Check the credits, that was my mom 😆

untrue (See: Portal 1)

@@EisenFeuer maybe Portal 1 has some incongruences due to being the first game (happens a lot with first games, like Kingdom Hearts), but Portal 2 explains it quite well and plays with it during the whole game. Also, on Portal 1 you can only place portals on white surfaces, so you can think that they used the white gel for those walls, ceilings and floors

@@DaniKH1 The Portal-able surfaces between Test Chamber 19 and the boss battle with GLaDOS in Portal 1 are office spaces with painted drywall and dirty concrete. It’s fine if Valve wanted to retcon the canon and make it moon-dust only from Portal 2 onward, but this film was written and shot before Portal 2’s release.

1500 a day, up to 20% are returning viewers

Хей! Не только ты ,опоздал с временем...

No, *YOU'RE* breathtaking!

My knee-jerk pithy reply aside, your excellent comment deserves some attention. Let's make this thread an AMA, you and me and whoever wants to chime in. While I wait for questions, here's some fun stuff: The idea that this film started with was literally the gimmick of using VFX to make portals real in real life. Motion tracking and camera solving for FVX using footage was just becoming a thing for the semi-normal person with apps like Boujou, and my co-director Jesse pitched the idea as a gimmick video like Corridor's "Portal Trick Shots" video. Now it's said that a film is told three times, once in the script, once in production, and one last time in the edit bay. Knowing a whole lot more about Valve's universe, I wrote the script and made it about Chell, but kept a lot of VFX gimmicks. Resource limitations however, told the story in production. We lost access to the empty house we were going to film in literally a week before the actress flew out. We scrambled and found an empty apartment that wasn't yet listed through some friends (high praise in the credits). This of course changed the scope of the shoot, you should have seen our filming equipment was shoved off behind the camera and every shot required us to move basically everything from room to room, and that's with one of the two bedrooms filled to the gills with equipment. The portal gun prop of mine breaking is an epic unto itself, but that that space constraint alone turned into a time constraint, and we had to pare away at our shot list in order to get some semblance of a cohesive story before our actress had to fly out after just two days of shooting (next to half of our film's budget was flying her out, lol). One scene was literally where she was supposed to be on a back deck looking at the full moon and casually shoots at it, causing the portal open on the wall to switch to space. Yes, this was written before Portal 2's launch and any knowledge whatsoever about Aperture using moon dust, and of course Portal 2's moonshot ending. This was out for many reasons, but we obviously weren't going to fire up leaf blowers and stuff at 3AM in an apartment complex. (knocking over pots and pans already disturbed enough). The only other scene I remember being cut because it would have fit and I regret it, was Chell rifling though the abandoned closet and having a quick montage of trying different clothes on (using the portals as a 'mirror'), leaning into her humanity as the rest of the film did. As you can see, pretty much only 2 ambitious VFX shots made the cut, and the camera wasn't even moving for either of them. (only the graffiti and the security cam had moving cameras, and those were simple technically) Others went on to make more ambitious "Portals in real life" VFX, but I gladly hand over that trophy considering what Outside Aperture ultimately became. Rather than epic it was intimate, the juxtaposition of Chell, used to flying though vast testing complexes with constant attention, now in a claustrophobic setting, her only observer being herself. In writing this I have a little more understanding behind the many comments that have been posted over time saying the film made them cry, especially that poem I wrote: "I got to have some cake today, the cube is watching me, I hope it's proud to see me now, outside, alone, but FREE!". A mix of sadness for her sorry state, living off canned food in dystopia, having been plucked from life at a young age for testing, but happiness that her robot prison warden's words were finally leaving her head. A little gem of a film, and I can hardly take credit for it considering how much it was a product of the circumstances that humbled it into its final cut.

