Video production is where the action is

The Orks are pouring it on. The green-skinned, snaggle-toothed furies rake the Space Marines with missiles and machine-gun fire. Then they rush in, axes raised high to deliver the final death blow.

Just then, the Dreadnaught appears, tracer rounds pouring from its Gatling gun like a solid beam of light. The beacon of fire sweeps to and fro, painting the barren terrain with Ork dead.

Now is the moment. The Space Marines rise from cover and charge. The slaughter begins in earnest. It's over in just two minutes.

That's a pity. It was just getting good.

To be sure, the rest of Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War, a sci-fi strategy game made by THQ Inc., is entertaining enough. But for sheer visceral impact, nothing in the game can touch its blood-caked introductory video, a digitally animated motion picture known in the game business as "the cinematic," or, more simply, "the open."

If you're in the computer game business, you're also in the movie business. Nearly every big-ticket computer game has an open these days. There are also TV commercials for upcoming games. Inside the games themselves, you find "cutscenes" -- minimovies that tell the player important details, like what planet he's on and why the inhabitants want him dead. And then there are the trailers, video previews of upcoming games similar to the movie previews you see at the local cineplex. Indeed, movie houses routinely show previews for upcoming games, such as Microsoft Corp.'s trailers for its hit games Halo 2 and Zoo Tycoon 2.

"We want the experience to be just like a movie," said Brian Rekasis, who heads global advertising for Microsoft Game Studios. "We feel that it's a form of entertainment that's reached that point in storytelling and in graphic quality." Microsoft also runs its trailers in theaters in an effort to reach beyond the hard-core game geek market and sell its products to Middle America. It might be working; Halo 2 sold 5 million copies in a month, at $50 each.

The R-rated savagery of the Warhammer video was never intended for theaters. But it perfectly illustrates the ruthless excitement of the game itself. That was the mission of the filmmakers at Blur Studio in Venice, Calif., one of a small band of video production firms that have built up a tidy business in computer-game moviemaking.

Blur was founded to crank out TV commercials but got into the game movie market in 1997. "Usually the [game] developers don't have the staff to do their own movies, but they need movies done," said Blur founder Tim Miller. Small companies like Blur are popular with game designers because they can work fast and for relatively little money, unlike the giants of Hollywood special effects, such as George Lucas's Industrial Light & Magic. "The budgets for game cinematics are really tight, and most of those guys really can't compete," said Miller.

Blur still does commercials, and it's produced a short film, "Gopher Broke," that's been nominated for an Oscar. But the company has become especially well known for its game cinematics. Miller's firm produced a memorable opening video for the 2001 World War II title Return to Castle Wolfenstein.

Many video-game films are recorded directly from the game itself. Skilled players spend hours punching, slicing, and blasting opponents, with their every move copied to a computer hard drive. These sequences are then edited together into exciting action sequences.

For the Warhammer 40,000 video, Blur went much further, using the same kind of cinema-grade digital modeling software that would be used on an animated feature film like "The Incredibles." As a result, the open video for the game looks much more realistic than the game itself.

However the graphics are generated, game cinema creators must capture in a minute or so the excitement and emotional appeal of the game. They've got to tell a miniature story that engages the viewer, sparks his imagination, and convinces him to part with his money.

Early game trailer producers didn't grasp this, according to Danny Ruiz, senior brand manager for Ubisoft Entertainment, because they were made by game geeks, for game geeks. The trailers listed the technical features of the game, with no sense of drama. "They were selling the game, not the emotion of the game," Ruiz said.

When Ubisoft wanted a video to promote its game Prince of Persia: The Warrior Within, it chose Hammer Creative Advertising, a Hollywood firm that has made trailers for "Assault on Precinct 13" and "My Big Fat Greek Wedding," among other films. "We used a lot of our knowledge from movie trailers and applied it to video-game trailers," said Scott Hayman, Hammer's creative director. "They're really similar. In both you have to tell a story and get the story of the game across. You have to tell what's cool about it and why you'd want to spend money on it."

Watching a good game video is almost as much fun as playing the game. So it's no surprise that fans eagerly scour such major websites as GamePro.com and GameSpy.com, looking for the latest video previews of upcoming titles. Even Apple Computer Inc. offers recent computer-game videos on its QuickTime video software website.

But Jon Slusser thinks gamers want even more -- an entire site devoted to game cinema. Slusser is executive director of GameTrailers.com, a website that serves up previews and reviews of computer game videos. "We're kind of like MTV back in the '80s," said Slusser, who added that his site is so popular he's getting buyout offers from other publishers. "People want to see the games. They want to see the explosions, they want to see the graphics, they want to see what the environments look like."

Slusser is working on a plan to create a gaming channel for cable TV. He's laying out plans for original programming, such as coverage of major gaming tournaments. And because everybody loves awards shows, Slusser recently launched the game-video equivalent of the Oscars, only without a nickname -- they're just the GameTrailers Awards. The first awards were given out last month, with prizes in nine categories, including best action/adventure trailer, best sports game trailer, and best cinematic. Blur won the award for best strategy/role playing trailer for its work on Sony's online multiplayer game Everquest II.

Even though the Warhammer 40,000 video didn't win, it's still Miller's baby. He'd like to scrape together the funding and the time to make a full-length feature film set in this merciless fantasy universe. But Miller's busy right now -- Blur shoots video for up to 10 games a year. So those who wonder how Warhammer 40,000 turns out will have to buy the game and play it themselves -- which is exactly what the filmmakers at Blur Studio had in mind.