The Amnesia Fortnight Movie (2021)
Once every year or two, San Francisco-based, BAFTA Award-winning game development studio, Double Fine Productions, takes a break from their big budget, AAA titles (Psychonauts 1 & 2, Brütal Legend, Broken Age) to work on small, rapidly produced prototypes. The two-week process came to be known as Amnesia Fortnight; A regularly occurring “game jam” used to boost company morale and exercise some of the creative muscles that don’t get flexed during years-long development cycles on core game projects. Over the past decade, the documented process showcased a rarely seen, intensive look into the world of game development, and the high-stress crunches commonly found within the industry.
Over the past few Amnesia Fortnights, the entire process has been documented by documentary crew, 2 Player Productions, a team I’ve collaborated with as an audio engineer many, many times. Aside from the normal audio production I’ve done for the team prior, Amnesia Fortnight required an acute focus on intensive work schedules and tight deadlines, typically spending multiple weeks recording on location in Double Fine’s San Francisco office.
The most recent entry in the Amnesia Fortnight series of game jams is The Amnesia Fortnight Movie, filmed in 2019, produced in 2020 and released in 2021. Typically, production for Amnesia Fortnight-related events were very stressful, but with the new approach of releasing a singular film as opposed to episodic series like we had in the past, we were able to absorb the material a little bit longer. Ironically, post-production during 2020’s start of the COVID pandemic allowed us the autonomy and isolation needed to create the event’s most refined version.
Aside from mixing the 2 hour feature film in Pro Tools, I designed the film’s logo in Photoshop and Illustrator, incorporating Double Fine’s established branding. The logo, when animated with After Effects, creates a cool lensing effect, that felt like the viewer was being enveloped by the events happening onscreen, as seen in the trailer, above.
Enjoy the complete film for free on YouTube!
Earlier iterations of the event, our team filmed Double Fine’s prototype development for 8 to 10 hours a day, edited and mixed the day’s footage into a 30-minute documentary episode later that night. Those videos were then released the next morning for rabid fans to watch and become actively engaged in the ongoing process. As a crew, a 24-hour work cycle was adopted, often integrating insane amounts of coffee to counteract the little amount of sleep we got each day, usually on office couches or under desks.
Past Amnesia Fortnight highlights include
Director, Editor: Paul Owens
Executive Producer: Paul Levering
Captions: Renat Sirbaev