HOLY CRAP. This is wonderful. I have so much to say. 1) "Now it's said that a film is told three times, once in the script, once in production, and one last time in the edit bay." While I haven't really picked up a camera since high school, I'm still a filmmaker at heart, always leaning over and whispering to whoever's watching something with me: "Look at that shot!" "Ooh, that was edited really nicely." "Mm...that was good. Did you see HOW they did that?" I can't believe I've never heard that before but when I read that just now, it was almost like ENLIGHTENMENT, it made so much sense. Flip... now I wanna make a movie again. :D 2) Do you have any pictures of what the empty house's interior WOULD have been? I'm terribly curious to see what sort of shots you were planning. Maybe a Zillow link or some pics on Imgur or something! 3) You were planning on a casual portal to the moon?? That's beautiful! You mentioned leafblowers... was the plan to have her open the portal, start to get sucked towards it, realize her mistake, and quickly open it elsewhere in panic? 4) This actress... how'd you find her? Friend of yours? I mean, she's a dead-ringer for LOOKING like Chell, so well done on that front. 5) “This has been a production by an unincorporated group of assorted people with no money and lots of passion.” I simply marvel at the passion needed for a personal project like this to budget FLYING OUT AN ACTRESS. Such props, Eisen. I give you such props. What WAS the ending budget for the whole thing when all was said and done? And since time is money, how many hours do you suppose you ultimately sunk into this film, personally? 6) Dress up with Chell! Using portals as a mirror! That is an ADORABLE idea. 😊What sort outfits would she have tried on? 7) “TWO cakes were eaten in the making of this film. The salt is a lie. BOTH were super tasty :D” First off... this credit here is PERFECTION.👌 Second, I wonder whether I might've purposely used salt so that the cake DID taste bad and Nicole didn't HAVE to act, lol. But I suppose your mom couldn't help herself, eh? 😁 8) 2:28 Ok... what was this? A sitcom with a "pizza enthusiast" and then Jesus shows up. A) Was this filmed in that same empty apartment; B) Was there any plans/story behind this gag or was it simply a quick throwaway joke? 9) 3:25 is so seamless. Making that CGI chair/computer drop so realistically is quite a feat...especially for 12 years ago! You know what they say with SFX: The best compliment is for people NOT to notice...and I didn't notice for 12 years! I thought it was a real chair and TV that you dangled and dropped from the ceiling, and I only noticed because I was pausing to get a timestamp just now! 10) 3:33 I noticed the sharp switch in depth-of-field from Chell to the wall which makes the vanishing *hallucination* even more jarring. Excellently done. *shivers* 11) 5:31 HOW. How did you do this shot? Green screens, camera angles, SFX programs... HOW? Spill the deets. 12) From Chell's wiki page: "Psychological testing showed that Chell scored well in the 99th percentile on the trait of tenacity." We're used to Chell being such a hard-edged steely protagonist that seeing her in such a vulnerable state was... really quite sweet and touching. I think that's why I keep getting drawn back to this film every few years. We don't SEE many heroes in stories or movies showcasing their trauma or vulnerabilities, especially in video games. So this entire film seems like the natural next-step for a character like Chell. There's dozens of little moments in your film where Chell is so... so... HUMAN. As you so eloquently said: "In writing this I have a little more understanding behind the many comments that have been posted over time saying the film made them cry, especially that poem I wrote: 'I got to have some cake today, the cube is watching me, I hope it's proud to see me now, outside, alone, but FREE!'. A mix of sadness for her sorry state, living off canned food in dystopia, having been plucked from life at a young age for testing, but happiness that her robot prison warden's words were finally leaving her head." 13) "Rather than epic it was intimate, the juxtaposition of Chell, used to flying though vast testing complexes with constant attention, now in a claustrophobic setting, her only observer being herself." -- Yes. THIS. This exactly. No real comment here. Sometimes, someone says something SO well, so poetically, so perfectly -- that you just have to say it back to them. 🥲 14) "A little gem of a film, and I can hardly take credit for it considering how much it was a product of the circumstances that humbled it into its final cut." I like watching behind-the-scenes stuff, and over the years, I've noticed a common theme between what so many of those filmmakers say about their stories and it's this: *Isn't it curious how so many stories end up telling THEMSELVES*? Almost like... we, the storytellers, are the ones bringing it into existence, sorta like a mother birthing a child -- and the mother can raise the child and shape it and even direct it (pun fully intended)... but ultimately the child, like so many of our stories, ends up deciding for ITSELF how it turns out in the end. So many stories seem to be the same way. Well... if that's the case, then I am GLAD... GLAD, I say... that "Outside Aperture" ending up the way that it did. Are you content & glad too, or does a small part of you still wish for what it might've been? 15) I'll just say this: we've seen "epic" a million times over... but intimate? That's rare. Precious, special, and rare. ♥ 16) So to you, Eisen, and everyone who worked with you... I say -- ***GOOD JOB***.

