America, I get it. You’re hard up for heroes in an election year when your choices are The Nineties: Part 2 and a racist pomegranate. But seriously, these clowns on an oil rig ain’t it.
Portal is a fantastic series of games, and it’s built up such an interesting world that several fan films have sprung up to expand upon its themes of imprisonment, quantum physics and puzzle solving.
Dan Trachtenberg of Totally Rad Show fame has upped the bar with his Portal fan film, entitled “The Escape,” which you can see below:
Others have also put together Portal fan films. My favorite is this one, which eschews action for something a little more moody and introspective:
I’m sure there are more fine fan films out there, but these, in my opinion, are the true standouts.
Jim Munroe is the multimedia genius behind No Media Kings, which started as a way for him to self-publish his work but has since morphed into a DIY mini-empire featuring comics, games, film and books.
A few years ago he and several collaborators made “Infest Wisely“, a lo-fi sci-fi film that they broke into chapters and filmed separately with a overarching story written by Munroe. You could watch it online in segments or as a feature.
Jump to several years later and Munroe and friends have created
“Ghosts with Shit Jobs,” a near-future extrapolation of what happens when North America goes bankrupt and China outsources all the jobs they don’t want to us. It’s being done with the same low-fi ethos as Infest Wisely but with better equipment and a little more money ($4,000 this time as opposed to the $700 they spent on the previous film.)
I’m looking forward to seeing what Munroe hss in store with this latest film…it looks like they’ve upped their game visually while hewing to the same approach of ideas over pointless spectacle. Keep watching here and nomediakings.org for further news on the film.