An Interview with Nick Murphy, Video Game Trailer Director Extraordinaire

You may not know the name Nick Murphy but if you are an avid reader of the site or just into video games in general you are more than aware of his handiwork. Nick won a Geek Award last year for his trailers for Zelda (1987) and Indie God of War, and he has now tackled the game that seems to come on every electronic device from Nooks to microwave ovens these days… Angry Birds.

I spoke with him about directing his newest trailer and what goes into creating these little viral masterpieces. You can check out his newest parody at the end of the interview.

So how did you get started doing these game parodies?

I got hired working for the company Gamervision, they were setup already and they were like a video game news site and they had some web video content. They had this idea of combining Mario Brothers, but as Inglourious Basterds since the film was to come out.

So a friend of mine worked there and was like, I know my friend is a filmmaker lets bring him on. So they brought me in and I did it and it got like 300,000 or 400,000 views so it got passed all over the place and went pretty viral.

So right after that, they paid me for my time working on that, and they were like we want to hire you full time. So we kept making shorts.

It started there and we tried to keep that momentum going. It was a lot of fun.  I love it but it is such a niche thing. I am always trying to find that guy that loves video games, but loves movies the way I do too.

What do you think goes into a good video game mash-up trailer?

It’s hard because someone else did an Angry Birds thing and it has like 11 million views. But they did it in a way where it is super over the top. It’s like Michael Bay doing it. There was this government program that manufacture these birds to fight these pigs, who are the enemy.

For us that was an easy joke. We wanted to challenge ourselves and try and incorporated it into the real world. They came out with this Mortal Kombat realistic, gritty web series, so we thought if they can come out with something like that we can make Angry Birds gritty and visceral I guess. That is what I wanted, could this be a real thing?

So how did you come up with the concept for the ANGRY BIRDS video?

We usually take a while to come up with these. Angry Birds is everywhere so we wanted to try and make it so its not cutesy or dumb or over the top. What would be a really weird way to do it?

So we started brainstorming about birds, and what if they were girls? I thought it would be British since it is a bird thing and it would have to be directed by Guy Ritchie. It just started like that.

Then we just tried to work in the little things like the eggs and the pigs.

What was the biggest challenge of putting the video together?

It would have to be the scheduling, all the girls and getting the pigs together and all the locations.  We had those fake guns so I didn’t want to be outside with them, you don’t want to do that especially in a post 9/11 world.

So we rented a hotel room to shoot some stuff in there and then we just winged the rest.  That was the hardest part, getting everybody together and doing it so no one gets arrested or shot which is the biggest thing.

What was the budget for the trailer?

Like $200 maybe.

Someone had a brief case and we paid $70 to rent the hotel room.  It was a lot of my friend has this, these girls have these clothes, so we had to buy some pig masks and a Styrofoam egg.  Every one in it was a friend of mine, so we were like lets do this thing and I will buy you all dinner afterwards.

That is where our $200 budget went to a hotel room, food and pig masks.

How long was the shoot?

It was three or four days shooting but they weren’t full days.

But it took 2 or 3 months of post because I got bogged down with other stuff, the production part went really quick because of how it just came together. When I saw a commercial for Google Chrome with Angry Birds I realized I had to get this thing finished, because once something like this makes it on television everyone knows about it and it had to get finished now.

Any intention of doing anything longer like a web-series or something feature length?

I worked on a feature; it was like 45 minutes and there was so much invested in it. It didn’t turn out the way I wanted and I just got really frustrated with it. It seems like the short form just speaks to me a little better I think.

I really don’t want to work a year on something and have a diminished return. If I am going to put a year into something I want the world into it. If I put these little chunks of time into these little things I feel like for what we put in what we get out if far greater.

I do a web-series too where we review video games, so we have that part and we have this other part where we do these goofy videos. But I would like to get back into making a film that is my 2012 resolution, to make a short that isn’t based off anything and an original concept.

So have you beat Angry Birds? And if so with how many stars?

When it first came out I beat it, but now they have released all these things and stuff. I played it and enjoyed it, it’s a great time killer. It’s a perfect game. Its simple and complex at the same time.

But I really cant look at it the same, I really wish it was more like our movie.

So what’s next?

I want to do that film. I definitely have some ideas. We will still do the shorts and stuff, but I really want to focus on the film this year. I would really want to do the Philly Film Festival.

We still do that web-series and that is taking off, hoping to get a Geekadelphia award next year.