Half-Life: Escape from City-17

Half-Life: Escape from City 17 is a Canadian short film set in the Half-Life universe. The first part was released on February 13, 2009, and the second part is currently in production.

The film is set during the events of Half-Life 2: Episode One. Isaac Kleiner is making his "Kleinercasts" on City 17's PA system, warning that the Citadel is set to explode at any moment, destroying much of the surrounding area. Members of the Resistance are fighting their way out of the city as Civil Protection holds them back. Civil Protection officers are seen executing captured rebels. Two rebels are introduced escaping through a train-yard. Through radio communication, the two discover that the last evacuation train has already left, and are urged to escape the city on foot through the canal system. Civil Protection officers appear and fire on the two. The rebels return fire and manage to escape. As they flee, a Combine hunter chopper appears and shoots at them, and the film abruptly ends.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q1UPMEmCqZo (This is the short film, please click the link and watch)

The first part of the film was created by Toronto-based David and Ian Purchase, who use the professional name of the Purchase Brothers. Before Escape from City- 17, the Purchase Brothers had directed several commercials, including one for Coca-Cola.David contended that they worked as commercial directors in order to support their independent projects. They were both fans of the Half-Life series, and decided to start Escape from City-17 as a way "to showcase and promote their talents further, and experiment with several post-production techniques they had developed."

The two had a budget of C$500; the computer equipment and software employed for the development of the film belonged to the Purchase Brothers from previous projects. According to David, the money was spent on the live-action elements of the film, saying that "The costumes, and used/broken airsoft guns made up the bulk of the budget." The two had no crew to support them, and were not paid for their work. Many of the elements of the film, such as the background, were extracted from Half-Life 2, "graphically enhanced, and incorporated into the live action with 'a lot of complicated tracking and rotoscoping.'" The background used at the start of the film is the Panorama of Riga.

Upon the film's release to YouTube it garnered thousands of views very quickly, but the film's exposure was skyrocketed when Valve, developers of the Half-Life series, promoted it with a news post on Steam. It was quickly featured on many popular gaming news websites and had surpassed 1 million views within two days of release. As of October 3, 2009, it has more than 3 million views.

The Purchase Brothers planned to release the second part of the film in early to mid March 2009, but the large amount of emails and phone calls the two have received regarding the first part has slowed development of the second. According to teaser clips at the end of the first part, the two rebel soldier characters will be joined by a heroine, and will come into contact with headcrab zombies. As of December 2009, Part Two has not been released. The Purchase Brothers cited on their YouTube profile page that a new secret film project has heavily hampered their progress in completing Part Two, although it will be released in the near future: "Second episode will be completed eventually. Lots of post already finished on it. But we are busy hammering out our top secret feature film so things have been slow...Thanks for the support" - David Purchase, Ian Purchase (October 14, 2009)

A new teaser clip was released on YouTube on October 13, 2009 promoting the entire franchise which also showcases some new Part Two scenes not seen in the teaser at the end of Part One. (Which is the one you just watched)

I just wanted to share this with everyone who is a big fan of Valve's Half-Life series. I'm sure most of you might already know about it but like myself I just found this video a few weeks ago so I'm sure there are plenty like myself who are Half-Life fans and wish there would be some sort of a movie done for this series.

Now my comments on this short film. I myself as a huge Half-Life enthusiast thinks that this was done very well from what the two Purchase Brothers had. What I like most is that they are filming it from the resistance side and not from Dr. Gordon. Because we (who have played Half-Life 2) already know what's going on from his side and if a movie was to be filmed from his eyes it'd be quite difficult due to that Dr. Gordon never talks through out the game, as for the same in Half-Life One but the intense movie graphics would be killer! I'm excited and can't wait till Part Two of this short film comes out! I really hope that it can be turned into an actual theatrical movie and hit the box offices.

So please, leave me your comments and thoughts. Post up anything new that you may know of that anyone separate from team valve may be working on or anything new from Valve. Let's try to keep this strictly Half-Life and yes Black Mesa the new game coming out soon is apart of Half-Life so don't be afraid to post anything about that!