GEMINI Laboratory (hereafter GEMINI) held ‘Media-Mix Workshop | Where Film Meets Game Design’, where creators from different industries collaborate to pursue new possibilities from October through November 2024. On November 11, presentations of works created at the workshop was held at IMAGICA Takeshiba media studio.

At the workshop, they attempted a collaboration of different media of movies and games. Media mix works were created at a public restroom in Shibuya, which drew attention with a movie PERFECT DAYS directed by Wim Wenders.

At the presentation, creators talked about their thoughts that they put in the fabricating process or expression methods, and guest creators gave passionate comments. This article will look for the new possibilities by collaboration of movies and games, that were discovered through the workshop.

New possibilities with collaborations of different values

Holding this presentation, GEMINI aimed for pursuing ‘innovation’ that is created by interaction of different cultures and values. Michiyo Matsumura, who is from TOPPAN that organizes GEMINI, hosted the presentation and said that ‘we cannot avoid conflicts or hustles at places where various values interact, but those places bring the power to create new things.’, emphasizing that this idea was the foundation of the presentation.

Matsumura, who is originally from construction industry but has accumulated experiences in other areas as well, planned this workshop with the stimulus she gained at creative places such as Ars Electronica or SXSW (South by Southwest）

The Workshop was attended by approximately 20 attendees from various areas such as movie, game, music and architecture. They worked on fabrication under instructions by two main instructors, Yui Furuhashi, VFX producer at IMAGICA and Noboru Horita, game creator at Core Eight Co., Ltd.

Also as special instructors, Katsutoshi Machiba, the director of ‘Beyond the Frame Festival’, Yuta Tokunaga from ARCH HATCH who manages the documentation platform, Masato Takahashi, who is an architect and advises for designs at domestic and foreign local development projects, Masayoshi Obata, a digital contents creator and Kazuyuki Hashimoto, president at dots in space joined. Lecture with the theme of XR movies, discussion on digital archives of architectural objects and a session on the outlook of game industry were held on Day 1, 2 and 3, respectively.

The stage is a restroom designed by Tadao Ando. A media-mix work where a movie and a game interact

The stage of fabrication was THE TOKYO TOILET in Shibuya, Tokyo（THE TOKYO TOILET）. This is a building that Tadao Ando designed pursuing the ‘value of urban facilities’, which also drew attention with its appearance in a movie PERFECT DAYS directed by Wim Wenders.

The circular restroom, called ‘AMAYADORI’, realizes both stability and openness by its wall with vertical grid, making its unique existence.

Based on Ando’s design concept that ‘This restroom is a jewelry box. Users are jewelries’, attendees were divided in two teams to work on the media mix of a movie and a game.

A team: Me in the back of a jewelry box

A team completed a work with a focus on ‘unreasonableness’ of modern societies, with the main character, 35 year-old female cleaning staff. It described social issues such as difference in contract forms based on genders or occupational discrimination, combining a movie that aims for viewers to think through and a rhythm game with which players experience the emotions of the main character.

The main character, Izumi, applies for a position of cleaning staff that she happened to find while often changing her job. She was exposed to discriminating words at her work and was treated unreasonably, but did not resist, working quietly hiding her frustration. In the final scene, Izumi, who had been cleaning without any expression makes her voice heard for the first time, having the viewers think about her emotions and the social themes.

From the standpoint of media mix, it introduced a system where a movie and a game would synchronize. The game starts with a scene of movie where insults are expressed, and the player would hit the insults on the screen with a mop in a form of a rhythm game. The story of the movie would change depending on the results of the game, affecting the final ending .

With the theme of ‘delivery of emotions’, creators aimed to create experiences that would appeal to players’ emotions, not just a mix of videos and a game. With the behaviors in the game affecting the stories of the movie, it was made for viewers to think deeply about social issues through the change of emotion from anger to sorrow.

After the presentation, audience gave comments such as ‘it is a fresh idea to express the direction of anger while facing realistic themes’ or ‘Game had a role of saving while depicting the negative aspects of societies’.

