NOTE: The following was posted on April 1st (April Fools). It is not to be taken seriously.Honest.

First off, I’d like to apologize for the delay in posting. This project is very much still alive; we have just been busy getting it done. We promise more frequent updates as we near launch.

Rachel’s Walk has been in development for nearly two years, and it has been a long, grueling journey. At this point I find it necessary to explain why it’s taken so long: this is not our full-time job, and it frankly does not pay the bills… yet. So, in the meantime, we have been forced to seek alternate employment in order to make ends meet.

Part of this search involves my personal effort to expand the business that is Darklight Interactive, and that involves getting the name out there and doing a lot of footwork. I’ve been trying to contact the right people, going to the occasional trade show, getting on all the right mailing lists, etc… etc… in the hopes that Darklight Interactive can make a name for itself and start attracting customers.

One of these efforts involved me trying to make contacts in the movie industry. Catering to the movie industry is not something out of the ordinary; ARGs have become what they are because of their ability to promote upcoming movies. In fact, in the past we actually have been part of bidding process for at least three different major motion picture studios (for legal reasons, I cannot mention the names publicly, but at least one of them has appeared on unFiction).

So, in an effort to make better contacts in the film industry, a few weeks ago I attended the Miami International Film Festival (the fact that they were showing David Lynch’s Eraserhead had nothing to do with it. Honest.)… and what a life changing experience that was. Luckily I had a foot in the door – I coordinated my efforts with two friends I went to college with that are now independent filmmakers – and pretty soon we were mingling with some rather meaningful people in the industry. Quite honestly, I wasn’t making much of it at the time; this “mingling” involved talking a lot of banter and drinking (it was at Miami Beach, after all), so I didn’t realize what an impact it all had…

…until I received the call that changed everything. Somebody was actually interested in this little project. I couldn’t believe it at first, and didn’t even remember talking to the person that called me, so I thought it was some sort of joke. No joke: soon found myself landing at La Guardia Airport to meet them.

So there I was… sitting in a board room on Park Avenue, with two motion picture studio “executives” (to this day I’m not sure what their job really was), explaining to them what Rachel’s Walk was all about. They seem genuinely intrigued by the prospect of it, and were interested in presenting this to the would-be producer.

“Can you write up a scene? It will make it easier for them to understand.”

I’ve never written a screenplay before, but I was so excited I agreed to do it. That night I didn’t sleep, and wrote six different drafts of a “teaser” for this project. I wound up writing what would be a five minute scene involving the four main characters to date.

The next day it was presented to the producer, and he had some reservations for it. But, to my surprise, he agreed to help out on the project… provided we make some “adjustments” in order to make the movie attract a bigger audience. By mid-afternoon they handed me a six page document detailing the changes they would want. I wasn’t thrilled with some of their suggestions, but the fate of the company I was trying to develop was at stake. They were willing to pay, and pay well, for this project to be developed, so long as it fulfilled their expectations and their desires. Besides, when it comes to making movies, they were the experts, not I.

So I spent the last six days writing a revised script for a sort of introduction to Rachel’s Walk, based on their suggestions. I sent it to them, and they said it was exactly what they were expecting. So it looks like this measly little project might turn in to a film of some sort!

So here is the initial draft of the script for Rachel’s Walk. Casting (out of NYC) for this short starts Monday.

To further express their interest in this project, the studio’s marketing team went ahead and created a “proof of concept” movie poster for Rachel’s Walk. Once again, not quite what I envisioned when I first thought of this project, but they must know what they’re doing.

NOTE: I don’t quite know where they got the actor/actress names on the poster… I think they’re merely filler… But, gosh, I *wish* I could get people like that to play these roles!

Despite all this, rest assured that the ARG is still in development. After all, we now have a movie to promote!

Thank you all for your support. Expect bigger and better things from Darklight in the coming year!

David and I could hardly contain our excitement this morning when TheBruce, linked us to this article in The Guardian in which Keith Stuart writes:

But in some ways the really avant-garde work has been going on elsewhere – in the realm of the ARG, or alternative reality game*. Here, proponents like 42 Entertainment and Darklight Interactive create interactive experiences by placing information around the internet, on faked websites, forums and Wikipedia entries, encouraging players to work together to decipher the clues.

Maybe it is partially all the coffee I just consumed, but my heart is racing!  Our relatively small company has just been recognized on the international scene.  And in the same breath as one of the largest companies in the ARG industry.  We are extremely proud and frankly more than a bit surprised.

In the meantime, despite unfortunate distractions of our real lives — I continue to battle a chronic illness (which I write about in my other blog Novel Patient) and David has had to find a new job on short notice — we continue to move forward on Rachel’s Walk.  We’ve been working on all aspects of the game, but in particular Owen has been putting in a lot of hard work on writing copy for activities players will be able to do within the Dream Engine.

Much to my CPU’s dismay, I continue to render and render and render some more.  And in honor of occasion, I’d like to leave you with another small taste of what I’ve been working on.  Another “screenshot” from the game if you will.  This is one of my personal favorites, and I hope you enjoy looking at it as much as I enjoyed making it.

Fairy River

When we first began creating the visuals for the world of Rachel’s Walk, we looked to stock photography.  I picked out literally hundreds of images for David to download.  But they all had varying “looks”, and we quickly realized we would have to do something to make them all match if the world was going to have a unified appearance.

Around this time I was starting a new role playing game campaign with some online friends and was looking to make a portrait of my character.  I was looking around for free 3D rendering programs to use for this purpose and stumbled across Daz 3D.  I was so pleased with my render of my character and the power of the program that it occurred to me that we could make the whole world of Rachel’s Walk in this fashion.  Instead of being confined to what I could find on stock photography sites, I could custom render each “scene” to our specifications.

I presented the idea to David and he loved the render of my character and the idea.  But we realized that we would need more than just the free DazStudio software and few free models.  So I made up a proposal of all we would need to complete the game world.  We devised a plan with phases of purchases and a budget.  And then I got to work.

Though the basics of the software were easy to master, some of the more advanced features had a higher learning curve.  Frankly my initial renders didn’t look like much.  But with practice I improved.  As I improved I realized the need for more advanced software to complete the game world.  So we purchased Bryce and most recently Carrara.

The process has been (and continues to be) extremely time consuming and extremely rewarding as I slowly piece the world of Rachel’s Walk together.  And today I am pleased to present you with a sneak peak of 3 “scenes” from the game world in the form of wallpapers for your desktop.  They can be found in various sizes in the new Media section.  I hope you enjoy viewing them as much as I’ve enjoyed making them.