I have an idea

[Unknown,Unknown]

i tried to start a new topic, but somehow it didn’t work…

Good Day, Mr. and Mrs. Williams.

I am a young Guy, who lives in Switzerland (thats why my English not very well, sorry!) and makes an apprenticeship as a Multimedia Specialist. I am also doing short films by myself. My last one is just playing at the swiss youth film festival. Maybe i am soon a award-winning film maker ;-). I am very interested in the golden Era of Interactive Movies which was in my eyes from 1995 to 1996. I also adore Sierra On-Line, since my father bought a brand new Multimedia PC with 66 Mhz and 8 MB Ram for his Company (he used to lead an animation studio in Basel). Anyway the Shop, who sell my father the PC gave him also a CD-Rom Game for free. This Game called “Kings Quest VII – The Princeless Bride). That was 1995, when i was 8 years old. I really liked the Game, and in the manual I read about a woman called Roberta Williams. She became one of my Idols, together with John Carpenter, Rand and Robyn Miller (the guys who invented MYST and Riven), George A. Romero and David Lynch. I decided, to become a Computer Game Designer and work for Sierra or to become a Movie Director. Year passes. I grew up and on Christmas (I think i was 13) i became a Sierra Original Collectors Edition of Gabriel Knight The Beast within. I was very impressed about the use of real-life in a game. I read about all the other interactive Movies like Tex Murphy and so on. Then i played Phantasmagoria 1 and i found it quite cool. But i was more interested in the technical side of the game. How many frames per second? Wich cameras? Wich format? Beta SP?
I now combinated my two dreams and decided: I will become a in-house director for interactive movies at Sierra! I will direct all the great scripts from Mrs. Williams, Mrs. Jensen etc. But now, interactive movies are dead. Too expensive. Too much data. Too small CD-Roms. But now, here is an invention on the market, which could probably save the interactive movie: it’s called Digital Versataile Disc (DVD). Wecould make Hi-Res movies, with 30 frames per second and put all this on one DVD! That would be great, wouldn’t it? I saw all the other fan projects in the Internet (Kings Quest IX, Space Quest 7), so i wrote a 10 page long Treatment of (I hope Mrs. Williams will forgive me) Phantasmagoria 3 – Spaceship of Terror. Like the title already says, it is placed in space. In a Pirateship of the future, to be honest. The Crew has just captured a Chinese cargo ship. They stoled everything and brought it on their ship. But what they don’t know, they also brought something else on board… You play the role of the female Captain called Janed Percival (Maybe played by Victoria Morsell? :-)). She’s having nightmares all the time, and since they robbed the cargo ship, she’s hearing strange sounds. And soon, the first man has been brutally murdered and now the Crew and Janet begins to understand: They’re not alone anymore on the Ship. Cool , isn’t it? An Alien like story! Okay, maybe it isn’t… But i think it would be a great sequel! I mean, every horror series ends somewhen up in space 😉 (Leprechaun, Friday the 13th…) I know, i’m quite young, but in our company we also do animation for the internet and commercials and we’re also doing video production and postproduction for such big swiss concerns as Roche, Novartis and Ricola. I always have to write the script, because that’s what i can do best. I would love to send you my concept, but i have to let it translate to English first. Currently i am working on a Phantas 3 Website, which is going online at the 1st January 2003. I think, with the technology that we have today, we could make a great Phantasmagoria 3. Maybe you are interested? It’s okay if not. Maybe it’s impossible to convince Sierra to make another Phantasmagoria although they decided to make another Larry Game. I mean, i’m just a silly Teen who lives in a country no one knows and dreams about making movies! Well, i will be finished with my apprenticeship next year and then i will go to a school called SAE in Zurich, where i will take a course “Digital Film Maker”.

I wish you and your wife only the best for your future and thank you, for telling us such wonderful stories and inspiring me and letting me dream!

Sincerely

your

Joel L. Mayer
uploaded 11/24/2003 2:27:34 PM

[Unknown,Unknown]

(re: I have an idea) Joel:
Good luck to you! I’m jealous .. I wish I was your age and pursuing a film career.
It’s a tough business to break into — but, I think it’s just a matter of being persistent, and shooting short films until something you do gets noticed.
Roberta and I go back and forth everyday on if we’ll do something again or not. My guess is that if you look through this board there will be as many messages where I say we’ll do something again, as there are that we won’t.
For now, we are definitely retired and having fun!
-Ken W

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