A good narrative is a base of a great game. In this task I am looking at two different crime scenes from the Rockstar game, L.A. Noire, where you play as different police investigators in L.A. solving brutal and difficult crimes form the 1960s.
In ‘The Stocking Murder’ a young woman is found lying dead, naked on the floor with her throat cut, her wedding ring missing, red lipstick message on her body and library card by her side. This case is linked to two other previous cases where a woman’s body had a message written in red lipstick on their chest which may be a copycat murder even the previous murderer returning, as the previous ones were not solved. Throughout this case the investigators continue to doubt each other to whom the murderer is as they have seen this kind of crime scene before. The victims clothing and personal belongings have been placed far away from the body, however still in the location, intentionally telling the investigators the identity of this woman but not showing them the less needed information about her. Additionally the killer appears to want to send a message considering the similarity between cases. Using this story for my trailer as I could work a lot with FX makeup, as most of the makeup is quite extreme, I would have to look at the makeup artist Glam&Gore.
In this case, ‘A Different Kind of War’, Cole Phelps (the investigator) is called in to solved the murder of Dr Halan Fontaine as he was discovered in his office, strangled, as well as figuring out the kidnapping of Elsa Lichtmann a patient of Dr Fontaine. This story would be fascinating to do for my final trailer as so much would be happening, that and they’re could be several ways as to how the story could play out, the trailer itself could have many tense moments as well as drama between officers and the victim’s family/ friends. Furthermore filming in different locations could make it more incising for the viewers as they’d be curious about where/ how the officers got there, therefore making people want to watch/ play the game. I feel that the use of lighting could be very useful in some shots too as it could foreshadows someone’s feeling or morals battling each other, similar to Kylo Ren in ‘The Force Awakens’ between him and Hans Solo on the bridge, where Hans is trying to tell him to come to the light side as he’s being brainwashed- half of his face is coloured red where as the other half is tinted blue hinting that there’s a battle between his conscious. Additionally the use of prop guns on set would making the trailer overall more exciting as they’d know that some characters are in a dangerous situation.
These are my two chosen stories, I believe that I’d be able to work with different techniques because of these crimes, such as lighting, makeup, locations, costumes, etc. Having something very dramatic like bloody/ gorey makeup would really get the target audience (ages between 20-35) as they’d be pulled in because of the different techniques used. When creating my trailer I will use the lines from the actual game, so then it links even more with the game and people can tell what case it is, as well as looking at the locations/ bodies. However it would be interesting to put my own twist on it, making based in a different type of genre either Sci-Fi or Cyberpunk.
KCIMGD- Nichola Humphreys 