Making Live TV for Not For Broadcast

Not for broadcasts is an FMV game about creating a TV show. As the National Nightly News airs live on screen, you make the edits, censor the swear words (and later politically controversial phrases, if you like) and even choose what plays during the commercial breaks.

As tensions rise, a burgeoning resistance movement demands that you broadcast your anti-government propaganda in lieu of the regularly scheduled news, in a move to dramatically change the message being broadcast to crowds of adoring viewers.

The feeling of making a TV show, being in control of what the audience at home sees and influencing the stories of the characters and the world was the experience we want for you, our player.

In a world dominated by the consumption of visual media, it’s time to take a closer look at the power they hold over us. And what better way to up the ante and give you a keen sense of urgency and power than doing it all live? After all, the news is reported as it happens. There’s no such thing as a real-life pause, rewinding an interview to ask another question, much less avoiding the commercial barrage. That experience, the stress, the fun, and the creativity of making spontaneous choices to tell your story, to see the narrative evolve from the consequences of those choices; that’s the fun part Not for broadcasts.

This, of course, posed a completely different problem.

Our biggest challenge was shooting footage as single, continuous takes. Creating that “live TV feeling” meant no cuts were made… Right: no cuts. You are the editor here, not us. So while a film consists only of the best shots, excised from all the day’s footage, we don’t have that luxury. We had to get every scene done in one go – some of them took almost 20 minutes!

Our incredibly talented performers had to learn relatively lengthy scripts and perform them in one take without a single mistake in front of moving cameras whose operators had to deal with their own world of complications. We were fortunate that most of our scenes were shot in ten takes or less, but it wasn’t uncommon for a longer or more complicated scene to go into the teens.

We pulled it off with a strong combination of planning, exceptional cast and crew, and a very conscious decision: we made the shoot feel more like a theatrical show than a movie set. We rehearsed an ensemble of actors who were ready to roll with the punches of a live performance and respond accordingly until we had a scene that worked.

That meant an enormous high pressure for everyone. Fluff up your line in minute 12? Dropping your camera out of focus? We’re all going back to the top. Although the upside is if you nail that one take, you’re done and ready to go to the pub.

This format, too, had further folds in the form of long, complex tracks for our friends, who adopted the Russian and Chinese dubbing Not for broadcasts, but if you’ve heard our fully produced rap single “Paint It Red” in Russian, you’ll agree that the time and money were well spent. As it turns out, it ended up resulting in a record-breaking amount of footage in our game at over a whopping 41 hours.

So next time you play Not for broadcasts, and you come to a sequence that is over 15 minutes long, take a moment to reflect on the actors, crew, dubbing teams and staff at NotGames who brought this piece of flawless one-take action from the script have taken over to the set game. Definitely will when we plan next time!