Mills: George Romero. I'd say we're pretty much evenly half classic horror, being the horror that started in the 60's and 70's, and half pulp fiction and film noir of the 1930's. I couldn't say which of the two had more input than the other. They're pretty equal.

The work in the opening cinematic: how did you chose that style?

Very Lovecraftian, don't you think? (102k).

Mills: That's actually the cinematographer who we brought in to do our cameras. It was mostly him. We just decided we wanted him to do it.

Smith: Yeah how that came out, his name is Peter Besson, and he's a German bastard! He's really good. He's the director of short, great cinema. He's an up and coming filmmaker. We had contracted him to do the promotional AVI's, we had like a 4-part movie that we released about 1 month apart leading up to the release of Nocturne. And it kind of introduced the characters – I don't know if you saw those...

Yes I did.

Smith: The fourth one, well we were just like, wahh! The fourth AVI came out around launch time, we had loved all the pure cinema shots that he had done, and it kind of tied everything together, because we had a completely different type of intro for Nocturne at one point and we just decided that that kind of relayed some of the horror and the drama and the suspense and whatnot that you get playing Nocturne, without just loading you off with a bunch of pretty cinematics and crap at the beginning. We really don't see the benefit in spending 6 months and using 2 or 3 art guys to make these great cinematics if we can convey the same kind of message with using some really innovative and cool cinematography. And that's what Peter was able to provide to us. He was kind of a blessing in disguise. That was one of the few things that really fell into our laps at the end. It was like, “Oh there it is!” Unlike any of the design or anything like that.

So you kind of sent him off and he came back with what you wanted before you knew what you wanted?

More concept art (85k).

Smith: Yeah. Well he came back with a completely different view than anyone – even if we had made a cinematic that was exactly the same type of thing in-game, it would have looked different and it would have taken us a long time to put together. I don't know if we would have approached it the way that he did because he's the director. He's a filmmaker. And none of us claim to be a filmmaker less than others, though other than in our own inactive style, we are making cinema. Cinematic experience.

Mills: They're calling it Machinima.

Let's get back to talking about the Blair Witch. One of the things that really affected me in the Blair Witch movie was that I never saw anything. I know that was done on purpose, but are you going to try and recapture that element in the game? Obviously you're going to have new monsters.

Mills: There are things that you won't see. A lot of the stuff, especially early on, you don't see the actual creatures that are occupying the woods. You will see a lot of artifacts.