CHADAM – ONLINE SERIES MEETS VIDEO GAME TECHNOLOGY!

Many of you know that my company (HDFILMS) has been working on a cutting edge computer animated WebSeries called “CHADAM” for the last couple years.

“CHADAM” is a story about reclusive character who lives as the “chosen one” in the hyper-stylized and exaggerated metropolitan island city of Vulture. His power of imagination is strong enough to physically change his environment and, therefore, his world … to save it from evil. The series finds Chadam in a place of refuge where he and others have retreated to plan their attack against a serial killer known as Viceroy…

The challenge of the project was not only to tell an engaging story, but to also make an unprecedented attempt at producing nearly an hour of detailed computer animation within the extreme budget constraints of current internet economics.

To put this in perspective, in order to be viable as a project, CHADAM’s budget for the entire 10+ episode hour long computer animated series had to be significantly smaller than what it typically costs to produce ONE SINGLE half hour animated network television episode.

Not an easy feat. I assure you.

These extreme limitations led us to focus on more creative and out-of-the-box approaches to accomplishing the task at hand. A notion was conceived to see if it was possible to use video game technology (specifically UNREAL 3) to lower the barrier-to-entry and actually be used to produce the desired final product.

Coming from the video game industry, and having been personally involved in working with numerous game technologies, I felt strongly that we could tell the entire story of CHADAM within a video game engine technology like UNREAL 3 – and so our journey began and we discussed it with the character’s creator, legendary artist ALEX PARDEE…

Historically, the use of video game technology to tell linear narrative has been limited. Utilization as transitionary moments in-between video game levels is a typical example of the limited use. Never has there been a whole movie completed in such a way - Although there has been a great effort and community known as MACHINIMA that has always held the idea that movies could be made with video game technology, and it is only right that I should mention that in this article.

The issue with most MACHINIMA efforts has been that typically all the content that appears in a MACHINIMA-type production, is primarily a re-use of a particular video game’s art assets. This immediately brings in extreme story-telling limitations because if your story requires a scene or character interaction that the original game never conceived, there was no simple way to do it.

Nonetheless, there have been some pretty cool MACHINIMA efforts and if you want to see/learn more about it, you can go HERE:

CHADAM, however is different than that. The CHADAM production represents a complete-front-to-back original content creation effort without any game asset re-use. It literally is the ultimate expression of the MACHINIMA idea, and guess what? They were right! It works.

It is also an expression of what can be created within “internet economics” by a VERY small team, using nothing but video game technology.

CHADAM was never intended for any other medium besides the Internet. It is not an independent film that couldn’t find distribution. It is not a direct to DVD effort that then suddenly changed strategies. CHADAM started as a web series for the internet and it has remained so.

The description of the production journey itself (the trials and tribulations) will have to be discussed in another blog entry – there is also a “making of CHADAM” documentary that we shot and will become available…. But my point here is that there is clearly new opportunity in animated series that can make use of state of the art video game technology, and the internet is a fantastic medium for its distribution.

It is important that you know that Warner Bros. demonstrated vision and leadership by choosing to get behind this project. They stood strong where many would have faltered. Please do us and them a favor by spreading the word to everyone about CHADAM on theWB.com and getting people to check it out. They won’t be disappointed!

Please tell people to go here:

www.chadamtheseries.com

And now for the first episode. Let us know what you think!!!

We are very interested in your opinions. Please share them with us!

Jace