| Infinite Lives: The Road to E3 | |
|---|---|
Promotional poster |
|
| Directed by | N Pfeifer |
| Produced by |
|
| Starring |
|
| Music by | Jon Carter with additional music by the Newgrounds Audio Portal |
| Editing by | N Pfeifer |
| Studio | Terran |
| Release date(s) | June 21, 2010 |
| Running time | 93 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $3,000 |
Infinite Lives: The Road to E3, or simply Infinite Lives, is a 2010 independent documentary film that follows four filmmakers from the American midwest in their 2300-mile, week-long road trip to the Electronic Entertainment Expo. Founded in 1995, E3 has been the premier venue for all of the gaming industry’s largest announcements and previews.
Three years in the making, Infinite Lives documents a brief history of the expo as well as the planning and execution of the quartet's cross-country road trip to E3 2009.
Contents |
Production on the documentary began in late 2005. Creator N Pfeifer, who had attended the expo in 2004 and 2005 with fellow cast member Cody Meyer, wanted to film a documentary of the show from the perspective of non-media outsiders, rather than the typical mass media outlook that outlets such as IGN, G4, and Gamespot had provided. The film was originally entitled E3: From The Outside-In, a play on words to describe the inverted perspective. Inspired by other independent documentaries, Pfeifer and his associates set out in early 2006 to raise funds for the film in exchange for film credits.[1][2] The fundraiser fell through however, and production halted. Coincidentally, it was that same year that the Entertainment Software Association announced that they would transition the E3 Expo to the E3 Media and Business Summit, a much smaller version of the pandemonious show of the previous decade, instead focusing on small meetings in an invitation-only setting with roughly 4,000 attendees.
In 2008, it was announced that E3 2009 would return to a much larger size (~45,000 attendees) at the Los Angeles Convention Center after publishers complained that the smaller show failed to attract significant media coverage. In the interim period, Pfeifer and his castmates produced various video game-related short films.[3][4] With that, N Pfeifer and his producer Kelly Karnetsky set out with a small budget of roughly $3,000, mostly on credit, to document the return of the E3 phenomena. The film was shot on roughly half a dozen handheld high definition digital camcorders in Los Angeles, California before 8 hours of interview footage with the four primary cast members was shot in Colorado Springs, Colorado.