Exploring Other Places with Andy Kelly

Exploring Other Places with Andy Kelly

 

This summer the NVM is whisking families around the world exploring new places, real and imagined, through videogames. As part of our new Fast Travel exhibition we are proud to be able to include curated excerpts from Andy Kelly’s Other Places, a series of short films celebrating the artistry of videogame worlds and environments.

Through Andy’s stunning work we’re able to showcase aspects of games like Grand Theft Auto, Red Dead Redemption and Assassin’s Creed for the first time at the NVM. Our curator, Emily Theodore Marlow, had the chance to chat with Andy about Other Places, its origins and how it was brought to life.

ETM: Could you introduce yourself to our readers who may be unfamiliar with your work?

Andy Kelly: I’ve worked around video games for my entire adult life. My first gig was in 2004, writing for a PlayStation 2 magazine called PSM2. Over the next 18 years I wrote and produced video for PC Gamer, Edge, Vice, The Guardian, Official PlayStation Magazine, Official Xbox Magazine, GamesMaster, GamesTM, and many, many more.

It was only recently, in December 2022, that I finally left games journalism to go work for indie publisher Devolver Digital. Other Places is just something I do for fun on the side. However, the videos have ended up in some interesting places, including a number of film, photography, and digital art festivals around the world—and now, best of all, the National Videogame Museum!

ETM: Other Places does a great job of exploring gigantic digital worlds in a way players won’t have seen before. Could you talk a little about your process and how you go about making a video?

AK: It’s different for every video, but the first objective is always getting control of the camera. Every shot in Other Places is staged by me, not something the game’s developer has set up. The idea is to show these worlds from a perspective you’d never normally see them from. Sometimes, very rarely, the game will have a built-in free camera. That makes life a lot easier. But most of the time I have to use hacks, mods, console commands, and other techniques to get free reign over the camera. Then it’s just a case of taking hours of raw footage, selecting maybe 10% of it, and cutting it to music.

ETM: Who would you consider the biggest influences on the project (games, films, directors, photographers, artists, developers?) What motivated you to start making the series?

AK: Other Places started life as a website showcasing some of my virtual photography. But then I thought: what if these images moved? I’ve always played games primarily to spend time in, and immerse myself in, other worlds. This felt like a cool extension of that. I also love movies, and the influence of my favourite directors is all over the series. The stark landscape shots and deliberately slow pace of the Red Dead Redemption 2 video is pure Coen Brothers and Paul Thomas Anderson. I made an Elite Dangerous video that is really just a thinly-veiled pastiche of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. A lot of the shots in my Life is Strange video are, like the game itself, influenced by the films of David Lynch.

ETM: Are there any games that proved particularly difficult to capture? Did you have any you had to give up on?

AK: One of my favourite video game worlds is Dunwall from Arkane’s assassination sandbox Dishonored. But I was having a hard time hacking a free camera into it. However, determined to make it the focus of an episode of Other Places, I cobbled together a somewhat clumsy solution. Tweaking the game’s data files, I reduced the in-world gravity massively. Then I used a tool to hide the user interface, and voila! I could make lead character Corvo leap high into the air and float back slowly to the ground, simulating a camera. Watching the video, you’d never know. I was beaten by another game, though. Rockstar’s post-war detective story L.A. Noire, another game world I love, resisted all attempts to control the camera. I might have another go, because I love spending time in its depiction of ’40s Los Angeles.

ETM: Have you made any interesting discoveries whilst exploring a game for a video?

AK: The most eye-opening thing about making this series, and breaking out of the game world with camera hacks, is realising just how much of game development is smoke and mirrors. I always love seeing a stunning, scenic vista from afar and thinking, wow, that looks incredible. Then I fly over with the camera, in a way the developers never intended, and see that the buildings are all tiny low-poly blocks with blurry textures, and the sky is really just a flat texture wrapped around a cylinder. This isn’t a slight on the artists, because normal players will never see this stuff. It’s just interesting, as someone fascinated by how these worlds are built, to see the tricks developers pull behind the scenes.

ETM: Other Places often takes otherwise violent, action-packed games and translates them into quite contemplative, atmospheric videos. Was it always your intention to explore this kind of duality in the series?

AK: This was always my goal: To showcase video game worlds without objectives, characters, missions, enemies, UI elements, or other distractions. To celebrate the artistry of these settings without anything getting in the way. I love how even the most chaotic, action-heavy war game can become peaceful when you strip away the gameplay and focus purely on its environment design. Other Places was also intended to be a contrast to the majority of video-based games coverage. A lot of them can be loud, brash, and in your face. I wanted to make something quieter and more meditative. A little oasis of calm on YouTube. People have told me they use Other Places to help them sleep, and I love that.

ETM: Other Places has been used before as evidence towards the argument that ‘games are art’. How do you feel about this argument in 2023, do you think gaming is past it?

AK: I’ve never been a fan of video games being held up to other mediums in an attempt to somehow legitimise them, but I’ve always considered them to be art. That said, I don’t think it’s a debate worth having in this day and age. I mean, look at them. Of course they’re art! I’m proud to have helped the cause in some small way, though. Other Places has been screened in a bunch of galleries, including the Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona. Which I’m told is considered quite prestigious in the art world! If something has been in a gallery, it’s officially art. Boom. Case closed.