of thingsalways appealed to me. There was
a not particularly amazing Brianoldest novel that I found in
like a yard sale. As a kid thatwas two novels in one. I think
he was one of those kinds ofstories where there's, there's
like a frame narrative. And thenwithin that narrative, that
protagonist is reading a novel.
And I think I've seen aninterview, or maybe I just

(09:12):
inferred this, but it reallyfelt like Brian Aldous had just
written this pulp sci fi novelthat he wasn't 100% committed to
and didn't feel like he couldsell it. But then when he
started creating this framenarrative, that in itself
interrogated his own novel, likehe found a way to make it
interesting to himself, and tomake it to a more substantial

(09:34):
piece. So I've always beeninterested in that kind of
element where you do have theselayers of fiction and reality
and they kind of bounce off eachother, you know, all those
things. Were in there. Yeah.

Jon Dieringer (09:48):
And so it was always fundamental to the game
that it would be like a multithreaded narrative.

Sam Barlow (09:55):
Early on, it was I mean, like the purest Genesis at
some point It would have been megoing people keep calling these
things that I make interactivemovies. But as someone who is a
fan of movies, I would kind ofalways put my hand up and be
like, well, they're not reallymovies, right? Like to me, sure
what makes a movie is I'm goingto sit for 90 minutes, and

(10:16):
somebody is going to give me asequence of images that is so
controlled, right? That that'sthe story is the sequence of a
combination of images. And thenI was making these things where
I was surrendering control, butas well, like a lot of the lot
of the way that performancesworked, particularly, like when
we did telling lies, the frontpage of a screenplay said on it,

(10:39):
this is an anti movie, which Iremember tickling Logan, because
we would have you know, dramaticscenes between two people, which
might take 15 minutes, where,you know, the dialogue was not
compressed to be like justbeats, like very cinematic type
beats. You know, so there was alot more kind of space and kind
of real time feel, which isvery, not so magical, you know,

(11:01):
not generally cinematic. Sothere was, there was part of it
was like, people keep callingthese things, movies, they're
not really movies. So there waslike a contrarian thing of me
going well, okay, I will nowmake an interactive. And, and in
the same way that like herstory, deconstructed the
detective story. And to someextent telling is was me trying

(11:22):
to kind of deconstruct the sortof undercover cop thriller.
Here, it was like, Okay, whatdoes it mean to, to deconstruct
cinema and sort of break it downinto component pieces and have
people reassembled it? Yeah. Andthat became very quickly, not
just like the structure of amovie, but also the idea of
making a movie, the process, thebehind the scenes, the people

(11:43):
involved? And you know, so that,then, you know, pretty early on
that it was kind of obvious thatthe core of that story would be
an actress, right would besomeone who was the star in a
movie, and you know, what thatmeant? And I think it naturally
then kind of followed that,like, Oh, if we get to see
multiple of these movies, we getall these interesting structural

(12:05):
things. And we get to kind ofbounce the different characters
see progression across thesethree movies. Seeing that a lot
of that stuff sort of fell out.

Jon Dieringer (12:14):
Yeah. You know, you really assembled like, I
would say, like a murderer's rowof writers for this. And I
wondered, you know, at whatpoint were other writers coming
into the process? And how didthat all come about?

Sam Barlow (12:28):
So the fun part, for me, like, to some extent,
starting a new project is alwaysan excuse to do research, right.
So it's like, oh, here's a bunchof books, I wanted to read
movies, I wanted to watch allthis stuff that I don't have the
time to justify, but hey, ifit's for the project, then I can
go do this stuff. And a reallyfun part of the process here was

(12:49):
when we started to dig intothese different time periods.
And the history of moviemakingat these points in time, we went
out and tried to speak to asmany people as possible from the
time period. So we are speakingto a lot of people who wrote
before or worked with, or on thecrew, on a lot of my favorite
movies for a lot of my favoritedirectors across these periods.

(13:10):
And, you know, there's there's adifference between reading,
reading in a book, the historyof these areas, and some of the
details to actually speaking tosomeone over zoom, and, you
know, the things that theanecdotes they might give you.
And during that process, givenhow willing people were to speak
to us, it became a reallyobvious and cool thing to do

(13:36):
that, if we wanted to create thescreenplays and have them feel
like useful, kind of foundartifacts, almost that and we
already knew that, like theprocess would be to treat these
movies as if they were realmovies and you know, have a full
screenplay, have a full shootschedule, and then have all

(13:56):
those kind of things figuredout. It became obvious that like
a really cool way to pull insome of the texture and some of
the authenticity and sort ofbuild on some of that research
we've been doing would be to tapinto people that, you know, had
some insight to those errors. Sothat, you know, part of the
process was then identifying whoare the people who wrote on

(14:22):
these movies we like is stillaround, who is still actually
working, who will answer ourcalls. And you know, that, you
know, we ended up speaking to alot of people and having some
really cool conversations andthen working with the people we
did. And they you know, so thatwas we've done like a lot of the
kind of high level outlining andplanning. And so then when we

(14:47):
kind of brought them in, likethe conversation was always
interesting, because the firstpart of conversation would be,
hey, we're making this videogame. It's interesting and
weird. Do you want to come inand Do something on it. And you
know, a lot of people would belike, Oh, that's so cool. I've
never written for a videogamebefore. That's exciting. Like, I
want to do this entirelydifferent and new thing. And

(15:09):
then we'd be like, Oh, actually,what we want you to do is come
in and just forget, we saidvideo game like three, three,
this particular artifact isjust, it's just a screenplay,
right?

Jon Dieringer (15:20):
So there was no instruction to write and like a
video game a or like, keep thesemechanics in mind or etc.

