Week 3 - Semester 2

Recently I watch a film called The Prestige which was on BBC2 (20th February 2011).

The film is a period thriller set in Edwardian London where two rival magicians, partners until the tragic death of an assistant during a show, feud bitterly after one of them performs the ultimate magic trick - teleportation.

His rival tries desperately to uncover the secret of his routine, experimenting with dangerous new science as his quest takes him to the brink of insanity and jeopardises the lives of everyone around the pair.

The film describes how a magic act consists of 3 Acts. The first part is called ‘The Pledge’ where the magician shows the audience something ordinary. The second act is called ‘The Turn’ where the magician takes the ordinary and makes it extraordinary. The third act is to bring back the extraordinary back to its original state.

Having watched this film I could help but wished we created our structure of the level based upon these 3 acts that were described in the film. This also got me thinking that with better research into the topic of Magicians, this idea could have been used much earlier in the process of creation.

Instead now, we have created a structure that is purely based upon location. Having found this Neo Tokyo Mod and being allowed to used the assets for our project, meant that focus on creating a level based with that in mind on not towards the idea of misdirection which is the main focus on the project.

It’s easy to look back at what should have been done, but at the time ideas about Tokyo and the setting were getting the team excited towards the project with everyone coming up with ideas. It was always said that the team could play on the idea using misdirection with the use of a different culture, which lead to us finding the Neo Tokyo Mod, however ideas on misdirection on the whole have been difficult to create effectively as of now.

It seems that the teams desire to go ahead and create a Tokyo setting without fully understanding how to implement misdirection into a test that would record meaningful data may have a negative outcome for the project on the whole, which worries me right now.

Write ups for the First Draft Reports should be completed this time next week, along with the new Design Document. Team input towards both is needed, which will be done in tomorrow’s meeting (22nd February 2011)