Under The Bloody Moon

• PC game where players use the camera and microphone to embody vampires

• Two week project for the ETC Building Virtual Worlds course

• Team of five students

• Required constraint to use indirect control instead of explicit instructions

• Selected for the 2020 ETC Fall Festival

In order to establish the story and guide the guest into performing completely unintuitive actions, I wrote voice lines for six characters.

I provided voice acting for two of characters (the vampire and the witch) and my four teammates acted as the four victims. Due to the pandemic, each person recorded their own lines on a cell phone in their own living space.

My biggest sound design challenge this round was to write the lines, direct the performers remotely, design a consistent aural landscape for each performance- and most importantly, iterate on each part of this process after playtests revealed that the dialogue could use revision for clarity.

I was also responsible for sourcing and editing sound effects and ambient background noise.

Skills used:

• Creative software: Reaper, Audition, Audacity

• Other software: Perforce, Zoom, Slack, Google Suite

• Other skills: written and verbal communication, script writing, voice acting, voice directing, research

As producer, I organized daily standups, assigned and estimated tasks, and provided a positive environment that enabled the team’s success. Working during October 2020 presented unique production challenges, as our fully remote team spanned time zones from Beijing to Pittsburgh.

Additionally, I organized eleven playtests and personally facilitated eight of them in our two-week design period. I wrote notes and synthesized recommendations from playtesters to present feedback to team members who could not attend.

Lastly, I supported the team in creative areas. I created an interaction map for the world and revised it after every playtest. I documented our project for entry and adjudication into the ETC Fall Festival. And I captured and edited video footage for our trailer.

Skills:

• Software: Google Suite, Premiere, MS Office, Zoom

• Other skills: Project management, documentation, playtesting, presentations, written and verbal communication

With just a webcam, microphone, and a Windows PC, you can attack humans with your fangs, drink blood, and even transform into a bat. Become the vampire in Under the Bloody Moon.

This project was made in two weeks for the Building Virtual Worlds course at the Carnegie Mellon Entertainment Technology Center. As producer and sound designer, I led a fully remote team on crafting an answer to a difficult challenge: creating a world that a naïve guest can successfully navigate without explicit instructions.

Our world was selected to be shown as part of the 2020 ETC Fall Festival.