Sam Barlow (15:31):
We had like a loose outline. So we, you know, we
knew that these were the, thiswas the story that was happening
during the making of thesemovies, these were kind of the
things that we wanted to touchon and explore. So we had like
an outline of each movie, whichwe then unrolled into, like,
this would be the shootschedule. And then make sure you

(15:54):
know, there's some synergy ifthis thing is happening, whilst
this particular part of themovie is being shot, etc. roll
that back into the outline. Sowe kind of had a rough outline
of each movie. And there werecertain scenes where we were
like, Oh, this is a useful sceneto us on the game side. So just
FYI, like we'd like to see,don't get rid of this thing. And

(16:16):
then we just handed it over.
And, you know, then people wentand change stuff and push stuff
around and try to make thescripts their own. Yeah, I mean,
some of the interestingconversations were like, Is that
Is that a thing that would havehappened in 1970? It's like,
well, yeah, I was back. I wasthere. And we're like, okay,

Jon Dieringer (16:36):
yeah. Well, yeah.
I mean, someone like Alan Scottis such a, you know, legendary
writer. And, for instance, like,was he at all confused about the
video game aspect or just, likestoked about it?

Sam Barlow (16:49):
I think everybody was slightly mystified, loosely
by like, what are we whatexactly what are you doing? But
but but then we would just belike, okay, don't worry about
that. We're just talking aboutthis story. Yeah, this script.

Jon Dieringer (17:03):
And also, like, some of the scenes are portrayed
as rehearsals, or locationscouts, were they written that
way? Or would you take like ascene that was written within,
let's say, standard screenplay,and then say, okay, we're
actually going to portray thisone as a rehearsal scene in the
game.

Sam Barlow (17:20):
Yeah, that was something that was decided after
the fact or during those somescenes where we knew we wanted
to do a certain thing with them,loosely. But pretty much the job
was let's get the fullscreenplay of this fictional
movie. And then once we had it,then we got the line producer to
break it down. So we knew how itwas being shot. And then we kind

(17:43):
of found the most interestingways to drop in to the various
Yeah, so that was a layer thathappened separately. So yeah,
like, I know that. You know,Amelia is excited to play
because she has no idea. Likewhat we did to the stuff that
they write. Yeah, in some cases,it's like, Oh, quite a big, you
know, surprising thing mighthappen in the middle of the

(18:04):
scene that otherwise was doingsomething entirely different.
Yeah. But yeah, I thinkeverybody was, was just
generally amused to be doingthis. And to some extent, it was
just like, it was a fun thingfor them to do, because they
were getting to write,screenplay and write scenes
without the being a huge studioprocess of notes. So everyone

(18:25):
got to have a little bit of fun.

Jon Dieringer (18:26):
Yeah. And we're Amelia and Barry Gifford were
they collaborating directly witheach other? Were they both kind
of like taking a pass atdifferent drafts? Because they
both wrote the two of everything

Sam Barlow (18:39):
is great. Yeah, no, they were again, kind of heavily
siloed like the thing with Barrywithout getting too deep into
spoiler territory was like allof these conversations. It was
it was really hard to make themat some point, like be
conversations about about theproject and not just be like,
you know, like, constantlyinterrogating Alan about like

(19:00):
working with with Nick, rogueand dope now his collaborations.
But something it was reallyobvious early on, we were
speaking to Barry was like hisbody of work, even though he's
collaborated with a bunch ofvery unique people, like pretty
much everything Barry has putout is very much in his own

(19:21):
voice. Which is crazy when youthink like, here's someone that
can collaborate with David Lynchand still come away with like,
his, his voice. Yeah, in themix.

Jon Dieringer (19:32):
And he's also like a huge encyclopedia film
noir. Like I read. One of mysort of, like formative books
was this basically was like alittle encyclopedia film noir
that he wrote, and, you know,obviously, he's known for his
work with David Lynch, but sucha repository of like film
knowledge and also just generalknowledge of like mystery noir

(19:55):
tropes.

Sam Barlow (19:57):
Yeah, man. He's a great record. So I like I mean,
all A lot of these people willbe like, Okay, we're gonna have
to budget three hours. For thiscall, we're gonna, people will
just get talking right? I thinkit was, I think it was early on.
He was like, Yeah, I don't liketo use the term film. Like, you
know, that's come to me andsomething that's not quite
specific. So what are thoseconversations with? With Barry

(20:19):
early on was like, you know,wouldn't it wouldn't necessarily
be a great fit for him to justcome in and be, you know, and
write for what we are askingright? And then have it be too
far away from his own voice. Sothen we start having this
conversation around? Well, theidea that is kind of touched on
in the story of like, oh, thismovie, two of everything starts
out as being explicitly a verygifted adaptation. And so it's

(20:44):
rooted in and based on BarryGifford short story. And then we
talked through with Barry, like,what an adaptation might look
like. And it's, it's a storythat beautifully touches on some
of the themes as well that arein the game. And pretty much we
were talking about this before,I think we brought Barry in, but
like, one of the things thatfascinates me when you start

(21:06):
digging into film history,right, and I think ultimately,
if there's a goal in this game,it's basically to encourage the
player to become as obsessiveabout film as I am. Right. So
it's like, we're going to askyou to to watch and rewatch,
we're going to ask you to diginto the behind the scenes
stories understand some of thegenesis of these things. So we
were talking a lot about the wayin which movies change from you

(21:31):
know, during script developmentto them the actual performance
to them the editing room, likejust even even in that process.
Not to digress too much but it'slike as someone that works in
games you constantly come upagainst this question of our
games are right and kind of gamestory work alongside other types

(21:51):
of storytelling. And the commoncomplaint I think like Roger
Ebert is on record with this onewas a game can't be art because
the story does not have the tothe author is not choosing the
ending, right? The player is incontrol the the author needs to
be in control for it to beactual art. And that was always
bizarre to me, just because Iknew that Ebert would know and

(22:13):
anyone that works in film wouldknow how that Final Cut comes
about through so muchcoincidence chance the so many
decisions along the way thatlike, you know, prior to the
Edit, maybe it had a differentending maybe as the case now
with every blockbuster. Theyactually showed people a
different edit. And they went,oh, people don't like this
editing, and they reshot andthey tweaked it, like there's so

(22:34):
much fluidity. So I was reallyinterested in that aspect of you
know, when you when you learnthat, like Stanley Kubrick was
trying to make Eyes Wide Shutpretty much his entire career,
and that there were comedicversions written. John lecarre,
a wrote a treatment, right, likethere was a version where Woody
Allen was going to start whichan alternate time mention that

