RELEASE: Incantaro

 

 Incantaro

Today, we'll be traveling back in time. Twenty-two years to be exact; to relive past events of when the Chamber of Secrets was re-opened. A past, relived, once again, as today marks the release of 'Incantaro': an experimental visual study and outlook on the 2002 rendition of the Harry Potter universe found within the GameCube port of 'Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets'.

Developed by Eurocom and Published by EA in November of 2002, Incantaro is my very first console-based machinima project and sheds light on a game that is considered for many, myself included, a hidden gem, somewhat underrated and a highly personal favorite. The name Incantaro is a word-play on the word incantatum, which is quite fitting for a film taking place inside of the Harry Potter universe.

The film was recorded solely inside of the Dolphin emulator, a piece of software that allows users to play Nintendo GameCube and Nintendo Wii games on a computers. While doing so, the user is able to enjoy various quality-of-life improvements, such as higher rendering resolutions, graphical updates, anti-aliasing and custom controller mapping. Furthermore, what makes the Dolphin emulator highly interesting for filmmaking are their ‘custom texture’ and ‘free look camera’ functions.

 Literally, with a mere few mouse clicks, the player is able to conduct camera manipulation in over 1500 potential games (both GameCube and Wii) from the get-go with little to no setup. Imagine the possibilities for machinima in games such as Mario Kart Double Dash or Super Mario Sunshine, or perhaps Xenoblade Chronicles, Monster Hunter and Metroid Prime.

Everyone has a game, book, event or movie that one keeps closest to their heart and soul. For me, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets for Nintendo GameCube is that game; no questions asked. Having initially purchased the game shortly after its release in November 2002 on somewhat of a whim (CoS was my favorite book and I was looking forward to the film), I have easily sunk hundreds of hours into the game; exploring the castle, collecting Witches and Wizards Cards, defeating enemies, flying around on my broom, collecting Bertie Bott’s Every Flavor Beans and simply ‘Flipendo-ing’ the heck out of everyone I came across. What set this game apart for me, personally, is the excellent lighting engine, the diversity of the story and activities, smooth overall gameplay experience, the full implementation of Quidditch (full training session and full season consisting of three matches!) and its masterful soundtrack originally composed by Jeremy Soule. Where most stopped playing the game after a few months or so after the film released, I kept coming back to relive its' magic over and over. From hot summer saturdays to rainy autumn wednesday afternoons.  

Breaking Magical Boundaries

 Diving further into the concept of console-based machinima: last July I released a new installment of the APPOVTALK-series. The video enjoyed a runtime of almost 12 whopping hours and included a full 100% playthrough of the game, alongside personal commentary and lots of technical insights and hands-on live examples regarding camera manipulation with the Free Look Camera. This latest installment of APPOVTALK serves as the bridge between the introduction of console-based machinima and the film, Incantaro, itself. It is an exhaustive introduction towards the phenomena of console-based machinima by using Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets as a case study.

 Breaking Magical Boundaries stands, in hindsight, for the invisible barrier known as the in-game camera. Used and perceived by millions, yet an invisible gameplay element perceived as-is; overlooked and underexposed; yet such a key ingredient and important puzzle piece for a proper introduction regarding console-based machinima.

 While console-based machinima might sound straightforward, it really is not as there are deeper phenomena at play. APPOVTALK 3 - Breaking Magical Boundaries grasps the opportunity head-on to dive deeper into camera manipulation, texture manipulation and various aspects of troubleshooting regarding opportunities, challenges and issues which would arise during machinima production in GameCube/Wii games. APPOVTALK 3 starts with an introduction in the form of a presentation, continues on with the actual gameplay - commentary - creative insights and camera manipulation and ends with a very preliminary conclusion in presentation format in order to try to answer the question: “From a highly preliminary perspective, to what extent can we find machinima potential inside of Nintendo GameCube games?”

 

 

Production Process

Heading back to Incantaro, production commended in March of 2023 and was concluded in May of that same year, around the same time when 'Breaking Magical Boundaries' was initially streamed. Footage was captured by using the free-look camera and the texture manipulation options within Dolphin and the well-known capture software OBS. The film’s production process embraced the at this point well-known feeling and interpretation approach that I often use for post-production. However, this time I decided to use it for both production and post-production. I created an overview of all the maps found within the game and used a number of developer debug menus to swap between the various maps (credits to fellow HP-enthusiast Angel Sandro for bringing back the developer debug menu with a cheat code). Once the map was loaded, I used the F&I approach to move about around the map, and record footage until I was simply convinced there was nothing left to capture in terms of footage and perspectives.

Once production concluded, I conducted a rough sweep of the recorded footage by checking every piece of footage and deleting pieces of footage that did not meet expectations at that time. All the footage was categorized in folders during post-production based on the map where they were recorded. Shots were selected randomly and based on feeling. Once a rough offline edit was completed around and near the end of the summer, the runtime clocked in at around 20 minutes. The slow pace, which I initially used in AR3NA and Regression 4 and was found to be very fitting within these projects, simply did not fit Incantaro for some reason. I changed this by implementing a higher tempo in the edit, which decreased the total runtime to approximately 7.5 minutes. While doing so, I took the opportunity to critically look at the selected shots once more and deleted another number of them that were found to be redundant or their surroundings/arena too overly present within the general ‘balance’ of the film. I found this newly decreased runtime to be more fitting, bite-sized and digestible in terms of overall experience and consumption. The amount of shots will perhaps be a lot to take in all at once, but I found the idea of ‘burst consumption’ pretty interesting for this new machinima installment and thus decided to give it a try.

Depthmaps also make a return in Incantaro. While Dolphin in itself is unable to generate depth of field maps, I was able to use a third-party plugin that generated depth of field maps for me based on the shot input, further adding to the cinematic aesthetic alongside other visual effects such as cinematic grading, noise and cinematic audioscapes.

The audio track was solely created with sound effects found in the game in combination with a number of experimental drone/ambient tracks composed by Serat. While in production, I turned off the game’s music completely in order to only allow the sound effects to be recorded. During the audio post-production process, I, again, used the same F&I approach to layer various background sounds and sound effects in order to generate a whole new soundscape on a shot-to-shot basis. Afterwards, the experimental drone-type tracks composed by Serat were added to compliment and complete the established soundscape.

Incantaro serves as a definitive visual study and experimental point of view towards a classic game and the many personal memories attached to it. Enjoy.

 

 

Incantaro

 

Produced by A Pixelated Point of View

Released: Friday, March 22nd, 2024

Runtime: 7'22"

Color/BW: Color

Aspect Ratio: 2:35

Resolution: 1920x816

Genre: Machinima, Experimental, Visual Study

Framerate: 24fps

Audio: Stereo, -16LUFS

Color Space: REC.709 

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2002)

Developed by Eurocom Entertainment Software

Published by Electronic Arts

Software and Mods:

Dolphin Emulator, Custom Textures and Free-Look Camera, by the Dolphin Emulator Project

Developer Debug Menu Cheat, by Angel Sandro

Music:

 

Sound Effects 

found inside Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2002)

Composed by EuroCom Entertainment Software

 

Dark Transmission

Composed by Serat

Obtained from freemusicarchive.org

CC-BY-4.0 License

 

Rapid Waters

Composed by Serat

Obtained from freemusicarchive.org

CC-BY-4.0 License

 

Son of the Vampire

Composed by Serat

Obtained from freemusicarchive.org

CC-BY-4.0 License

 

Bar Tel Aviv

Composed by Serat

Obtained from freemusicarchive.org

CC-BY-4.0 License

 

© Jordy Veenstra 2024

© A Pixelated Point of View 2009 - 2024