@@moogamooga2100 1) highly recommend "how Star Wars was saved in the edit" here on YT, a masterclass (I yanked that quote from them). I'd argue a fourth a story is also written by the material/budget constraints as well, for better or worse, in our case with hindsight I'd argue better... and a fifth: it's written by the times/places/culture its made in. That's why with infinite money/passion, you cannot create another "Star Wars" because you cannot recreate the conditions and the cultural moment of 1977. 2) eh, no memories other than it was a 2-story house and no Zillow link because I don't want to doxx my location, heh. I never even walked inside, its sole value to us was the fact that it wasn't furnished yet and had bare wall like a test chamber. 3) yeah she was going to catch the Portal gun as it started sliding towards the portal, all this was interrupting her hands being busy doing the dishes or something because in Portal 1, portals took some time to travel instead of being instant. 4) known her for a long time, no other details to offer the public 5) $1500-$2000 was the number I calculated at the time, time-wise everything started with the portal gun prop which took at least two school semesters minimum (I passed it off as an 'assignment' in a high-level sculpture class that I took several times in college) 6) I forget what we asked the actress to bring but I think the joke was going to be putting on something you'd wear on a date to appreciate herself in the full length portal 'mirror' and then settle with some frumpy sweats for bed, heh 7) I mean, it was part of the production catering :) 8) A) no B) it was from a series that Jesse was making called "Me and True". 9) mic-drop moment: that wasn't CGI. For the background monitor+beta player+chair we green-screened them falling from my roof and used a slow translation upwards with the camera from behind to get the foreground angle (frames mixed for motion blur). Reality is the best physics simulator :) I have never been a wireframe 3D graphics guy (outside of designing things in CAD) until I started using Blender for a project literally last year. The camera that she hallucinated was made by a friend (credited) and everything else was real world or game assets with a Garry's Mod freecam composited in (sans graffiti, credited). The shadow was jank rotoscoping stuff but passable for such a short event. Also a vocab lesson: SFX is things done on set or in camera (real events on green screen, pyrotechnics, blanks, bloody bullet impacts, wires, forced perspective). VFX is what happens after production (the compositing, CGI, coloring, retiming, other filters and effects). A subset of SFX is practical effects where no post work is needed kind of like a magic show, moving things with fishing line etc. 11) I didn't even have to look it up because that timecode is cited so often haha, the original plan was to have two cameras 90° to each other filming on greenscreen and the other two less obvious images we'd sync. I forget why the two-camera option died but we ended up syncing her actions to some on-set techno beat music and took several takes of her trying to do the same action at different angles (rotating her, not the cameras) there were some discrepancies in timing that we (barely) cleaned up with optical flow retiming. 14) The only thing I wish we could have done is fit a shot where the shakey-camera follows her through the portal. Films that came later scooped us on that, as all of our stuff was fixed camera. I had done so much testing to be able to motion-track/camera solve those elements, which was tech that was juuuust entering the hands of small-timers like me. Not sad at all that the moon shot got axed, considering that ended up in Portal 2 and people would have thought we stole the idea from P2 when we had wrapped filming in March before P2 ever came out. The dressing up scene would have messed with the perfect pacing at the end where we see the broken clock go dark and it all gets a bow tied neatly at the end, but maybe that's the film score dictating that pacing. Mostly I wish I had had a better "what's next?" plan. I ended up going to Hollywood to a Machinima party and rubbed shoulders with the Corridor Digital guys and others (a fun part 1 part 2 story) but I didn't seize the momentum beyond making sure that launch had some links on the big gamer sites at the time. KZbin monetization was still in its very infancy and mostly a way to make small fortunes smaller. Ultimately glad I didn't do anything Hollywood-specific though, that place is cursed in at least seven dimensions. One of my top 5 best decisions. Thank you for coming to my TED Talk

mekkin me feel old

@@EisenFeuer What are you doing now bro? Are you still doing this?

@@lplays6507 Still making fan films about 16 year old video games? nope

@@EisenFeuer still making films?

@@lplays6507 yes, though more documentary and educational stuff than narrative like this. I’m super generalist so it’s been more writing, editing and animation work and such than stuff behind a camera.

I was on the phone with Nicole when you wrote this; I passed this along and she was grateful!

p1.portal2sounds.com/159

right!? idk why but it's been ingrained in my memory for no reason ever since I saw it back then

The feels man.

That’s a game mechanic that was introduced in Portal 2, this was filmed before that when all you needed was a large enough flat surface.

@@EisenFeuer O h