Masayoshi Obata, a digital contents creator made compliments to A team, saying that the work was ‘ambitious that suggested deep questions to viewers while fitting social themes in the framework of entertainment’.

Hiromi Kamekawa, president at a music producing company, Include P.D. expressed his assessment saying that ‘I felt that roles of voices and sounds could be more pursued in the fusion of music and videos. I look forward to seeing new expressions by close connection of sounds and videos in future works’.

B team: Anyone WC

B team created a media-mix work with the theme of ‘experience of absurdity brought by contrast structure’. Viewpoints of humans who were abducted by aliens and aliens that selected humans were depicted in the movie and game respectively, making good and evil or ethics vague, giving viewers dilemma.

The movie expresses how precious daily lives are, through the main character’s experience of being suddenly abducted by a spaceship. As the story proceeds, viewers would realize the value of days even with absurdities, with main character’s ‘jewelry box of life’ as a symbol.

On the other hand, the game depicts experience of aliens where they indifferently proceed with the cold-headed task to select humans. The task is expressed in a very pop space, in contrast to main character’s distress, designing two different worlds in a same timeline, with different views.

B team members said that they ‘paid attention to make both the movie and the game independent works’. They avoided conventional ‘a game like a movie’ or ‘a movie like a game’, making it for viewers or players to be able to build the general view of the world through fragmentary information.

Also, they made the theme clear utilizing a dual narrative (two different stories) saying that they ‘made good and evil or ethics vague though the contrast of views of the movie and the game, emphasizing the feeling of absurdity’.

As for the strict production schedule, they reflected that ‘all of us flexibly took roles to proceed with, in the tight schedule where we needed to film in five days after the first day’. They told about how they made the production happen, saying ‘we achieved it by having all the members join to act, even though we did not have enough actors’.

Audience gave comments such as ‘The movie and game are both independent, but present the common theme strongly’, or ‘It was a fresh method of showing the contrast of the view of humans and aliens, making the theme of absurdity clear’.

Also, Ryosuke Hara from loftwork Inc., made comments that ‘I was impressed that the quality was made this high in a short period. It is wonderful that different media of videos and a game interact with each other, creating new views’.

Hiroshi Takahashi, CG supervisor also made compliments saying ‘The core of this work is the public restroom designed by Tadao Ando, and I was surprised by the high quality of videos and the game. It makes me feel the possibility of new cognition strongly, by the beauty of videos and the pop game’.

Outlook for the future with next generation

During the talk session held at the end of the event with the attendees and main instructors, Furuhashi expressed respects to the efforts by the attendees who completed big works in the short period, saying that ‘It was impressive to see the passion and the ambitious spirits of attendees. The process of production required teamwork and capacities of concentration, making it a learning opportunity for the attendees. Furuhashi said that he ‘hoped that this experience would be valuable for creative activities in the future’.

Similarly, the main instructor, Horita, made compliments to the efforts to complete media-mix works in the short period, where games and videos interacted. He showed his high recognition saying ‘These efforts will be wonderful role model when thinking about new possibilities’. The works completed with limited resources show the possibilities brought by mixing media, and the new directory within creative areas.

Experiential play of XR film

At the end of the presentation, an event was held where XR film that was nominated at Venice international film festival was experimentally played. Katsutoshi Machiba, the festival director of Japan’s only XR film festival ‘Beyond the Frame Festival’, talked about the charms of XR films. Invited attendees tried the dedicated goggles on and experienced the world of works with the immersive feelings.

Possibilities of collaborations that create the future

This workshop showed the possibility of creating new values by combining view from different values. Discoveries that can be obtained by not only sharing ideas and views but also by ‘thinking and moving hands together’ would bring the opportunity to have ideas of creative productions for attendees, leading to diversities and new developments for creative activities in the future.

Furthermore, activities utilizing AI and generative technologies will enable more innovative and dynamic creative styles. Discoveries and challenges found at this workshop will be the first steps to pioneer creative possibilities of the next generation.