(22:54):
we avoided so then we moved onto Barry, there was this idea of
like, oh, it'd be cool if in astory, they're working on a
script and are developing thismovie, and at some point, it
becomes something entirelydifferent, which is what
happened with Lost Highway withhim and Lynch. They were
adapting one of Barry's books,spend a good amount of time on

(23:16):
it. And then it got to a pointwhere they were like, hey,
actually, why don't we justthere's some stuff here that we
kind of liked. But let's justcreate an original story. And I
think there were two lines in,in that original treatment. For
I think it was called, I want tosay nightcrawlers to get this
wrong, but it was in thisoriginal treatment, there was an
adaptation. There are two linesthat that I think David Lynch

(23:38):
was like, I love these twolines. That's that's gonna be
the Genesis and one of the lineshad some phrase around the Lost
Highway, there was another linethat I think ended up being in
the the final Lost Highwaything. But it was some that that
became exciting towards the ideathat we would incorporate
barriers and actual characterwithin the story. And have this

(23:59):
adaptation of one of his storiesessentially, be the thing that
they're playing around with thedirector, John dirt gets really
interested in the idea ofdoubling. And this is like, tail
end of the 90s. So they're usingsome motion control camera stuff
to try and do compositing. Yeah,to have the same actress play

(24:19):
twin characters. And at somepoint, he's like, this is the
thing I really like, like let's,let's let's pivot and make the
story more about the idea ofdoubling and walks from there.
So that was, you know, that waskind of how that played out.
Yeah, to get was kind of justthrowing in more things.

Jon Dieringer (24:40):
Yeah. I mean, speaking of directors, I
wondered, in part, if you feelthis game is a response to
people, you know, thinking of usand alter as a game designer.
You know, is that somethingyou've considered and making the
game does that factor into anyof the themes? Yeah, I

Sam Barlow (24:57):
mean, it's such a it's such a weird thing. because
when I started out in games andwas working for, you know,
bigger teams, the biggerpublishers, all of the effort
was, I guess you see this nowwith Marvel was for the big
companies to stamp out any anynames, right like you now have
with Marvel doesn't matter whowrote the story who directed it?

(25:17):
To some extent, they don't evenwant you to care about who's
starring in it, right? Yeah,it's the characters. So you'd
have examples of like EA, gotrid of the guys that created the
Call of Duty franchise and theywent, Call of Duty is bigger
than that right Call of Duty isthe thing that EA owns. And
coming up in games and beingobsessed with story, a narrative

(25:38):
and character. At that time, theonly way you got to, as a
writer, have influence on thestory, or even say the story
matters was to become thedirector. So the examples of
like Hideo Kojima, Ken Levine,like the only way you could

(25:58):
actually get to say, look, thisstory matters, we need to take
it seriously. We need to buildthese game mechanics that tie
into it was to end up as thedirector and to some extent,
cultivate this idea of being anauteur. So there was a point
like when I was coming up, whereI was, like, we need more of
this utter nonsense in videogames, right? Even knowing that
like, you know, even in thehistory of film, obviously, like

(26:20):
the concept of the auteur wassomething the French invented to
allow them to pretend thatstudio pictures are, right, that
was the whole concept was we'regoing to invent a hypothetical
motor so that we can talk aboutstudio pictures as authored art.
Whereas obviously, the the kindof modern idea that, you know,
you have basically a genius atthe top of the thing that is

(26:43):
creating all the magic, forsure, silly. So there was
definitely an element coming upwhere I was like, this is a
useful way of forcing the peoplewith the money to, you know,
allow things to be a bit moreinteresting. And it's, you know,
to some extent, createsinsurance for the team almost
right. Like if, if, if there isa team of extremely talented

(27:06):
people working on a Hideo Kojimagame, they at least know what
kind of game they're gonna getto make, right? And the
publisher is going to have anexpectation and they know how to
market it, etc. And then it getsI guess it gets weird, because
then when I went indie, youknow, when I made her story,
which was, you know, a real lowbudget indie thing. I was, like,

(27:26):
90% of the team there, right?
Obviously, I was using gameengines and technology that
existed, but it was pretty muchme viva, and a composer, you
know, actively engaged on makingthat project. And once that's
happened, obviously, you know,in the indie space, where we
don't have these huge marketingbudgets and stuff that comes a
point where you're, you know,putting my name on a thing,

Jon Dieringer (27:50):
right, and you become part of the narrative and
part of the marketing of it.
Yeah.

Sam Barlow (27:55):
But clearly, yeah, I mean, on this project, in
particular, a, you know, thiswas the biggest team I've worked
with, on something in the indiespace, obviously, was a
reasonably ambitious endeavor.
But yeah, we're also and reallythe story of this game to some
extent, I think I was thinkingabout it less in terms of the
the auteur angle and myself inthat way. And it was more just

(28:19):
the general question of puttinga story out there. How help your
story is it like, who, who iscontributing to that story? And
those sorts of aspects. So Iguess, identifying as much with
Marisa as I would with thevarious directors. But again, I

(28:40):
think I mean, to some extent,the the kind of deconstructing
of the idea of there definitelywas a repeated theme in the
research, right? Because we, youknow, the game is set. We have
the tail end of the 60s wherethere is this transition out of
the studio system, after theSecond World War, you've got the

(29:01):
European New Wave, and then youget the new Hollywood, and there
is this clear, kind oftransition from the studios are
in charge, the stars assigned tothe studios, the studios create
their personas, like, literally.
And, you know, we Rita Hayworthwas, like a touchstone for us in

(29:22):
terms of like, you know, here'ssomeone who was physically
rebuilt, painful plasticsurgery, their identity, their
ethnicity, their name, you know,changed and became the star and
almost kind of outlive thatprocess, but we have this
transition going from that tothe new Hollywood, where, you
know, as we, you know, I thinkwe're still in a period now

(29:44):
where we kind of look back atthe 70s as being this golden age
for adult cinema, right withambiguous endings and kind of
deeper, more kind ofnaturalistic characters. But
looking back at that period oflook at you know, and just kind
of going through the people wethink of as being These
incredible individuals and Otresand you go well, okay, the

