AR3NA

ARENA (alternative name: AR3NA) is an experimental machinima and visual study produced by A Pixelated Point of View within the game Quake III Arena (ID Software, 1999). With a production time of almost one full year, this is the first ever longform/feature film project to be released by A Pixelated Point of View.

ARENA is a visual study about Quake III Arena; its environments and its textures; and a deeper critical look at over two-hundred maps that many of us seemed to have spent many hours in; to fight, frag, strafe, score and humiliate. The map as a 'being' is the outside layer of an onion, serving as the aesthetic layer for all of the nail-biting and nerve-wrecking last-moment capture the flag scores and all of the digital bloodshed that takes place within this vast universe where only the strongest can prevail.

ARENA is antimatter; rejecting skill and traditional means of gameplay. No power-ups, weapons and/or players are found. It is you, your inner thoughts and the arena, inside a world that is empty, inside a universe that is limitless. The rest is up to you.

Production took place over the course of one full year. Pre-production started in early January 2022. Actual production took place between March and August and post-production concluded in early December. Approximately two-hundred maps made for the game Quake III Arena were selected from within the game's vanilla maps selection and randomly on the lvlworld map repository. Each map was carefully explored with the help of the Quake III MovieMakers Edition Mod. Shots were created 'on the spot' based on the current interpretation and usability of that portion of the map. In total, almost a terabyte of TGA sequences were conceived when production concluded.

The film was edited by using an approach I'd like to call 'F&I' (Feeling and Interpretation), rather than the 'fit to music' style that I'd often employ in other projects in where the film is heavily edited to fit the flow of the music. To be more precise: the rough cut of the film was completely edited without any form of audio and primarily through feeling. The length of the shots and the placement of the shots was also decided through the F&I approach. Once the rough cut or offline edit was established, it was time for the grading process; which was entirely done in Adobe After Effects by using vanilla effects found within the software. The main takeaway for me during grading was to differentiate the maps so that they'd be less recognizable in order to establish a more powerful cinematic experience. This was done mainly with heavy contrasts, hue-changes, noise/grain and sometimes sky replacements/adjustments. The visual effects in the beginning of the film were made with Video Co Pilot's Element 3D.

The last step before AR3NA's completion was audio post-production. An extensive music search was conducted inside YouTube's Audio Library and on FreeMusicArchive. The main purpose for the audio was to extend the current still (somewhat) flat visual experience by creating a auditive 'universe' through soundscaping in order to make it truly sound and feel like an industrial-based, eerie universe. The soundscape was created by cutting and combining parts from approximately twenty audio tracks. The majority of these were obtained from songs that have been used before in previous projects such as Regression, the DEPTHMAP series and the IGNIIITION series in order to create a bit of an auditive recognizable leitmotiv that would often reappear over the course of the film.

The full 35 minute film has been released on YouTube only due to storage constraints on Vimeo. However, on Vimeo, a shortened 4 minute version can be found with a call to action for the full film on YouTube in order to provide a release for both platforms. Both films released on December 15th, with the trailer surfacing online ten days earlier.