TBILISI: FNE spoke to Beso Kacharava, Sound Artist and Founder of POSTRED, about his company's experience and companies like his that work in both the film and games industry.
FNE: What are the main activities of POSTRED regarding the convergence of film and games?
Beso Kacharava: I founded POSTRED in Tbilisi in 2015. From the very beginning, the main goal of POSTRED was to create one of the world's leading audio post-production companies, which would provide services for projects of any budget and need. The team creates sound and music for films, commercials, video games, and other television or interactive media. It is noteworthy that POSTRED has made a name for itself not only in Georgia but also abroad. Over the past seven years of its existence, POSTRED has collaborated with such names in the film industry as HBO, Netflix, Amazon, Paramount Pictures, BBC, Hulu, A24, Apple TV+, The Farm Group, Formosa Group, etc. We have collaborated with Riot Games and 2K Games in the Video Games industry. Today, 95% of all the projects are from international countries such as the USA, the UK, Norway, Sweden, Netherlands, etc. The most notable projects we have worked on are HBO's EUPHORIA, Paramount Picture's horror franchise's fifth iteration of SCREAM, Mike Mill's C'mon, C'mon, produced by A24 and starring Academy Award Winner Joaquin Phoenix.
FNE: What can you tell us about the relationship between the gaming industry and the film in your exeperience?
Beso Kacharava: In both the video game and film industry, as in any art form, it is vital to use all the tools to tell the story. So, telling a story with sound is like choosing the right sounds for the right emotions in the right places. And I think both video games and film need the same approach to tell stories, with the right sounds, to create the right associations or emotions. When it comes to differences, I would say that one is linear, and another is interactive. But when you dissect both and understand how it's played or how it's watched, you start conceiving ideas about where and how to play each sound to create emotions. So, even though they're very different mediums, and as I said, one is linear, and another is interactive, storytelling with sound techniques still applies the same way to both.
FNE: As far as I know, you have also worked on League of Legends cinematics in sound design. What can you tell us about this experience?
Beso Kacharava: We collaborated with Shannon Potter from Formosa Interactive to do Foley for a couple of cinematics for the League of Legends series. It was a great experience working with such a legend as Shannon and working on the League of Legends franchise.
FNE: What can you tell us about your latest project, the indie game Lile, which you are working on?
Beso Kacharava: Lile started as a passion project for me and some of my partners. Lile is a short animation by Natia Nikolashvili that premiered at the Berlinale Film Festival in 2017. This was one of the first Georgian projects I have ever worked on, and it was very sentimental for me. I loved the world from the first time I saw it, I loved working on it, and I wanted to continue the legacy of this project. And then, I talked to Vova Katcharava (Producer) and Natia Nikolashvili (Director). Then I spoke to my partners, Lado Lebanidze and Luka Lebanidze, and we decided to create this exciting video game. We wanted to maintain the animation style of visuals and evolve it to the point that it would be a very intriguing video game for the audience of the indie game community. I think this is the project where you see that it was done by people who love both film and video games. Therefore, I think it will be something new for the community.
FNE: How do you see the development of the relationship between the film and gaming industries?
Beso Kacharava: I think the world is changing now, and we have more and more ways to tell exciting stories, and both film and video games have their place in the art world. Some new experimental contents merge those two, and some of them are very attention-grabbing. I love film in a linear fashion, and I love video games being purer and more straightforward. I see many remarkable new video games that are told in a very cinematic and exciting way. And I also see new film projects taking some of the exciting parts of video games, and I hope we get to follow a lot more thought-provoking ideas and projects that combine both.