(30:04):
freakin the cupolas that, youknow, the Godfather, The
Exorcist, these were like,pieces of work for hire. So one
was like this novel is a bestseller, please go and adapt it.
And they were like the fourth orfifth person that was on the
list, right when it got to them.
And they're like, oh, do Ireally want to go make this
movie about mobsters like, andthen you know, but at some

(30:26):
point, it becomes a meshed intheir name. And they're the one
that gets to plant the name onit, as you know, even though
there's lots of otherinteresting stuff going on,
behind the scenes. So I think alot of the research was really
kind of getting into that, thattransition in that world. And
you know, realizing that just asthe studios might have had a

(30:47):
somewhat unhealthy level ofcontrol, overseeing actresses
life, jumping over into the 70s.
And going well, the studios outof the picture, but now you have
a director that is controlling,and also probably sleeping with
the lead actress, right, andthere is a similar kind of power

(31:07):
dynamic at play. So I thinkthere's naturally when you just
start to kind of track thesethings and sort of start to
interrogate whose stories beingtold. There's, there's naturally
a kind of questioning of thosethings. But yeah, it's
definitely complicated. Yeah,for me, because, again, coming

(31:28):
at it from video games, wherethere is nothing worth trying,
but like a dearth of interestingstories, and, you know, a dearth
of more personal, kind of morecomplicated storytelling. You
want to push this idea of peopleauthoring things, right. And I
always say, you know, games thatexcite me where it feels like

(31:51):
there's more of an authoredexperience happening. So you are
closer to somebody expressingsomething that's personal to
them. Yeah, but, but at the sametime, just like movies, these
are huge enterprises in whichall these people are coming
together. Yeah, everybody iscontributing, and there is, you
know, the logistics of it all.
So yeah, it's definitely acomplicated question.

Jon Dieringer (32:12):
Yeah. And then I guess, speaking to others,
people, this is I assume, likethe biggest scale you've engaged
in filmmaking on before, interms of, you know, reading
through the credits, the endquote, unquote, I guess of the
game, it's very clear that, youknow, you're working with like
large crews. And these werelike, big endeavors. Did you? Do

(32:35):
you feel like you've learned alot about filmmaking through the
process of engaging in this? Doyou feel like you were prepared?
Like, what was that onsetexperience, like, once you once
you got there,

Sam Barlow (32:47):
I think the weird thing for me across all the
things I've done, as I've kindof dipped my toe into live
action, because before when Iwas in traditional games, we
would do a lot of performancecapture and motion capture. So I
kind of done a lot of directingin those situations. But it's
quite a different thing. Becauseyou're in a large black

(33:08):
soundstage, there is sometechnical stuff, but you know,
you don't need as many crewpresent, right. So it's up to
you and

Jon Dieringer (33:18):
stuff, and you'll

Sam Barlow (33:21):
shoot the scene. And then we want to change location,
or someone just presses a buttonon the computer and wheels out,
like we need a chair, right, achair prop or something so
people can act around it. Butit's, but interestingly, like,
so 90% of what I've been doingon a mocap set was directing the
actors, and also having a senseof like the larger composition.

(33:41):
So in many ways, it's verytheatrical, and you know, very
intense with actors. But thenwhen you translate that to film,
to some extent, the expectationof a director is still that your
job is 90%. To be with theactors, right, and to direct the
actors understand how the storyfits together. But then there
are lots of other professionalswho are there, who are, you
know, handling a lot of thetechnical kind of minutia. And,

(34:04):
you know, and that's kind of abeautiful thing to see. But I
think the weirdest thing for mewas, like, when I entered into
this world, I was I tried to bevery humbled, knowing that I
knew nothing, right coming in,like, Okay, I'm just ready for
everyone's telling me how thingsshould work. But fairly quickly
realized. Mostly, I think,because the things I was making

(34:28):
was still quite different from aconventional movie that actually
I was still the person that knewthat most likely in terms of why
we're doing this, how's thisgonna work? What will the end
product look like? I was stillthe one that kind of had the,
you know, the best idea of thatthe best feature of that in my
head. So, you know, and then yourealize it, you know, everything

(34:51):
you're doing, people are stillfiguring out new things right,
as much as that pulling in theirskill set in their craft. You
might ask them to do somethingYou know, any given movie is
going to ask the lighting crewor the camera crew to figure out
something they haven'tnecessarily done before, right
or use a new piece of tech orsomething. And you know, that
was the same across the board,you know, we would commonly on

(35:14):
these projects, and it wasroughly the same here, we will
tend to shoot much longer tapesthan you normally would. But we
have a lot less coverage. Yeah.
So on one hand, you're notasking the camera crew to do as
much work because you're notnecessarily like changing their
setups or having to anticipatethat. But we will get through

(35:34):
more setups in a day. Sosuddenly, now you're asking
wardrobe, to be pulling out fouror five different looks at a
day, whereas they might be usedto shooting like, for three days
in the same scene, right? Yeah,worried about continuity.
Whereas here, you're like, Okay,we're going to do this, this and
this. So everyone is kind of,right, you know, figuring stuff

(35:55):
out as well. So you notice thatthe famous phrase, nobody knows
anything. In filmmaking, yourealize that you know, how much
to some extent that is true,right? You everyone has this
deep, you know, well ofexperience and craft that they
can draw upon. But then thereally fun stuff happens when
you kind of push beyond that.

(36:16):
Yeah. So you know, I was I justreadily became apparent as well,
the number of times people wouldbe surprised at how
collaborative I was. Yeah, thatisn't necessarily how movie
directors work. But coming fromgames where, you know, it's,
there isn't the excitinghierarchy, suddenly, a director

(36:39):
is not getting paid the samewill give him the same kind of
level of authority, as well,like doing these motion captures
shoots that I would do. Theywould end up being so
complicated how all thedifferent pieces fit together,
that I would be very deep in thescheduling of them. Like all the
boring minutia that I've nowrealized on a movie is kind of
given over to the line producerand the whole production team.

