Montage

The montage went through a lot of changes over production. Originally, I started with many ideas that were brainstormed as to what each level could be, and how it could appeal to some aspect of games from the era I am evoking in the short. Then I paired it down  to make my original storyboards. A lot of these cuts were based on redundant shots, things that would be hard to convey clearly, things with not enough violence, and things requiring too many unique assets to create. Among the shots cut were a top down shooter stage inspired by the likes of Space Invaders and a level about clutching through walls to find secrets.

I picked the original montage order at random, starting with Mario-esque levels and then branching out to other genres. At the end of the montage the action speeds up so I could show several shots in succession to suggest the continuous nature of Jeff's failure and the monotony of repeating the same steps over and over again. From there it was cutting down the time for some shots, speeding up some shots, and cutting a few shots in order to find better pacing within the sequence. Because each level was its own instance unrelated to the others, I could easily rearrange the shots until I found a flow that I liked. Even close to the end of production, I am just now finding a sequence that works well. I simply arranged the levels from longest to shortest, and that caused the sequence to have a steady flow to it. I think I am finally happy with the flow of the sequence. Hopefully everyone else is too. ;)