Thursday, January 4, 2007

Filming Complete for Game Room Documentary

Filming was completed today for Classic Game Room: The Rise and Fall of the Internet's Greatest Video Game Review Show. My new documentary film is about the rise and fall (hence the title) of the video game review show that I co-hosted in 1999 and 2000. By the way, I am sitting on the little hill where we filmed Duck Hunt/People Hunt for the NES and X-Men for the Sega Genesis.

Mark Bussler pondering on Duck Hunt Hill

Me pondering life, Game Room and wonderfulness on "Duck Hunt Hill".... We filmed a lengthy interview today about my recollections on the 75 episode series, production details and how it eventually came to a sudden end (along with the rest of its website company, FromUSAlive.com). Ironically I started my career with Game Room and now primarily make historical documentary films.

City of Pittsburgh

Jay filming the city of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania from Schenley Park, where we filmed the "sad retrospective" scenes in the film. All of the Classic Game Room episodes were filmed in 4x3 video on Betacam SP or DVCpro. I decided to keep a similar format for this doc instead of shooting in HD. There were also budgetary concerns and Game Room is no stranger to tight budgets. Our original budgets were $50 per episode, but that's also what made them so good. When you have no money you just have to get creative... by the way, Jay and I are filming in 2 weeks on a new High Def. historical film, more info on that coming soon.

Jay!

Jay is an excellent director of photography and we have worked together on several of my previous high definition films Expo: Magic of the White City, Horses of Gettysburg, and World War 1 - American Legacy . Even though Classic Game Room is very different from the other films, top quality production value is a must.

Slide back to the West Side

There's nothing quite like a playground slide for a moment of quiet reflection. I slid down it about 6 times and it was fun.

Holy crap its the Game Room!

If the people on this plane had looked down they would have seen Classic Game Room being filmed! I love my 300mm lens.

Word!

More fun with the big 300mm IS lens, downtown Pittsburgh. You may recognize the building on the right from Dogma and the pointy topped building on the left from Inspector Gadget.

Sega GT sucka!

You can still hear the cars from the Sega GT episode! More Classic Game Room information to come soon along with DVD packaging and the release date. Stay tuned! The official website will be up soon as well.

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