In ‘Ibelin’ and ‘Grand Theft Hamlet,’ video game realms draw filmmakers with virtual cameras

NEW YORK (AP) — Film productions often wrestle with shifts in the weather, the threat of the crew going into overtime or the fading of a day’s light. Less common are concerns over the cast slipping off the top of a blimp.

But that was one of the quirks of making “Grand Theft Hamlet,” a documentary about a pair of British actors, Sam Crane and Mark Oosterveen, who, while idled by the pandemic, decided to stage “Hamlet” within the violent virtual world of “Grand Theft Auto.” When Shakespeare wrote of the “slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,” he may not have imagined the threat of a python loose in a bar or Hamlet wrestling with whether “to be” on a helipad. Yet “Grand Theft Auto” might be an oddly appropriate venue for a play where nearly everyone dies.

“The first time Sam did a bit of Shakespeare in that space, he said, ‘I imagine this is what it was like in Shakespeare’s time at the Globe when people would throw apples at you if you were rubbish,’” says Pinny Grylls, who wrote and directed the film with Crane, her husband. “No one’s really watching you but they’re occasionally looking around and listening to the poetry.”

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“Grand Theft Hamlet,” which Mubi will release in theaters in January, opens with Crane and Oosterveen’s avatars, fleeing police and careening into an outdoor amphitheater. One says loud, “I wonder if you could stage something here?”

They aren’t the only ones who have drifted into virtual spaces and wondered if it might be a rich landscape for a movie. In the “The Remarkable Life of Ibelin,” which debuted Friday on Netflix, director Benjamin Ree plunges into “World of Warcraft” to tell both the life and virtual life story of Mats Steen, a Norwegian gamer who died from Duchenne muscular dystrophy at age 25.

“Knit’s Island,” streaming on Metrograph at Home, takes place almost entirely within the survivalist role playing game DayZ. The filmmakers went in with “PRESS” badges across the chests of their avatars and seeking interviews with high-kill-count players. “Don’t shoot!” one yells during one approach. “I’m a documentarist!”

All three documentaries enter video game realms with curiosity at what might be discovered within. For them, the surreal life inside these virtual spaces, and the possibilities there for real human connection, are just as worthy as anywhere else.

“Filmmakers want to make films about the world we live in. And more and more people are living in these virtual gaming spaces online,” says Grylls. “As filmmakers we’re just putting a mirror to the world and saying, ‘Look what’s happening here.’”

As the gaming industry has emerged as the dominant entertainment medium (by some estimates it dwarfs film, television and music combined), the lines between movies and video games have increasingly blurred. That’s not just in big box-office films like “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” but in the smaller films known as machinima (a combination of “machine” and “cinema”) that use gaming engines to make narratives of their own.

But “The Remarkable Life of Ibelin,” “Grand Theft Hamlet” and “Knit’s Island” are first-of-their-kind feature forays in bridging the gap between virtual and cinema.

“This is only the beginning,” says Grylls. “We’re right at the foothills of it. It’s nice to think we’re part of that evolution of cinema.”

Reconstructing Mats Steen’s life

When Ree first read about Steen’s story, he was tremendously moved. When Steen died in 2014, his parents, Robert and Trude, had the impression that their son had missed out on most of life. As Duchenne muscular dystrophy, a rare disease without a cure, progressed, Steen’s life was increasingly relegated to playing video games from a wheelchair in their basement.

But after Steen’s parents posted news of their son’s death on his blog, they were stunned by the response. Messages poured in, eulogizing Steen, known to most as the strapping Ibelin Redmoore of “World of Warcraft.” Ree rewinds his film to start over, retelling Steen’s story using thousands of pages of archived texts to animate Ibelin/Steen’s vibrant life within the game. In the game, Steen, as Ibelin, experienced his first kiss.

“I thought: Is it possible to translate that enormous archive and reconstruct actual events with real dialogue and real characters, but also invite everyone in?” says Ree. “He actually came of age inside of a game. And I was so curious: What was that like? He experienced friendships, love — all the things I can recognize in my own life growing up.”

Ree knew that to make a film about Steen’s life, he needed to illustrate it through “World of Warcraft.” Though he, himself, wasn’t a player, Ree sought out gamers on who posted fan videos on YouTube. Rasmus Tukia, a 28-year-old, self-taught 3-D animator, led two other animators in rendering the game environment with the same models used for gameplay videos.

“They were all YouTubers and this was their first job,” Ree says. “We’re doing something totally new here. If this works, it’s a lot of credit to these YouTubers.”

Ree’s goal wasn’t to exactly mimic the game — that can come off as clunky or too herky-jerky. So for three years, without permission from the game’s maker, Blizzard Entertainment, they animated Steen’s/Ibelin’s experiences in “World of Warcraft,” but with a slightly more cinematic touch. Along the way, they showed drafts to Steen’s online friends for feedback.

“When I showed them the film after working on it for three and a half years, the response after the screening was: ‘This is exactly how we remember Ibelin,’” Ree says. “Then they said, ‘But you’ve made one mistake. Ibelin liked women with more leathery clothes.’”

Only after the film — a small, independent Norwegian production before Netflix acquired it — was nearing completion did Ree reach out to Blizzard. He traveled to their offices in California to screen it for executives.

“I was so nervous. I hadn’t slept for days. We didn’t have a plan B. I had to take some extra doses of asthma medication in order to breathe before the meeting,” Ree says. “We showed them the film and right after we saw they were crying. The boss turned around and said, ‘This film is fantastic. You will get the rights.’”

Shakespeare with a cargo plane in ‘Grand Theft Hamlet’

Crane, an experienced stage and screen actor, had initially started what became “Grand Theft Hamlet” as more of a lark, a way to keep busy while theaters were shuttered during the pandemic. As he posted videos, though, people responded enthusiastically, as did the game’s maker, Rockstar Games.

“They spoke to us about how they designed the game to be used like this, as a sandbox, as a creative space,” Crane says.

But little about how to make “Grand Theft Hamlet,” which won best documentary at SXSW in March, was established. For starters, nearly every audition or rehearsal in the game ended in bloodshed. Someone with a gun typically turned up and chaos ensued.

The filmmakers had a few touchstones, like Joe Hunting’s 2022 documentary “We Met in Virtual Reality” and the work of the artist Jacky Connolly, who used “Grand Theft Auto” to make the nightmarish, existential short film “Descent into Hell.” But little about how to make a movie set entirely within a game world was prescribed.

“We were kind of working out every aspect of it – putting on a play inside this world, learning how to capture the images in this world, then how do we edit all this footage,” Crane says. “We were learning as we went.”

That also meant freedom. At one point, they realized they could essentially perform Shakespeare “on a billion dollar budget.” Theirs is the first “Hamlet” to feature the car from “Back to the Future” or a cargo plane. Meanwhile, Grylls, an experienced filmmaker, experimented with how to position the camera.

“I realized: OK, let’s try to make things a bit stiller and more cinematic,” she says. “When I discovered there was a phone inside the game with a camera on it, I was able to make close-ups and wide shots and a cinematic language of sorts.”

Game not over

As “Grand Theft Hamlet” has screened at various film festivals, Crane and Grylls find themselves in the surprising position of being celebrated for a movie they made mostly in their bedroom on a PlayStation. Like their virtual-world forays, something done in physical isolation has found an ever-growing community.

Ree, who spoke from a festival stop in San Francisco, has been traveling with “Ibelin” with Streen’s parents. A life that had once seemed quiet and lonely has reached around the world.

“They’ve watched the film every screening,” he says. “In a way for them, the film is a part of their healing but also their grieving process. They’ve seen it now over 150 times.”