Lightbox

Closeup of my old BOLEX camera showing the framerate dial and part of the handcrank. 

My film class was one of the last to shoot, edit, and project our movies using actual film stock. Nowadays they shoot everything digital (and in many ways it's much better.) Florida mosquitoes would attack me whenever my hands were stuck inside a change bag; sometimes the lab would screw up the negatives; and we'd never knew for sure if we'd exposed our scenes properly until days later.

Filming a shipwreck movie on the Gulf Coast back in college.

But there was still something magical about holding a reel in your hands, a frozen waterfall of time condensed into miniature rectangles. Although threading celluloid through Steenbeck edit tables was tricky, it also felt like we were practicing a trade, an ancient craft passed down to us from the legends of movie-making (or maybe I'm just feeling nostalgic.)

I wanted to capture some of that old-fashioned mojo in HAUNTIBLES. That's why I added a lightbox. This tool is one of the most valuable in the game, as it'll allow players to cut and splice film together, testing theories and searching for patterns.

The ghosts in HAUNTIBLES communicate through patterns, and recognizing them is the main game mechanic. As a result, the lightbox is super important, and I've spent a long time developing it. Making it intuitive, useful, and cool-looking was a challenge, but I think I've achieved a good balance.

Since I didn't have a vintage lightbox, I decided to make one. Broke a cheap IKEA picture frame and then backlit the glass to get a cracked texture.

 The lightbox dial came from the door hatch on my old BOLEX film camera.