YOUTUBE CINEMATIC LOG #6

The casual audience is attracted to violence. There’s no mistake about that. Why else would there be video game after sport after gripping novel that involves graphic detail, however quick or slow, dealing with battling others physically? The art of talking out problems, while providing more of a chance of settling things, just isn’t as visually intriguing as a high-action battle to save oneself.

The casual audience is also attracted to heavy music, like rock’n’roll. Several bands suckered by certain bigwig stat-gatherers rip their hearts and strings out, playing note after note, sacrificing their livelihood for the sole purpose of entertaining others. Among them, rock gets the heart pumped quicker than a gas station pumps a heart. The quiet, classic stuff, meanwhile, appears the sole target of past generations.

Violence and rock in roll appear to go hand-in-hand, from what can be gleamed from the last two paragraphs. This exciting enclave even has the potential to make movie trailers exciting, or violent video game trailers awesomer. There’s one violent video game whose trailer makes due with more poignant music…and it works better than rock does.

What am I yarning on about? It would be the first Gears of War game which I bring forefront today.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cbh5MqqDq4M

It begins with a longshot of a soldier, tilting from his feet to his entire body. The soldier runs by the camera closely, and the camera pans around to a backshot of him. The next view positions the camera from an aerial, high-angle view of him running through the city.

The view shifts to within a destroyed building, a panning longshot of the soldier running by, as a mysterious creature rises from its nap. Back outside, we first get a frontal medium shot of the soldier, then a zooming extreme longshot from his view. Cue eventual panning longshot of the soldier jumping into the building. Then a close up of him recovering and raising his head to see…

…a longshot of a pincerless arachnid rising from an abyss of the dark. It quickly cuts back to the soldier’s point of view, before the camera decides on an extreme longshot that zooms out as the soldier battle the ferocious freak mano-a-arachno.

If this were a normal commercial for a normal violent game, there would be a rock track playing. Instead, setting itself apart from other commercials, a different, melancholy song plays…”Mad World”, by Micheal Andrews and Gary Jules. Or rather, a remake of the song plays. It certainly fits the somber craziness of the characters and world in the commercial. It also fills me with dread at what waits in the game being advertised. In other words, an artist can make any work of art give off any emotion with the right tools.