In modern times like these, technical advances are a great advantage to the past time of the regular high school student. Without much to do after classes, a group of friends and I got together and decided to take action on the technical opportunities that we had at our disposal. With only one camera and about 80GB between three computers of use, we decided to make a movie that year and make it good. The only problem is, what would the movie be about.
Looking back at the beginning of the project, I remember first thinking that a movie about the famous video game series, Metal Gear: Solid was a great idea. During the start of the project the main idea for the film was to be a short movie with our hero defeating guards MGS style then killing a type of “big boss” at the end. The idea was simple, but the potential was far greater then we expected.
After filming the first scene I noticed what this movie could really be so I added in sub enemies and more guards for our hero to fight. Thus turning it from a short teaser to a average sized preview.
During production of the preview however, a good friend of mine, Arpan Patel, died in a car crash. The boys life and soul was video games and Metal Gear was his favourite game. So, to honour his life on this earth and the times we shared, I decided to make this film all that it could be.
So I set to work on making the story longer, more complex and much more traditional. I added a ninja and metal gear. Plot twists and eye candy. Pretty soon the project was way to big for most of the team to swallow, but we tightened our belts and gave it our all.
During production it was hard to get extras and other actors to come in on the right day, and expecting them to work professionally and to memorize their lines was out of the question. So it was crucial that I story boarded every scene and followed the boards like a bible, so I wouldn’t waste time making it up as I went along. But despite all my planning, we did have plenty of filming days and there were only two deleted scenes out of 13 scenes filmed in a span of 4 months give or take.
Besides incompetents we also ran into problems with hard drive space, continuity, music, dialogue and acting. All these problems can easily be noticed during the film and were unavoidable.
Though in the end, despite all problems and due dates, the delicate organization and the indescribable dedication of the staff and crew was the heart and soul of this movie. If it wasn’t for them, the movie would most likely be in limbo, like 90% of all other high school projects are.
Director of Metal Gear: Gaiden,
Efraim Siounis
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