Unstoppable Analysis

What genre would you choose for the game?
If I was to create a game based on the movie “Unstoppable” it would be an ‘Endless Runner’ type-game in which the player needs to move trains onto other tracks before the fast and unstoppable train hits them. The inspiration comes from the mobile game "2 Cars" in which the player needs to move two cars at one whilst hitting circles and avoiding squares. The game tests your coordination and reaction time. In my game, the longer you survive the faster the train gets and your reactions need to be. I feel a train that can’t stop and will travel forever fits the Endless Runner genre well. This genre also allows for high replay-ability where the player can upgrade and buy skills such as slowdowns and reduced amount of cars which can be used when collected to help you survive longer, and get a better score.

Is the movie based on anything?

The movie Unstoppable isn't based on a book but it is inspired from the CSX 8888 incident in which an unmanned runaway train containing hazardous chemicals traveled across Ohio at 82km/h.

Who are the main characters?

The main characters in the movie are veteran railroad engineer Frank Barnes (played by Denzel Washington) and young train conductor Will Colson (played by Chris Pine) who are the people who coupled onto the trains’ last car in the final attempt to stop it.

Who are the side characters?

The majority of people in the movie are side characters such as:

• Connie Hooper, the train yardmaster who helps Frank and Will throughout the incident
• Ned Oldham, the railroad lead welder
• Dewey, the hostler who accidentally starts the disaster
• Oscar Galvin, the vice-president of AWVR train operations
• Scott Werner, the FRA inspector who helps Frank, Will, and Connie
• Bunny, the railroad operations dispatcher
• Gilleece, Dewey's friend who helps him stop the train
• Darcy Colson, the main character Will's estranged wife
• Jesse Colson, the main character Will's brother who helps him with his family situation
• Judd Stewart, the veteran engineer who dies in an attempt to slow the train
• Groundman, the railroad ground specialist
• Maya and Nicole Barnes, the main character Frank's daughters who work at Hooters
• Ryan Scott, the US Marine veteran who attempts to board the train from a helicopter
• Aisha Hinds, the Railroad Safety Campaign Coordinator on a train heading into the runaway.

What are the emotional themes?

The central themes of the movie are family and loss. Family is shown as being very important in that the main characters reflect on them before they go on their life or death train stopping attempt and fight to live so that they can turn their lives around. Loss is shown in the various failed attempts to stop the train. For example, "Judd Stewart" another veteran train engineer, dies in his attempt to stop the train from the front. Frank's also talks about how his wife died of cancer years before. Trust is also a silent theme throughout the movie, regarding Will's family problem. He lost his wife Darcy Colson for not trusting her and later down the line Frank asks him if he trusts him in his decisions for evading the train and in stopping it. It feels as though he trusts Frank in his decision because of his years of experience, but also because the last time he didn't trust someone he lost them. Because of this him and Frank manage to stop the train and become good friends.

What are the characters motivations? 
Frank Barnes as a person is always focused on the job, doing it right and avoiding mistakes and even though his concerns and problems aren't really shown during the film, he does talk about a few main things. One of his problems that we see throughout the movie is that many new young people are taking away jobs like his and he has already been issued an early retirement to make the job available faster. He also has a family problem involving his daughters working at a bar called "Hooters" in order to pay for college, so money is an important role in their life at the point in life the movie's set in, and with Frank about to lose his job, it will become more of a problem. So he continues to work as a train engineer in order to help with their payment.

Will Colson is a young conductor who has just started working and is partnered with Frank Barnes. He too has family problems, but instead with his wife. He saw her texting and asked who it was, she said no one and so he went to her cop friend assuming she was having an affair with him. When he gets there to talk to him he points a gun to his head and told him to stay away. He then gets a restraining order against him that stops him having contact with his wife and child. Because of this he gets a job as a train conductor in a small attempt to make things right. Later on, he chases after the runaway train with Frank and has to complete a dangerous task in order to stop it, which - if completed - could redeem him.

