IDEA is a twice-awarded game that explores the boundaries between filmmaking and video games. Based on an awarded short film by Olli Huttunen, it challenges players to take an idea as far as possible while travelling through beautiful landscapes mixing the human and the wild. Both the pictures seen in the film and the game were recorded by Olli himself, who has shared more insights about the filming process and how the world of IDEA was created.
"Aerial photography is fascinating — with a drone, you can get to angles that we don't often see. I find the direct top to down angle interesting, and here it is a central part of the whole story and the game. All the aerial footage was shot with popular DJI drones. I mostly used a small Mavic Air and few shots were filmed with Mavic pro. Both Drones are cable to record 4K video", Olli explains.
Another noteworthy feature is that landscapes keep changing as the lightbulb moves on towards a goal, using the seasons as markers of creative progress. Huttunen's photographs show the evolution of the landscape between early spring, where streets are still covered in snow, and early summer, when everything gets covered by green. However, Olli confesses it was very difficult to carry out since spring “was quite late that year and the change of season took longer than expected”.
The key to making IDEA work, both as a short film and as a video game, was "finding good streets and intersections", Huttunen acknowledges. He mainly flew his drone in public or remote areas that don’t require special permits. Then, the filmmaker looked for suitable shooting heights and found three different distances ideal for his project: “In some landscapes, I had to watch out for trees, but for the most part I flew over open places where it was easy to observe the views below".
After wrapping up the short film, Huttunen and The Longest Road Games team shot new footage for the game — now facing the problem of bad weather: "I planned and researched on the map where interesting streets and areas could be found near the place where I live. Unfortunately, there was a long period of rain here and I didn't get to shoot as much as I would have liked.”
The filming plans got postponed until next year but fortunately, we could use some old pictures in Olli Huttunen’s collection that also fit the game very well. We feel very glad to have been able to work with such a talented professional!