(37:02):
Yeah. So for a director to showup and have spreadsheets and
have things planned out and haveanswers to a lot of questions.
Why is this direct? Yeah, yeah.
People telling anecdotes of likedirectors who just live in video
village and just, you know,shout direction over walkie
talkies and stuff. And I'm like,Okay, that's interesting. That's
running around, getting stuck inand being told off because I'm

(37:27):
fiddling with props, and that'snot my job. Yeah. But yeah, I
think it's yeah, it's, it's beenreally fun. I mean, I loved just
the experience of working with afilm crew is so exciting.
Because when you're on a game,everybody's working on something
different, right? You might workin a game for five years. And
there's all these differentteams doing all these little

(37:47):
things. It's all very exciting.
So as a director of a game, it'skind of exhausting, because you
have to go from team to team toteam to team to try and keep
everything cohesive. And thebeautiful relief of being on a
movie, or a movie like thing isat any given time, pretty much
everyone's looking at the samething. Sure, and we're all

(38:07):
trying to get the same shot. Sothere's this real nice sense of
everybody is, is you don't needto keep everyone's eye on the
ball. So you can rely onpeople's kind of innate craft
and stuff a little bit more.
It's kind of liberating.

Jon Dieringer (38:20):
Yeah. And then speaking of working with actors,
can you talk about the casting?
I mean, I think you did a reallyremarkable job of finding people
who, you know, they're great forthe roles and really believable,
but they're also not, like,immediately recognizable in the
way that you know, if you had, Idon't know, Kiefer Sutherland,
or something in the game.

Sam Barlow (38:41):
Yeah. I mean, that was, that was was like an
interesting conversation wasbecause, like, I remember asking
some really dumb questions earlyon, because I was pointing to a
couple of movies was like, Oh,these movies did like a really
good job of period. Looks. And Iwas like, is, is there actually,
like, a face shape? That, like,it was like, the period? Or is

(39:03):
it just is it the hair makeup?
Is it the costume? Like, yeah,you look at something like
Stranger Things, and it feelslike they've definitely cast
actors that you know, especiallywith the kids and stuff, like
have aren't necessarily youknow, they, they have a look to
them. So they don't feel likethis is the kid you would cast
for like the Nickelodeon show.

(39:24):
2022 right. See, I was like, howdoes it you know, really looking
for people that already have aperiod? Look, are we going to be
putting that on them? And likeyou say, just the whole thing.
Of, to what extent doessuspension of disbelief with
this piece rely on kind of not,you know, throwing people out of

(39:47):
it because they're like, oh, sixYZ Yeah. And yeah, the the big
role obviously was for Marissa.
So we saw a lot of people andthere again, it was this You
know, you're at this reallyinteresting point where if
you're looking for actor of acertain age, but you also need
them to be extremelyprofessional, technically. You

(40:09):
know, you're constantly tryingto figure out what is the
balance, like, if we havesomeone that looks extremely
young and fresh faced, maybethey have a ton of experience,
probably not. And usually thattype of experiences, they've
done a ton of like soap operas,or, you know, or they've been on

(40:32):
Nickelodeon or whatever, butthere's, you know, and then you
know, you can get, obviously,then you suck it to the point
where they get too old. And soyou're losing some of the kind
of energy of selling the ideathat this person is fresh and
new, but they have, you know,tons of experience. And
obviously, there are a couple ofpeople who are already at that

(40:53):
young age known for beingextremely talented. But because
there's such a small pool tochoose from those end up being
extremely famous and expensiveand successful people that
again, even if you pull them in,even if it was like, Oh, we
could get Zendaya or whatever,then it would distort the whole
project.

Jon Dieringer (41:14):
Yeah. version of brutality might be a little too.
Loaded. Yeah.

Sam Barlow (41:23):
And I definitely, like, on telling lies as well,
there was some castingdecisions. And there were some
people we could have brought inwhere it even felt like, the way
we shoot and the way we work,like we asked so much of the
actors, that is this persongoing to be willing to come in
and be told you have 20 pages aday, gonna be doing this, this
and this, whatever. So that was,you know, so we spoke to a lot

(41:46):
of people. And it was such aninteresting casting process as
well, because we would havepeople do reads of each of the
three movies, as well as some ofthe kind of more nebulous bits
of it. And you would get peoplewho would be amazing. But like
one movie, right? You'd be like,Oh, if we were doing this movie,

(42:06):
and that was it. Yeah. Like thisperson would totally own it. But
they don't doesn't. I can't seethem doing this other bit. So
yeah, we saw a lot of people Ithink, like man on was one of
the people who, out the gate.
Once we met with them, they'relike, Okay, that was really
cool. Yeah. And there's aninteresting, kind of self

(42:29):
selection process with all of mygames as well, where, again,
just like, I always finish them,and I look back and I'm like,
Oh, my God, I dodged a bullet.
Like, during the process, Inever over thought too much how
much we're asking if the actorsthey just, yeah, I always look
back. And I'm like, Oh, my God,if like, if they hadn't been

(42:51):
able to show up off book, likeif we hadn't had someone that
could do 20 pages in Logan'srole, if we hadn't had someone
that was comfortable with beingpresent in a scene for 15
minutes with having thisnaturalistic approach with all
of the pressures of an indieshoot. With this extra
complexity, yeah, it would havebeen a disaster, write the whole
thing with the word. But I thinkto some extent, there is an

(43:14):
insurance policy, which is, onceyou start reaching out and
talking to agents and talent,you already eliminate a bunch of
people, when you go in and say,Hey, we're making an independent
video game, right? There's,there's a bunch of people are
like, that's fine. Like, I'mstill waiting on the big Netflix
show or whatever. And then whenyou actually meet the actors and
start speaking to them, thereare some when you say, we have

(43:37):
this script, that's hundreds ofpages, that every scene has
these layers, right? This isthere's no scene where you're
just reading a line, this isalways the same way you're doing
this. But there's this otherthing happening, when you show
them how much work there isthere. And when you talk them
through the filming process.
There are some actors who startgetting really excited. And, uh,
you know, like, oh, I, you know,I love doing the theater, and I

(44:00):
love working and kind oftheatrical productions, but it's
quite an ask to, you know, movemy family to wherever the
players and do that for sixmonths. But this gives me a
chance to engage with some ofthat texture and some of that
way of performing some of thatkind of high flying kind of the
risk of just shooting a thingthat's like 10 minutes long. And

(44:23):
those actors then really startto dig in. So by the time you
get to your shortlist of theseare the people we like and who
are still engaged and reallyinterested. I feel like you're
you've probably had, you've kindof eliminated through their own
choice, the actors who are notYeah, fully engaged with how
challenging this stuff is.

