Massively interviews Clear Skies creator Ian Chisholm
One of the most significant works of machinima created in recent years is Clear Skies, an unconventional amalgam of the gritty, far future setting of EVE Online tempered with a more human touch, imbued with life through clever writing and exacting manipulation of Half-Life 2 character models. Fans and critics alike have praised Clear Skies since its release. Indeed, the film recently took top honors at Machinima Filmfest 2008, garnering a Mackie award for Best Long Format Film.
This success at the festival was met with astonishment from Clear Skies creator Ian Chisholm as well as from his collaborators, John Guthrie and Richie Powles. But it was decidedly less of a surprise to the many fans of the film, a seemingly ever-growing number judging by the number of times Clear Skies has been downloaded from EVE-Files.
Massively recently caught up with Clear Skies creator Ian Chisholm, who was gracious enough to provide us with a sequence of production stills from Clear Skies 2, explaining how he brings a scene to life in stages from voice recording, to choreography, to the culmination of this work in the final footage. While we had his attention, Ian also discussed what drives a man to dedicate years of his life to a project of this caliber, and what he has in store for us with Clear Skies 2.
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The first Clear Skies film was undoubtedly a labor of love, 2 years in the making. What is it that drives you to create the Clear Skies films?
I'm a creative kind of person, I've always been driven to 'do something' rather than sit around watching telly or something. Even when doing a nice sociable bit of network gaming with my mates, I was the one that created new levels for the games we played... I also tend to focus on a couple of things in life at once as well, so I put the time required into whatever I'm into at the time.
Clear Skies came about by two things. One, I've also always wanted to tell a story but didn't have the opportunity. I first did a couple of EVE films to music but even then I was trying to tell a story instead of some PvP showcase. The third one I produced didn't pan out how I wanted it to and it was really frustrating - I was trying achieve too much with what EVE could give me. So that was annoying and it's a film of mine I rarely go back to watch again because I find it just plain embarrassing.
The second thing was that one day me and some friends were going out in our cars and videoing stuff, with an impromptu competition to take the same footage and the same music track and see what each person could produce from it. While messing with video footage of a blue car, I found the chromakey effect, and realised I could bluescreen stuff onto the side of the car. The only bit of handy footage I had was a warping effect from EVE... and it occurred to me: hang on, what if I had a window with blue behind it? I could look out onto an EVE universe... One quick technology test later with rough but successful results and I made a decision - don't just chuck it 'out there' saying 'look what I can do', but rather "If I'm going to do this, I'm going to do this right, with a script and everything". I knew it'd be a lot of work but I don't think I realised how much exactly! Several months later, after writing and rewriting a script, learning development tools, and testing all the aspects of creation that I'd need to produce a film, I finally decided that yes - I could do everything I wanted to do and it was time to tell my story.
After all that time put into making Clear Skies a reality, how did it feel to learn it had won Best Long Format Film at the Machinima Filmfest 2008?
Like I've said all along, Clear Skies was a creative outlet for me and a bit of fun for my friends. With one of the earlier EVE shorts I did, my mate John (aka Charlie Fodder) was flying an interceptor in it and he said that every time it came on the screen he went, "That's me that is!" So I thought, if he gets that excited over that, how much would he like to be in an actual story, have an actor onscreen with his voice, his words? And my other friends would like it too, and they did. It was a lot of fun doing the voice recording and I enjoyed the responses people had when they saw the finished result. Richie and John both said they had no clue at all it was going to be that good -- they didn't quite get the scope of what I had in mind, and seeing what I did with the voice recordings and the very tedious and unexciting EVE ship footage we took was a real moment of amazement for them, which was very fulfilling to me.
But still, we never, ever expected anything like the response we had. I was thinking "OK it's a laugh and my friends will like it because they are in it, and maybe 10 people online might comment it's a bit different but they might not get the humour" and so forth. Well, things went up in exponential stages of bewilderment from the moment of uploading and posting that thread in the EVE forum. The downloads shot up to the point EVE-Files was at max bandwidth for about two weeks straight, the threadnaught grew and grew with such wonderful responses, and people starting messaging me in-game and donating ISK. The culmination of it all was winning this award at the filmfest, I mean crikey, it doesn't get much better than that! So I'm proud, honoured, grateful, and still quite shellshocked by it. It's the biggest bit of validation I could ever want. I said near three years ago "I'm going to do this right" and this says, beyond doubt, yes I did. I can't wait for the shiny award, it's going next to my model Tempest.
How would you describe the EVE player community's response to Clear Skies? Has the film's popularity had any impact on your actual game experience in EVE, with more players recognizing you?
Haha, yes it has, and it's all been positive. I think from 'the Bucket' outtakes video it's apparent that we don't take ourselves seriously so I enjoy the banter that I've gotten now. Ingame I have the Fleet Command skill at level 5, and all the other stuff maxed out that supports it, and I fly a command ship - so in fleets of 200+ I end up top of the shop, handing out bonuses. That tends to highlight it's me so fleet chat occasionally goes off-topic! I've had someone (badly) impersonating me going "How much?" over Teamspeak, that was weird. I x'd up in chat and someone went "juh... John Rourke?!" -- the fact they took the time to type in a stammer was very flattering! The best one I think though was when myself, Charlie, Sol, and Haffa went on a roam (with our chum Twiglet but he doesn't count as he wasn't in CS haha) and while crossing a big system, the one other guy in local freaked out. He couldn't quite believe he was seeing the main cast from Clear Skies in system with him, so we all started doing our lines at him in local. Great fun, and if it makes people happy, that makes me happy.
