Deadpool director Tim Miller learned from Love, Death & Robots and brought his lessons to Secret Level

It’s hard to find a good story in Tim Miller’s career. Is he best described as a visual effects guy with a degree in film directing? Deadpool And Terminator: Dark fate? Or an animator whose short projects led him to doing effects work on games? Or one studio founder who has used their video game experience to create animated TV shows? All these stories are true, but there is not one linear story, because Miller did not have one career. He has jumped from games to short films, features and project management seemingly at will, following whatever interests him most.

In recent years this has been included Love, death and robotsan adult-oriented animated anthology loosely centered on the three titular subjects. There’s a clear line between that project and his latest anthology, Secret levelan Amazon MGM Studios series that sets animated stories in the worlds of popular video games and franchises including Warhammer 40,000, Mega Man, Dungeons & Dragons, Armored Core and even Pac Man.

Polygon sat down Secret level creator and executive producer Miller and supervising director and executive producer Dave Wilson (director of Bloodshot) to talk about how they created the series, how they worked with game studios, and what Epic Games’ Tim Sweeney might or might not have written to teenage game designer Wilson.

This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.

Polygon: Tim, I was at a SXSW panel years ago where you and co-producer David Fincher described the format for Love, death and robots as a simple process where you asked animators to pitch you adult stories to be told in animation, then gave them production resources and tried to stay out of the way. What have you learned after three seasons of that show? Secret levelin terms of the best ways to work with writers and directors on an animated anthology?

Tim Molenaar: Well, we really tried to recreate that show as best we could. We used the same authors.

Dave Wilson: So nothing. We have learned nothing!

Miller: I learned that development sucks. It’s much better to go out and find great stories and then turn them into animation. That’s why we tried to imitate that process as much as possible. We didn’t want the show to feel like it was Dave and I sitting in a room and coming up with all the ideas –

Wilson: Nobody wants that.

Miller: Nobody wants that! Not even Dave and I! That’s why we wanted to broaden the perspective. We invited all those authors to pitch us stories. We gave them a lot of information about the games. We talked to the publishers because first and foremost it has to come from them: “These are the characters that are the most interesting or the most popular,” or “These are the parts of the world that are ripe for exploration. ”

And once we had those, and the do’s and don’ts, we chose some authors who had an affinity with the material; often they had played the games. And then they pitched us ideas, and we turned the winning idea into prose, just like the short stories we started with. Love, death and robots.

And from there it went to script format. So I tried to recreate it with the carefree attitude of walking on the beach and picking up every shiny object I see. Although we had to throw the shiny objects on the beach first and then go pick them up.

Some of these games have a lot of lore to contend with. How much input did the game studios want in terms of where you could create new spaces for stories?

Miller: Merciless task masters! (laughs)

Wilson: Actually a lot of freedom. The Pac Man episode was one of the mission statements: “We would like the audience to ask themselves: What the hell did they do to Pac-Man? And then in Warhammer there is a big, wide universe. We knew they wanted to work with the Ultramarines. But it was really a collaboration. As Tim says, the creative guys put up the guardrails for the episodes. We were given a lot of freedom within this, both from Amazon and the IP holders. Absolutely no one understands their games better than them, so they told us when we did something wrong.

But our challenge has always been not just to make it attractive to a general audience and sideline the fans who have dedicated years of their lives to (these games), but to make it accessible to everyone, through an emotional principle where we can all respond to. , something primal and human beneath all that gaming knowledge.

Because in the end people don’t remember what they saw, but they do remember how you made them feel. And so ultimately that’s what we always strive for. And if we feel that the lore is getting in the way of some really great human emotion, we would come together and work with the IP holders to figure out a way to satisfy both of those things.

Miller: The great thing was that no one said, “Tell people how to play the game,” or “Show people what the gameplay looks like, or what weapons they’re going to use,” or anything like that. It was always very story-oriented, which really opens the tent up for anyone who doesn’t play the games. If you have 15 (games to cover in one season of the show), someone might have played three or four, if they’re a hardcore gamer. But we had to make sure that everyone could understand (all these short films) as much as possible.

The anomaly here is the Treaty episode, considering the disastrous launch and closure of that game. What was the timeline like between the game and this episode??

Miller: We were done with the episode by the time all that stuff went down. So our first look at it felt bad for the developers. By then we knew them and had worked with them quite well. And they were very nice people, science fiction nerds, who were very invested in the process. So we felt bad, just like you would feel for any fellow creative who put a lot of work into something that ultimately didn’t work out for them.

There was no way we were going to make it worse by not showing the episode, and wasting all the hard work that all the animators and artists put into the episode, because it really is a beautiful episode. It’s funny, and it’s super cool, and I’m proud of it.

And we have other games that don’t exist, like: Unreal tournament is no longer a game, but we made an episode. And Exodus hasn’t been released yet, so no one has played that. So theoretically, Treaty isn’t incredibly different, except that we already know the future of the game. Or us? Who knows, our episode might reignite the passion for it.

Wilson: Yes. There would be no reason to leave it on the cutting room floor. Too many people worked too hard, not just on the game, but on that episode, to leave this behind. I love it. I love it. I’m glad people are going to see it.

Are any of you gamers? Do you have an emotional connection to any of these games in particular?

Wilson: Oh yes, very much yes. What I wanted to do as a kid was get into video games. I remember going to my guidance counselor in college. I was maybe 17 years old. And I remember saying, “I want to make video games and movies and interactive entertainment and animation.” And the guy said, “Son, that sounds like an irresponsible career choice.” So this is the love child of all my vices. I mainly remember D&D growing up as a kid, and Warhammer – it used to be really hard to get your hands on those little plastic gray guys in South Africa. So many of the episodes in the series hold a dear place in my heart.

Miller: And I hired Dave when I found him after he was broken by his inability to get into the gaming industry.

Wilson: He’s joking. Well, half. Because I have a letter on my wall from Tim Sweeney, who runs Epic Games. When I was 15 years old, I sent them a demo of what I was making. They were a shareware company at the time.

Miller: He said, “Just one word: ‘Shit.’ Write no more.”

Wilson: (laughs) But I still have that letter…

Miller: It was a very kind letter.

Wilson: No, it was a shaping thing!

Miller: The fact that he wrote to you is great!

Wilson: But I had never met him until this series. And I was talking to Tim Sweeney when we were pitching them for one Unreal tournament episode, and I have to apologize for my demo. That’s 30 years too late.

Miller: Wouldn’t it be great if he remembered you? Oh yes. You’re that South African boy! That would be great.

Quick Final: What’s the most important game you didn’t play in this round that you want to play in the next round?

Wilson: There are too many — Pong!

It’s going to be a weird second season, guys.

Wilson: Just think about it. What could be Pong are? (whispers to the camera) Something.

All 15 Secret level episodes are now streaming on Amazon Video.