Lost Illusion

I live in a city that has been used as a filming location once or twice.  You would think the most unusual part of this would be the fact part of the city gets closed off for filming or the pandemonium that ensues whenever it's someone famous that is shooting, but neither of these are for me.  Instead however, the most unusual part of living somewhere that is used like this is when you watch the series or the movie or whatever it was, whether you are expecting it or not, when the scenes pop up that were filmed here you recognise the setting.  This still happens even when special effects make changes that add or remove things from the environment.  The recognition comes from the fact you've seen that place a thousand times before.

Being able to switch off and get lost in the story being told on screen is something that I can find difficult at the best of times, but seeing things in this light makes that reluctance to accept what you see even stronger.  Time was, special effects were limited.  What you saw was pretty much what was there when it was filmed.  Computer aided special effects took decades to advance to the level they now have.  Whilst I like the realism created by using real environments, I think I prefer to watch shows and movies that use computer generated imagery to the extent that they create a setting that doesn't actually exist.

There is an appeal in taking tours and venturing to spots that were used in the things we loved, but I feel that only really serves a purpose when the story that was told was set in our time.  In other words when it is believable that the real place on screen is where things happened.  For example there is a tour of Paris that follows the story from The Da Vinci Code and shows you the locations that appeared in the novel and were used for filming the movie.  This I like, because the plot of the book and the movie is done in a modern setting, there is no illusion being broken by seeing that setting the way it is today.  The loss of immersion comes when the plot plays out in different time frames, set decades or centuries ago, or when they are set in worlds that are very different to our own.  In those situations when you see the location as it really is, and see through the effects on screen when you watch it, the illusion is destroyed.  Like watching a magic show when you know how the trick is performed, you see every detail that normally the sleight of hand or sleight of body would mask.

This general concept I like to refer to as an unintentional fourth wall break.  Traditionally the concept of breaking the fourth wall is to let the viewer in on the illusion and let them be party to the fact that what they see is not real.  In these situations however this is not intentional, you could say it is like seeing the wires that hold up the performer on stage and knowing they're not actually flying.

Fourth wall breaks have been something that both fascinates and dismays me.  Not just for the examples I have given above but because in my life I have made choices based on what I see on the stage and then been disappointed when I got to see behind the stage.  The best example of this I can give is my choice of degree.  I chose Computer Science as my major and Games Technology as my minor.  I did this following the advice that if you take something you love and turn it into your career you will love your career - for anyone reading this who contemplates this, please, I beseech you don't do it.  The reality is if you take something you love and try and turn it into your career you'll turn it into something you hate.  It's incredibly rare to actually like your job, most people hate theirs, and this isn't me being pessimistic, in the thirty years that I have been alive I have never met anyone who genuinely loves their job and wouldn't give it up if they had no need to work.

When I studied something I loved, based on what you could see on the stage, the revelation of how everything worked in practice destroyed the illusion and took something that was fun, and exciting, and turned it into something monotonous and boring - where here too for the longest time I could not play games and see the game itself for what it wanted to be, instead seeing the components and the structure and how everything worked.  It took me years until the industry had advanced enough without me being part of it before I could play games again because I no longer knew how things were done.  Even today whilst many games fit that new definition, there are many more that remain within my remit, my education, and my technical ability to the point where I get little enjoyment out of them.

Sometimes it's better to see the stage and enjoy the show, than to see the broken down crumbling wall behind it and the reality of what is happening.