Marty Nicholas on His GunForce Inspired Series

PressPlay Cinema continues to find new gems, this time, at a local Michigan filmmaker’s mixer. We met Marty who wants to create a feature film inspired in his favorite video game of all time. In this interview, Marty will share his thought, and goals in depth;

PPC: Gun force gave me the impression to be a classic video game
brought to life, is that so?

Marty: There are many inspirations that GunForce draws upon, but yes. First, GunForce is partly inspired by the 8 and 16 bit home entertainment console era of video gaming from the 1980s and 1990s, as well as arcade games. Specifically, it draws inspiration from the shooter, tactical espionage and role-playing genres. Great examples include light gun arcade games (Operation Wolf, Steel Gunner, Mechanized Attack), stealth games (Metal Gear Solid), and role playing games like Final Fantasy, Borderlands, Mass Effect, Elder Scrolls, Fallout and Assassins Creed. It is from these style of games in particular that the rules of their world come into play, where the characters start at Level 1 and must fight to gain experience and improve their skillsets, as well as the pay and standard of living they receive as new mercenaries fighting to save the world.

Secondly, GunForce also draws upon my favorite film The Last Starfighter, in which a young man struggling to find direction in life is recruited to fight a war in outer space because of his video gaming skills, and films like Rocky where the “underdog loser” is given a chance to discover deep abilities and strengths he never knew he had. My protagonists Kent and Derek are misunderstood, unemployed goofballs who, in spite of their best efforts, were not successful in the military. But they have hidden eccentric talents that otherwise would never have been revealed to others like them except in a fantasy such as GunForce.

Thirdly, GunForce draws inspiration from 80s shows like The A-Team and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. In these kinds of shows, there are a team of four characters who fight evil together, each with their own personalities, abilities, strengths and weaknesses. Other shows have done this, but none of them mix men and women characters like GunForce does. Even movies like Aliens from 1986 have few women compared to men, but not GunForce. I’m working towards diversifying all the characters who will be appearing in future episodes.

Fourthly, GunForce is inspired by old action movies. The shootouts here are nothing like John Wick, The Expendables or the Bourne movies. They are filmed and edited to look and sound like Westerns from the 1970s/1980s and other cop and military shows and movies from that period. So the action scenes are slower paced with more intensity and practical effects, to the best of my ability.

Finally, GunForce is very much made up of the G.I. Joe cartoon show from 1985-1986, and the comic books. In this, each character has their own unique costume, weapons and abilities, and there is a very silly, innocent “good guys vs. bad guys” theme in the story and dialogue.

PPC: It looks like it will be a fun action/comedy, what was your favorite
part of the making?

M: A fun action/comedy indeed! I’ve been having the time of my life learning more and more about Davinci Resolve, an editing tool. I absolutely love editing shots together, sound effects and music. Working to enhance audio and video is also lots of fun. It’s extremely

time consuming, painstaking and often repetitive, mentally draining work, but I love it. It’s my happy zone 🙂
I also love continuing to work with my camera and improve my technical skills and shot compositions. It’s something I wish very much I had more of a chance to do.
However, what I loved most of all about making GunForce is meeting a truly awesome cast and crew, making new friendships and expressing myself to all of them and sharing a very deep dream and fantasy in such a way that I’ve never been able to do my entire life with anybody. The road to getting these films made has been extremely long and difficult, and I’m eventually going to be putting the themes of my life struggles into this.

PPC: If the characters die in the game, do they die in real life, How does that
work? Their organs just stop working, or do they enter a state of
shock due to being killed in the game, that ultimately causes a heart
stroke? How do they die?

M: Coming up with the whole concept of this alternate world our heroes travel into has been a very tough, daunting challenge dating all the way back to 2014. I’ve been writing and re-writing countless short stories, scripts and remaking of short films to flesh out the whole exposition of GunForce and the “rules” of the world they live in. I’m finally teaming up with a pro screenwriter to help me figure it out, and making it up as I go.

Basically, this is how I envision GunForce: the characters are in another parallel dimension to Earth. But they really are there. It’s not like The Matrix or Ready Player One where they’re strapped into a chair, a haptic suit or helmet, or virtual reality. It’s a completely physical reality just like ours with all the laws of science and math. With one little exception.

In many old shooter video games, when the character is shot, he or she loses health or hit points. But there is no blood or damage done to the body internally. It’s much more simple: give that game character health and/or power up kits. That’s what I’m trying to do here. I know this will be pretty implausible to many people, and I will probably face criticism for it. I’ve been told before that I should make the characters into pure video game graphics, and that GunForce should only ever be a cartoon or a comic book. But this is alright. It’s all part of the challenge of filmmaking, and I love taking it on!

I suppose maybe I’m trying to have my cake and eat it, because I want this to be a live action, old fashioned cartoony series combining all this stuff! Hahaha. But the fact is that I don’t want to spend time or money on blood packets, nor do I want to turn someone getting shot into a segment from Saving Private Ryan or any serious war film.

PPC: Is the film a fight to complete levels in order to get out of the game?

M: I’m not planning for GunForce to be like an 8 stage Super Mario Brothers video game; rather, it’s going to be much more akin to the GI Joe cartoon series with an ongoing struggle against an evil army. Of course, there will be more to the plot than this, and character development and relationships. The whole leveling up and character class concepts are pretty much only what is borrowed from video games at this point, but it’s still significant. Like I said, GunForce is made up of soooo many different things. But it has to be extremely eccentric and target niche. I don’t want to do the whole “Zombie Horror Apocalypse” thing that sells so well today just to try and make money and get fame. We live in an age of cinema where SO many ideas have been used up. But I am absolutely loving the journey of pushing this idea of mine farther and farther, and I believe very strongly in its potential for eventual success.

PPC: What you got going on next after the completion and premiere of
this film?

M: I have many ambitious goals. For starters, I’m going to start filming episode 2 on July 10. I will personally fund as many more episodes as my budget will allow to effectively carry the story. GunForce is a proof of concept, and not yet marketable. It will eventually need more and more proven talent to make it grow, but first I feel like I need more of a rock solid foundation. Once I get enough actors/characters, filming locations and costumes, I can do things like show off concept art, make a poster, a better story synopsis, etc. to prove that GunForce is worth funding. I’ve already started writing a Kickstarter Campaign, and am learning of more and more funding sites that are even better, with a higher success rate.
I want to put these movies into film festivals and get them on independent streaming channels. Once I finally get the visual effects work done for me, I’m going to try to get them onto Amazon Prime and Tubi. I’m very happy to have met you, with PressPlay Cinema, you’re definitely a part of my awesome journey now! If GunForce is successful some day I have several other movie projects I want to produce.

One last thing I want to mention about GunForce is that I want to eventually put in themes of Mental health, disabilities, veterans issues and themes of inability to fit into the system. I know, this is all pretty wild considering the trajectory I’m on with this now. I don’t know if it will work with GunForce, but eventually I definitely want to get these important issues put into some project. At the very least, I know I’m off to a good start combining modern sensibilities like gender and racial equality with old fashioned values. Movies today, especially action films tend to be very violent and angry, and it reflects many contemporary problems with the world. GunForce is a throwback to a happier, simpler and more innocent time. I really think the world needs it.

I’ll end by saying that my most important and realistic goal for making these movies is to network with people, sell myself, and gain marketable job skills. GunForce is essentially my supreme life resume. I’ve been working hard for many years to reinvent myself. I truly hope this can get me at the very least some part time, occasional paying gigs using my camera and editing videos.

https://youtu.be/YHVo___J-Qg