The Weathered Underground
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The Weathered Underground (2007) is the first feature length, live action film that functions just like a Choose Your Own Adventure Book, where the audience chooses what the central character does next. It is written and directed by David N. Donihue, and stars Michael Ciriaco and Brea Grant. The film features a combination of live actors interacting with CGI environments.
| The Weathered Underground | |
|---|---|
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| Directed by | David N. Donihue |
| Produced by | Greg Strom Doug Magallon |
| Written by | David N. Donihue,
starring = Michael Ciriaco |
| Release date(s) | Summer,2007 |
| Running time | All plots combined 4 1/2 hrs |
| Language | English |
Contents |
[edit] Plot (Overview)
In a film where the viewer chooses what the central character does next, a young man tries to come to terms with a break up by rushing into the arms of any number of others as he navagates through the underground scenes, surrounded by drugs, music and artistic derilicts. He balances the insanity with the help of his Ex-girlfriend, Liz, the only person that he trusts, and the person he seems on the verge of losing forever.
Since the film is in the same vien as a Choose Your Own Adventure books, there are hundreds of plotlines contained within. The film features over thirty different endings and hundreds of choices in the middle. Each time the viewer plays, he/she will makes several choices, and the "film/game" usually lasts around twenty minutes. It can be played for four and a half hours without reaching the same plot.
[edit] Characters
[edit] Eric
Eric(Michael Ciriaco) is a twenty one year old musician, living in the often surreal world that is known as downtown Los Angeles. He is obsessed with indie rock, yet knows the roots (hence a Joy Division poster on his wall. At first glance, he seems to be yet another young man just floating through the underground music scene, seeking sex, drugs or anything else that may prove interesting. He doesn't seem smart and he doesn't seem calculated. But as you get to know Eric, he has a razor sharp mind that justifies his every waking move. He has a system of picking apart the minutia of the world around. He's not troubled. But the world tends to hurl one moment of trouble after another at him at every possible moment. Eric, is Zen. But Eric is also anger. Eric is also violent. Eric is also filled with lust. Eric could care less about love. Eric needs it more than anybody. Eric is, essentially, who ever you choose for him to be.
In this interactive film, the viewer chooses what Eric is suppose to do next. Depending on what choices the viewer makes for him (many of them being moral delimmas), Eric's personality slightly changes. His tone changes. His systems of justifying his own actions changes. Even the way he sees the world visually (dark and colorless vs bright and cartoony) changes. If the audience choosesfor Eric to behave selfishly, then Eric's personality goes colder. If they choose for Eric to act eratically, Eric becomes a more jaded and dissefected character, comically bouncing from one insane event to the next, without seeing anything to out of the oridnary about any of it.
The viewer, is litarally, dictating his personality, simply by the choices that are being made.
[edit] Liz
Liz (Brea Grant) is a twenty two year old fire engine, and since age 15, Eric's best friend. She's sweet and fun to be around and far smarter than he, and genuinely loves and relies on him. Image:LIZ NEW UNDERGROUND TRAILER.PCT
[edit] Multiple plots/genres
Again, depending on what the viewer chooses for Eric to do, the plot changes. There is another level of pshychology working behind this, as depending on the what types of decisions the viewer makes, the genre and visual style of the film change. If the viewer makes rash and eratic decisions, the film becomes very fast and furocious, and the style tends to head in the directed of a comic book action comedy, with the colors becoming brighter and the characters looking more like animations than actors (while no animated character was ever used). These plots often boarderline intentional camp, and seem to play one notch above reality.
If the audience chooses choices of empathy, love or rational, the film becomes a more humanistic type drama, with the colors going more drab as well as the characters faces oten turning b&w while the surrounding environment continues to feature select, moody colors. These plots seem far more rooted in reality than those within the cartoonish world that is delivered if the viewer chooses eratically.
[edit] Winning the game
While The Weathered Underground is presented and marketed as if it were a film, the choices make the viewer also feel as if he/she is playing a game. The viewer generally has one of two goels, make Eric win at life, or destroy his entire world. To reach a possitive ending, the viewer must make possitive choices. If the viewer chooses out of love, selflessness and from a non-reactionary place of rational, then Eric is more likely to find love, contentment, etc.
If the viewer makes choices that are selfish, vengeful, acting on lust rather than love, etc - then Eric is likely to find himself ending up in a hellish reality. In many cases, Eric dies, loses the girl he likes, is shot in the testicles, etc.
The moralality aspect of the "film/game" is a strange formula, given the films constant barrage of warped ethics and off-handed treatment of the kind of subject matter that is generally approached in cinema with more seriousness. While many could accuse the central the central characters as lacking in values, it could be argued that such things are actually the viewers fault, and the lack of morality creeps in only when the viewer makes choices that show that they lack morals themselves.
[edit] various plots
Again, the plot is determined by the decisions the viewer makes over the course of the picture, but generally, it either operates on a very realistic view of the world, or one notch above a normal level of reality.