What is the relationship between the two main characters?
At the start of the movie Will and Frank dislike each other. Frank doesn't like Will because he's one of the people taking his and his friends jobs, and Will doesn't like Frank because he's forced to work with an old person and throughout the movie Frank advises him even though he is the boss. When the train is on the tracks and they don't know, the two men talk about their current problems. The main advise comes from Frank who tells Will that he needs to call his estranged wife Darcy and attempt to fix his family problems. When the duo stop the train and save the city they become good friends. This is because the event has forced them to work together in a dangerous task as well as trust each other. When Darcy saw Will fighting for his life between two carriages on television she felt a what it would be like to lose him, so when he lived. She was ready to forgive him and get back together.

What is the plot of the movie?
Hostlers Dewey (Ethan Suplee) and Gilleece (T. J. Miller) are in charge of moving a train from the main line to another. He sets the trains dynamic brakes and jumps off to throw a misaligned rail switch. As he does this the train shifts itself into full power and heads unmanned down the mainline at high-speed. On the other end of the line Frank Barnes (Denzel Washington) a veteran railroad engineer oversees his freshly hired conductor Will Colson (Chris Pine) as they run a train from Pennsylvania. Their job is to pick up twenty cars from a zinc processing facility.

Meanwhile down the track, yardmaster Connie Hooper (Rosario Dawson) orders Dewey and Gilleece to attempt to board the train and stop it, but just as Gilleece tries they hit a railroad signal and fail. When the vice-president Oscar Galvin (Kevin Dunn) hears about the runaway train he asks all railroads to be more secure until a plan is formed. The plot thickens when safety inspector Scott Werner (Kevin Corrigan) alerts them that molten phenol carried on board is highly explosive and will decimate an entire city, or more. When Connie hears this she suggests derailing the train at an upcoming unpopulated farmland so that no one gets hurt. Galvin rejects this idea as he cares more about the cost for his company than he does the lives of innocent people. Instead he decides to let veteran Judd Stewart (David Warshofsky) slow the train down at the front so that U.S. Marine Ryan Scott (Ryan Ahern) can rappel down from a helicopter and take control of the train. The plan goes well until Judd loses control of power and the runaway begins to shove him off the track. These shoves cause Ryan to crash through a carriage window almost killing him and eventually throws Judd from the track which kills him. But the horror doesn't end there, as Connie and the team realise the train is heading to a part of track named "Devil's Curve" at which the train won't be able to slow down and will derail causing a disaster that will decimate the city and more.

Meanwhile on the other end, Frank and Will avoid the train by pulling into a nearby Repair-in-place track. However, due to a mistake Will made earlier with how many carriages he attached, the train smashed through the last carriage. As the train passes, Frank notices that the train has an open knuckle that they could hook up to and stop the train. But Oscar hears this and threatens to fire the men if they try, but they go anyway. Oscar then decides to use a derailer on the train before it reaches Arklow. Frank informs Oscar that the train is too heavy and too fast for the derailer to work but Oscar ignores advice again. Before they attempt to derail the train the police try to hit the fuel shutoff button in between two diesel tanks but fail due to missing and worries over hitting the tanks. They then try the derailer plan and just like Frank said, it failed, so Oscar is left with no choice but to rely on Frank and Will.

Finally Frank and Will catch up to the train for the final stop attempt. The attach themselves to the back and begin slowing it down, but it still travels too fast. Frank, in attempt to slow it down further, jumps from carriage to carriage engaging each manual brakes until he is met with a carriage he can't get past, but luckily the speed is just low enough to make is round the curve. The men then realise that the train is getting dangerously close to the end of the line and will destroy and contaminate the yard at the end if not stopped. Just as it looks like they have no chance, Ned arrives in his truck and pulls up next to the line to take Will from the back to the front and stops the train. Will, Frank and Ned are then celebrated as heroes and the two main characters are reunited with their families.