Jon Dieringer (44:43):
Sure. Yeah. And then also, I mean, it, it seems
like there are a lot of demandsin terms of visual fidelity and
I've worked in film preservationand I was really actually
impressed it how authentic thatperiod It looks more in terms of
like the media. Becauseoftentimes, you know, every I

(45:06):
feel like every movie I see withthe CRT television, and it's
clearly like a screenreplacement thing, or it's like
HD footage that's clearly justlike, pasted onto a CRT. And I'm
wondering if you could talk alittle bit about achieving those
love.

Sam Barlow (45:20):
Yeah, and I think that was, that was one of the
things we highlighted up frontwas, you know, where, when we're
writing these things, we'retrying to make sure everything
feels real and authentic. And,you know, we had lots of
examples of their, their, youknow, their legions of movies
about movies or TV shows aboutTV shows, and a lot of time,
it'll be played broadly forlaughs Right. Or, you'll My

(45:45):
favorite example is when theydon't quite go there. But like
the movie, The Bodyguard, likethe premise of that movie is
that Whitney Houston is about towin an Oscar for a movie that
she's in. And at no point inthat movie, do you believe that
Whitney Houston has just beenin, like, a name? It doesn't
even sound like a real moviename. Right? Right. Just an end,
you know, a lot of times. Andyou know, actually, before I

(46:08):
moved to America, I saw 30 Rock,and I always was like, how are
they pretending like, this is apopular TV show. This thing was
terrible. I moved to America andsaw an SNL and I was like, Okay,
now they like, texted, I gotthat. But you know, it's often
it's quite a broad kind ofpastiche. So we wanted to be
closer. And so that definitelycarried across especially with,

(46:28):
with like, our DP dog, and youknow, every one on the kind of
the art and production side andcostume, it was always
important. And we had, you know,we brought a lot of research
with us in terms of like, theseare the specific looks and
textures, that make sense. Butthen it to some extent, like

(46:49):
with that Peter Greenawayexample I gave, like Cisely when
you start playing a game withhow you're doing things, it does
help. So, you know, when you go,Well, how are we going to
distinguish these three filmshoots, and then you speak to
the DP? And it's like, well, weknow that if they were shooting
this film, in a studio in the60s, everything would have been
on a track. Right. And and we'regoing to use actual period.

(47:12):
lensing. So you know, all theglass we used was period
accurate lighting wise. Youknow, so instantly, you start
having interesting creativedecisions, because you're like,
Well, this is if they wereshooting this thing than they
would have needed to lay allthis drag down. If they wanted
to get the shot. Oh, they wouldhave been shooting, you know,
this is how much film they wouldhave had to play with. And then

(47:34):
when you get to, like Minsky,you're like, Well, okay, now
they're shooting a lot onhandheld. What kind of zoom
motors but they had that waswhere my DVR to rein me in
because I was obsessed with likeNick robe zoom. And stuff that
he does this like I think is hismost indulgent movies probably.

(47:55):
Grab are completely gone blank.
In Venice, with Theresa Russell,this extremely dark.

Jon Dieringer (48:02):
Oh, bad timing.
Bad time. Okay, yeah.

Sam Barlow (48:05):
And it starts to zoom out and you realize you're
looking in the reflection of amirror at the other end of a
room. And then it keeps pullingout. Yeah, does that have a
window and you realize you'renow like, this long zoom lens
looking through a window. And itfeels like in that movie, it's
like says that's the one thatwhere it feels indulgent, you'll
have scenes where you feel likerogue doesn't know how to get
out of a scene, and he'llsuddenly just turn and zoom in

(48:27):
on something. So he's gonna getyou out. Yeah, there was a
couple of weeks was like, Oh,can we do like a super, super
super Supers? Rogue zoom? We gotsomething but you can't you
can't do that for every shot. So

Jon Dieringer (48:38):
is there a shot in the game that you're
particularly proud of?

Sam Barlow (48:44):
I mean, the ones that always a delight with a
split diopters. And they'relike, they're like a bunch of
people on the crew who had neverdone much with split up to us. I
feel like that was a thing thatwas kind of in fashion. Yeah. is
useless now.

Jon Dieringer (48:59):
But yeah. Oh, and there's also the great, the
great matte painting. And

Sam Barlow (49:05):
I mean, that's another fun one, where when we
would talk about mattepaintings, where you had younger
people on the crew, who shotlike a whole bunch of indie
movies and stuff, but had maybefor their entire career only
shot on digital. And when yousay matte painting in their
heads, you're talking aboutrotoscoping certainly after the
fact and digitally painting overit. So we would have like all

(49:27):
these conversations acrosspurposes, where and then it'd be
like, Oh, but but the person isgoing to disappear when they
step off here. Yeah, we're gonnahave to rotoscope that is this.
Oh, we need to get some shotsfor the CGI. People are going to
have to do that and be like, no,no, no, no, no. Like, I used to
work like that. So fair. They gobehind the painting. And that's

(49:49):
like the fun of it. Yeah, peoplewere getting yet people got a
real kick out of theirprojection backdrops and stuff.
Yeah. That was all fun. Yeah.
Yeah. And that was Again, liketo encouraging people to be
slightly obsessive. For me, itwas like, Oh, if each scene has
like something going on, for themovie story, something going on

(50:11):
for the kind of the meta storyof what's up with Marisa, some
detail or craft some little, youknow, we get to, you know, see
some little thing about howthese things were different that
reminds us. And you know, thingslike, making sure the grain made
it through in the kind of finalimage. I think this was this was

(50:35):
a happy accident. But I'm suremy subconscious was planning
this all along. But like whenyou start the game, the first
thing you see is this kind ofvideotaped footage of 60s TV
interview. And so when you doyour first zoom within the game,
you're zooming right into thesebig blurry. Yeah. And then, you

(50:56):
know, later on, when you're infilm footage, and you're zooming
in, it's just reminding you thatthis grain is a thing of some
very, not too pretentious level,but on some level, just
reminding you like, these arenot people living inside your TV
set, this is little dots ofcolor, that we're moving them
around, you suddenly becomepeople. Yeah, but just that

(51:20):
level of just yeah, just playingaround and kind of, you know,
deconstructing these things.

