On the subject of a Live Action Werewolf

[AscentionTheMage]

There's a lot of talk on the forums and on certain discords about how to translate material from the RPGs into a TV series. What no one has talked about is the difficulty of making a Live Action Werewolf Product on a technical/budget level. On the one hand, in a perfect world we'd portray werewolves with puppetry and special effects, but that would require a massive budget, which increases expedentialy if we create one puppet for each Garou on the show, Setting the show in black and white could offset the difficulty of making realistic looking werewolf puppets, Also the size of Garou would make puppetry difficult unless you used Forced Perspective to get away with small puppets. On the other hand, CG would be easier but Realisic CG in a TV show with a TV budget is rare. Hemlock Grove comes close but not close enough, whereas that one post apocalypse with robots had realistic CG because it was of robots and it was in Black and White. Obviously almost all Garou are not Adam Smasher cyborgs, but we can make the show Black and White, at which point you have to exclusively set the show in an urban enviroment because nature looks better in Color. Anything anyone wants to add?

[heinrich]

Well, you'd need CGI for Glabro, Hispo, Lupus, Umbrascape, spirits and Fomoris, too. So, I think it would be the way to go. You probably would need Streaming Service kind of money to do a show, not network television kind of money. At least that's what I hear about the differences in finance...

[AscentionTheMage]

Well, you'd need CGI for Glabro, Hispo, Lupus, Umbrascape, spirits and Fomoris, too. So, I think it would be the way to go. You probably would need Streaming Service kind of money to do a show, not network television kind of money. At least that's what I hear about the differences in finance...

I didn't have network television in mind. I should specify that I want this show to be on Netflix purely because it has the most subscribers.

I have no Idea what kind of budget Netflix would give to a show based on a Niche tabletop about werewolves who are planetiers fighting a losing war againts Nurgle.

Keep in mind too that the MCU, Buffy, True Blood, Blade, Harry Potter, and interview with a Vampire all exist as fiction properties in WoD so therefore all the actors exist in WoD. We can't use, for example, cast Wesley Snipes because how do explain a character played by Wesley Snipes and also Wesly Snipes in a newest action movie, It would be pure Cringe. So for this show we have to cast unknown actors.

[heinrich]

I think that we don't really need to worry about the actor vs. what properties exist in the WoD. But even, if like Buffy existed in the WoD, we don't know if she is portrayed by Kristy Swanson or Sarah Michelle Gellar, or someone else.
Actually, I had a character once, who ghouled Joss Wheadon - but that was long before he became big in movies...

[AscentionTheMage]

I think that we don't really need to worry about the actor vs. what properties exist in the WoD. But even, if like Buffy existed in the WoD, we don't know if she is portrayed by Kristy Swanson or Sarah Michelle Gellar, or someone else.
Actually, I had a character once, who ghouled Joss Wheadon - but that was long before he became big in movies...

Netflix likes to cast actors who's appeared in other Netflix products, so if they greenlight a WoD show expect the actors from 13 reasons Why, Bojack Horseman, Hose of Cards etc.

[Saur Ops Specialist]

I didn't have network television in mind. I should specify that I want this show to be on Netflix purely because it has the most subscribers.

I have no Idea what kind of budget Netflix would give to a show based on a Niche tabletop about werewolves who are planetiers fighting a losing war againts Nurgle.

Phrased like that, it would be closer to Mage. W:tA is more like if the Wolfen (movie version) were out to kill much less appealing, more destructive rival monsters made out of commercial branding, jingoist patriotism, sexual degradation or what have you. It would also have an approach to violence more on par with Iron-Blooded Orphans - loads of senseless deaths to go around, and every one of them hurts the viewer a little more.

Keep in mind too that the MCU, Buffy, True Blood, Blade, Harry Potter, and interview with a Vampire all exist as fiction properties in WoD so therefore all the actors exist in WoD. We can't use, for example, cast Wesley Snipes because how do explain a character played by Wesley Snipes and also Wesly Snipes in a newest action movie, It would be pure Cringe. So for this show we have to cast unknown actors.

Contrary to the advertising blitz that the original ParaWolf team slugged everyone with back about 2015, there are many different worlds of darkness. One might argue that no single tabletop chronicle takes place in the same continuity unless the ST explicitly says so.

[CTPhipps]

I liked it. It was a good show. Lots of lore and focus on Hunters as well as fighting Banes.

Wait, we're not talking about TEEN WOLF?

[Wilson]

I think the budget needed to produce the CGI to portray all the Garou forms, with credible expression and body language, as well as the CGI for whatever happens in the Umbra, would be prohibitively expensive for any tv show, and I don't think even the best puppets ever would be good enough for the crinos forms of the show's protagonists. You'd need a James Cameron-sized CGI budget, scaled up to the longer run time of a tv show, to make it work. And honestly, I'd rather see a WtA show produced in the style that Netflix has used for Castlevania. It's animated, but it's gritty, gory, and it's got big name voice actors. Animation is much less expensive than CGI when it comes to producing entire environments of surreal strangeness like you'd see in the Umbra.

[AscentionTheMage]

I think the budget needed to produce the CGI to portray all the Garou forms, with credible expression and body language, as well as the CGI for whatever happens in the Umbra, would be prohibitively expensive for any tv show, and I don't think even the best puppets ever would be good enough for the crinos forms of the show's protagonists. You'd need a James Cameron-sized CGI budget, scaled up to the longer run time of a tv show, to make it work. And honestly, I'd rather see a WtA show produced in the style that Netflix has used for Castlevania. It's animated, but it's gritty, gory, and it's got big name voice actors. Animation is much less expensive than CGI when it comes to producing entire environments of surreal strangeness like you'd see in the Umbra.

The next best thing would be to animate the show with rotoscope. "Undone" would be the standard to meet.

[MyWifeIsScary]

I liked it. It was a good show. Lots of lore and focus on Hunters as well as fighting Banes.

Wait, we're not talking about TEEN WOLF?

That had a somewhat decent first season and from there I was just watching it in the hopes that It'd stop being shit again.

1- I'd cast no-name actors because I'd plan to kill most of them off. Werewolf is a grim title where the garou take hits. I'd also cast no-name actors because I don't want them in homid all the time trying to show off their pretty actor faces.

2- CGI is getting cheaper as time goes on. But it's still going to take most of the budget. To cheap out on crinos, either show them when they're fast or when it's dark. The other issue is the umbra. You can kinda make somethings cheap in the umbra because it has an unreal quality to it, but you also have to concern yourself with scale; cities are trapped in steel spider webs and there's a bunch of stuff that looks like it aught to be on an album cover. Formor are some of my favourite enemies but most of them are unique types.

[CajunKhan]

I'll add my vote to animation. Really gritty animation. It's affordable, and stylized animation fits the mood of werewolf more than live-action would, even if you could afford all the high-end CGI.