When is the start, middle and end of the movie?
The start of the movie begins when the main character Will arrives at the train yard for his day on the job looking for Frank. This is where the main characters first meet and the story starts. The middle or plot start begins when a hostler named Dewey is moving the train to a different track. When he does this he sets the dynamic braking and gets off to throw a misaligned rail switch. As he does this the train shifts itself into full power and heads unmanned down the mainline. The end of the movie begins when the train is successfully stopped and the two main characters are taken off the train by safety teams. This is where the plot ends and the cliche "hero gets the girl" part happens.

Unit 73/P1 - Music and Sound

List a range of music/FX sources

You can get music and/or sound effects from stock libraries such as: SoundCloud, Incompetech, SoundBible and FreeSFX. You could hire someone to do it for you like a friend or freelancer, or even create it yourself using programs like Audacity, Adobe Audition or Reaper.

Explain the purpose of game music
The music used in video games can have various effects on the player that invokes emotions. The most common placement in games are during the reveal of new enemies or locations.

In Dark Souls, the mood for the game is dark, lonely and sad. There's no music during exploration and travel, which adds to the empty and lonely feel of the world. During some of the boss fights in the game, fast strings (which are iconic from movies like "Psycho") are played to symbolize horror, terror and fear which are feelings felt at each boss. But for one boss in the game that looks mysterious and sinister, slow strings and whispering is used to match those feelings. When the player is in safe zone, slow strings and harp plucks play to make the player feel more relaxed but there is still hints of sadness which reminds the player of the world around them.

In the games' epilogue, their are two endings; one that plays music and one that doesn't. The one that doesn't, involves you sacrificing yourself to keep whats left of mankind alive but has no music because it's a dull ending that doesn't make you feel good or bad about what you've done, you simply kill yourself. However, the ending that does have music involves you becoming the king in the upcoming world of darkness. When you do this you feel evil, powerful and like you've achieved something, and the brass instruments and choir singing that plays matches that. The music played during the end credits involves calm operatic sounds and a harp. This is played to simply let you think about everything that's happened and makes you think about the empty world you were just apart of as well as what could happen next.

Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance is a single-player story game in which you play as a cyborg that confronts a private military company intent on changing the world for their own gain. The game makes you feel powerful, heroic and awesome. Music is played throughout the games; linear storyline and is heard most during the intense and action-packed boss fights. Towards the end of the talking before most of the boss fights, music starts playing slowly and gets faster and faster as the talking continues until they eventually fight at a high speed tempo. This rise in tempo is used to build tension and the fast music is used to match the fast-paced action in the fights. The songs played for the boss fights also have lyrics relating to the kind of person the enemy is which helps the player to understand what they are 'fighting' for.

In Portal 2, the mood for the game is mysterious and lonely. The robotic/futuristic music in the game is similar to the two games above in terms of techniques used but also has the addition of interactive music and sounds. Throughout the game there are various interactions the player can have that will affect the music playing. For example, when a laser is constantly fired from a mechanism in the wall it plays at a normal volume, but getting closer increases it and moving away decreases it. There are also clever interactions with the sounds played when using things in the game. An example of this is when you use orange gel that makes you run faster. Whilst you are on running on it the music speeds up and when you stop running it slows down. Another use of interactive sound is when jumping on blue gel that helps you to jump higher. The music that plays here is mysterious, futuristic and minimalistic, but colliding with the gel adds another level of sound that completes the music. By running along the orange gel and into the blue gel, you are technically able to create your own music.

What are the legal considerations needed when obtaining or using Music/FX?
If you want to use someone elses music or sounds, then you need to ask permission from the creator and credit them in some way, either with money or by naming them in the game.

If you use sounds or music that are too similar to another or include parts of their sounds/music then you might get in trouble for copyright.

A working contract would be the best way to allow the use of sounds/music. They simply need to sign it and the trade is allowed.