Jon Dieringer (51:27):
Yeah. And we also we understand those textures
represent different historiesand time periods, whether we are
you know, like, technicallysavvy and able to, like, really
precisely identify them. Like,at the minimum, you just kind of
feel them. And it really like,feels really integral to the
experience, I wondered howimportant it is to you or

(51:50):
unimportant that people see, Iguess, the full scope of the
game, because, you know, you caneven get to the point where the
credits roll and miss a lot ofthe story. And I guess I would
assume as a player, like that'sa valid part of the experience,
like you don't, you know,necessarily have to drink in

(52:11):
every single detail. But it'salso there, if you want to like,
obsessively explore that. And Iwondered what your thoughts are
about that?

Sam Barlow (52:20):
Yeah, it's one of those things, you know, if you
just generally talk about videogames, it's kind of one of those
things. And when I was workingon stuff that was closer to the
kind of idea of the chooser andadventure. You know, the money
men would always be freaked out,they'd be like, wait a minute,
we're shooting, like, all thismoney's worth of motion capture,
but the player might only see50% of it. What the hell? And

(52:43):
you'd be like, Yeah, but the 50%they do see they own right is,
or at least that was the goal.
Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I like Ilike the idea that people will
see if people grok that you canwalk away from this without
seeing everything. To someextent, it then makes them feel
like the stuff they have seen isslightly special to them, maybe

(53:04):
they'll find some obscure weirdlittle corner and feel like
that's something they found out.
And maybe other people aren'tgoing to see that. So it kind of
feels special to them. There isno there's just like a general
abandonment of it beingimportant for you to see
everything right, there's anelement which where it's, it's

(53:26):
sculptural. So you know, you cango into an art gallery and sit
and look at a painting for 10minutes and walk away. Or you
can just walk past the painting.
And you can sit there and lookat it for 10 hours, right and
really extract everything that'sin there. Or, you know, expert
in Victorian narrative paintingcould go and see and go and look
at a Holman hunt painting andsee things that were literally

(53:49):
not seen or understand things.
So I think there's somethingthat's really interesting to me
about making things that aremore sculptural, because it's,
it's really what sparks someextent was sparks off the
players imaginations. And Ithink it'd be one. I think I

(54:11):
sent this out in some of thepress notes, but like there was
a touchstone for me when we'remaking this was the JG Ballard
novel, the atrocity exhibition,which is a fantastically fun
thing. And, you know, this is anovel, which is basically a
series of very small little minichapters, which I think you cold
compress novels or compressmovies or something. And when he

(54:35):
there was a an edition of thebook, where he wrote a foreword
to it, kind of after its initialpublication, and in it he has
like instructions on how to readthis novel. And he tells people,
open up the book and start justflicking from page to page. And
if a paragraph or a sentence ora word attracts your attention,
then stop and read that and thencontinue clicking and just move

(54:59):
at least Philippe's around thenovel dropping in and out based
on things that like, draw, drawyour eye and look interesting
too. And he says, if you if youread the book in this manner,
you will be reading the book inthe way in which it was written.
And I think there's something inall my games in this kind of
style, where it's kind ofcreating, it's moving the

(55:23):
audience closer to the creativePOV. In that, like I was saying,
like with movies, right up untilthe point where that Final Cut
is done. A movie has a life toit, right? When you're writing
it, there's all sorts ofpossibilities and alternate
versions of scenes, when you'recasting it one minute could be
Harvey Keitel, it's gonna bethis character for all time. And

(55:44):
then next minute, his schedulechanges, it's not hard to tell.
But then when you get on set,and you have a very specific
idea of how a scene should playout, but the actor has a
different idea, or, I mean, my,the one I was always quite were
making this was when OrsonWelles did
a fellow there was supposed tobe shooting the big action

(56:07):
scene, lots of fighting, but thearmor and weapons had not showed
up, because Orson Welles had notpaid his bills. So I was stuck,
I had to shoot and someone hadthe idea, give everyone a towel,
and we'll pretend it's a bathhouse. And so they then have
this incredible was the best bitthe movie, I think, action scene
in which someone is assassinatedin a bath house, then ripped off

(56:27):
by countless movies. And justthose little moments of just
like, chance invention and stuffare fascinating to me. And so
that, you know, and then whenyou get again, you get the
editing room, and you have allthis footage, all these
different types. If you'reshooting with someone like Meryl
Streep, you might have 20different interpretations for
character in a given scene. Andthere's still this incredible
life, man, and you're kind ofwrestling with that. And it's a

(56:48):
joy. And it's a fun partprocess. You know, so I think my
games have been an attempt totell you a story, and
communicate something, whilstalso having you feel like you're
in this moment. So the extent towhich it's not easily fully
novel, the extent to whichyou're discovering things kind
of gives it a little bit aboutlife again, I love that. The big

(57:12):
difference with digital thingsis that they can be kind of
unknowable. Yeah, right. Like, Itrust the exhibition, as much as
Ballard is encouraging you toplayfully read this thing. You
can also sit and read it coversa cover, have seen every page
that exists in this book, likethere's no hidden pages, there's
no secret parts of it. So youcan fully own it, and know it.

