Art exists in three forms: the artist’s view, the audience’s view and the art’s own existence in the world. For artists, one of the hardest feats to accomplish is having people understand what they wanted to convey through the art. In certain cases, the artist may be forced to come right out and explain the intent.
Jeremy Snead is an independent filmmaker whose most recent project is “Video Games: The Movie.” As the title suggests, the documentary explains the history of video games and their progression through the 20th century to now as one of the world’s biggest industries.
Since the film’s release in July, Snead has been busy riding the wave of its popularity and managing his agency, Mediajuice Studios. To enhance his film’s scope, Snead has been giving periodic talks about “Video Games,” further explaining the film’s making.
Snead will be delivering his talk today in the Art and Design Building at 1 p.m. A screening of “Video Games: The Movie” is also scheduled to play at the Digital Media Center tonight at 7 p.m.
The talks contain an element of metacommentary, wherein Snead explains the creation of film about the creation of video games.
“I love talking about my process and how things came to be,” Snead said. “It was such a labor of love and talking to an audience that would have some interest in that.”
The film’s focus on gaming came out of Snead’s interest in filmmaking and the hope that students would follow Mediajuice’s relevance in the gaming industry.
“Specifically, students that are hungry to know more about independent filmmaking and crowdsourcing,” Snead said. “The origin of the film really came out of me being a filmmaker. My agency … produces video game trailers.”
For Snead, the true purpose of making “Video Games” was the impression that gaming’s significance was undercut by the lack of a feature length presentation of its history. Though there are numerous television specials on the subject, Snead continued to find a lack of media covering the industry’s success.
“It was really just making a movie that I wanted to see,” Snead said. “It’s something that I’ve searched for years. It didn’t exist. There really wasn’t anything to put it into one definitive film.”
Entertainment was another objective Snead aimed to achieve. Being a form of art, Snead saw the documentary as a potential source of amusement as well as education.
“My number one goal was just to make a fun movie that people would enjoy watching and second to that … is to be educational and informative on some level,” Snead said.
As he will probably explain in his talk, one of Snead’s favorite parts of making the film was the opportunity to meet Nolan Bushnell, founder of the seminal game company Atari. From the business’s beginnings, Snead was able to expand on its history to the eventual hiring the late technology mogul Steve Jobs.
“He’s [Bushnell] kind of the godfather of video games being a popular commercial product,” Snead said. “I think the number one; most thrilling part of the whole thing is sitting down in a theater and watching it with an audience who had never seen it.”
In the future, Snead has plans to develop a television series, which furthers his exploration of video games. However, due to production restrictions, Snead could give little information on the project. Snead and Mediajuice are also currently working on a similar documentary on toys.
“Not the history, but the culture around collectors and collectibles,” Snead said. “That’s another medium … with nothing that really explores it or exposes the whole world of toys and collectibles, which is really fascinating.”
You can reach Gerald Ducote on Twitter @geraldducote.