(57:35):
And, you know, even with a moviethat might have many mysteries
and be very, you know, have allsorts of interesting things that
you can also still look at everysingle frame, you can kind of
lay it all out and dissect thisthing. Whereas I love that with
something that's digital. Untilyou pull up a scene until you
drop into a scene inimmortality, you didn't

(57:57):
necessarily know it was there,you could proceed through the
whole thing walk away verysatisfied, knowing there's still
stuff out. Yeah, yes, it's kindof iceberg under the surface. So
for me, that is like a reallyfun part of the texture. And I
think, you know, movies andbooks that I love the ones that
I finished them, I put themdown, and I feel like it's still

(58:17):
living in my head. I feel like Ican still go back. You know, I
love movies with more ambiguousendings, because they allow
things to run on, had a reallyinteresting conversation with
there was a point where theyalmost made a TV adaptation of
her story. And there was ashowrunner working on it. And he

(58:37):
was quite an experiencedHollywood writer. When we first
met, he said, I'm so jealous,I'm so jealous, because as a
storyteller, he knew that alevel of ambiguity is what
created interesting complexcharacters. But he said, writing
at this level in Hollywood, Ihave to resolve all of the major

(58:58):
threats and character questions.
Because Because if I don't, itwill come up and focus tests
will be asked to reshoot toexplain or resolve. And then he
said, what you're doing withthis game, is you get to have
things that are not fullyanswered, or questions that are
not explicitly answered. Butbecause the audience feels like

(59:18):
they have some control, likemaybe they just need to dig a
little bit further. And they'llfind something that will clarify
that it gives them a level ofhave kind of happiness and
confidence to sit with thatambiguity in a way that they
wouldn't necessarily,at least today in a traditional

(59:39):
movie, so I think that isdefinitely part of what is
exciting for me is being ableto, you know, make things that
are explorable and sculptural,have people play them come away
and you know, the way differentthings spark up different people
is endlessly fascinating. Uh,yeah, that was always the

(01:00:00):
question. When Herstory firstcame out, people like, well, how
can you have a mystery whereit's possible to have someone
come in and sit down and see theend or and see the solution to
the mystery? Yeah, versussomebody else could be there for
three hours? And it also willthere are both of those are
valid approaches to the story,right? There are movies, there

(01:00:21):
are Colombo episodes where yousee who did the murder, first
five minutes, and then you'redealing with the repercussions,
the dramatic irony of thatsituation, you might go and
watch a pulp fiction, rightwhere the whole thing is jumbled
to create some interestingsparks between the different
elements of the plot. Or youcould see a story that's told
entirely linearly. And I think,for me, the observation there is

(01:00:44):
that a story and characters arerobust enough that they can deal
with a bit of for sure.
Shuffling right? And there are Imean, bad timing is actually an
example. I believe that was amovie that was scripted as a
linear story, and Rogue shot itas a linear story. And it was

(01:01:06):
only when he then got to theediting suite that he went, you
know what, I need to shufflethis around. Right? And so then
he does, he does explicitly dropin like the, the endpoint
essentially, for TheresaRussell's character at the start
this very dark romance.

Jon Dieringer (01:01:21):
Yeah, but I love how the story order the story
order in immortality, it's like,almost like a chance operation.
You know, no matter how much youshuffle up a film or how
nonlinear you make it in termsof like narrative temporality,
it's still going to be linear.
And and yeah, I mean, I had anexperience where I think I got
that final clip of footage, likevery, very early on. Like it was

(01:01:43):
maybe like the fourth thing,somehow I had like a mug, I
guess. Well, the other thing,too, is I didn't know that it
was necessarily the final. And,you know, that sense of not
knowing but then also wonderinghow you get there. It's so
compelling. And it really drivesa sense of exploration. And that
sense of not often knowing whereyou are, or how everything fits

(01:02:07):
together. And just trusting inboth the game developers but
also in yourself to be able topiece it together. Yeah, it's
such a it's such a unique andwonderful experience.

Sam Barlow (01:02:23):
It's one of those things like I remember watching
Breaking Bad when it aired,right, Breaking Bad loved to
lean on the kind of the jumpforward, jump backwards thing,
right. So they would start aseason with like, I was like,
swimming pool exploding, orthere was there was like this,
this image that they keptshowing at the top of every show
that was full of foreboding, andit was like, Oh, so this

(01:02:47):
extremely violent, excitingthing is gonna happen. And then
you could sit through an hour ofguy arguing with his wife,
teaching chemistry, but youknow, you can sit through that
knowing that there was this bigdrama coming. But there is also
I mean, obviously, I, this iswhere my head's at, anyway, but
like a frustration, if you're inthe audience of, Oh, I know that

(01:03:08):
I'm going to have to wait. Nowmy bells going, I'm gonna have
to wait. All 10 episodes to getto this point, right? Like the,
yes, this is exciting, becausewe're seeing that there's this
thing that's gonna happen. Andwe're jumping back in time. And
there's the energy of that jump.
But I'm also I have to sit hereand you're in control. You're
the puppet master, and you'regonna let me see this thing when

(01:03:28):
you're damn ready to let you seeit. But yeah, the excitement
here of being like, Well, no,you can, you can just jump
around as this character thatyou're interested, you can kind
of dig into them and have thatkind of loop around and dig into
these different bits of storyand stuff. So yeah, it's
definitely you know, which, ifI'm pitching people, you know,
feels feels relativelycontemporary and modern, in that

(01:03:50):
we're so used to everything nowbeing kind of reactive and at
our beck and call. The Netflixinterface is constantly telling
us how much it knows about usand encouraging us to look at
things and so it feels givingpeople a level of control once
they actually drop into thestory itself. Yeah, it's an
interesting thing to do. Forsure.

Jon Dieringer (01:04:16):
You have been listening to the Screen Slate
Podcast, and I'm your host, JonDieringer. I really want to
thank our special guests IanBarlow for coming on the show
and mortalities producer NatalieWatson are facilitating the
audio for this show was recordedand edited by me with additional
posts by Spencer yeh a if youenjoy the episode, be sure to
subscribe on iTunes, Spotify,Google iHeart Radio or wherever

(01:04:38):
you get your podcasts andsupport us on patreon.com/screen
Slate we'll be back next weekwith Anna rose Homer and Salah
Davis directors of the new a 24release God's creatures. And
until then, happy watching andhappy playing Go through the fun