Metal Gear Solid Philanthropy - Part 2

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MGS Philanthropy Part 2 – (Short Film)

MGS Philanthropy Part 1 – Full Movie (2009)

THE PROJECT

Metal Gear Solid: Philanthropy is a fan made saga by Hive Division, a small video production studio and VFX house, originally a collective of students and young filmmakers. It’s a non-profit project, based on the videogame saga Metal Gear Solid, created by Hideo Kojima and published by Konami. Driven by our passion for cinema, new technologies and Hideo Kojima’s work, we have been working of this project to bring together creative people, to showcase our skills and to have fun. In october 2014 the project came to a stop due to licensing issues, just before a crowdfunding campaign for the creation of the second film could be launched.

The first years (2002-2005)

The roots of this project sink as deep and as far back in time as 2002, when Giacomo and his friend Gianluca (both just out of high school) got around to playing Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty. The game hugely stroke their imagination, to the point of driving them into planning and working on an amateur film based upon it. They had nothing but enthusiasm and a cheap as chips camcorder, but it had to be a full length feature, and it was going to be called “Philanthropy”. But the road was paved with problems: the huge workload required by creating a feature film, after more than a year and a half of attempts, started to take its toll on the production team. Philanthropy had become too stressful a pastime to be considered as such by those who were pushing their lives into other directions and, at the same time, it wasn’t satisfying enough for those of us who during the course of the project had come to terms with the simple, undeniable truth that indie filmmaking was going to be a part of our lives forever. In order to break this awkward stand off, Philanthropy had to “die”. And so it did. In the Winter of 2004, with the release of the very first trailer, all production on the project came to an end. The following year was dedicated to the salvaging and editing of the best footage produced, which came out in 2005, as the Prologue. 30 minutes or so to pay tribute to the hard, necessary and somewhat educational work that was put into the first years of production, as well as serving the purpose of a narrative link between the official Metal Gear Solid timeline and the spin-off resembled by our Philanthropy project. It would have been the diving board from which, eventually, we could have leaped forward.
MGS Philanthropy Part 1 (2006-2009)

Just before the launch of the Prologue, in October 2005, we had a three day meeting in Venice for those of us that saw this project as something more than a mere hobby. The wrapping up of the Prologue wiped the slate clean for us and we were free to take the next step. A new plot, albeit stripped to its essential guide lines, had been ready for months: it evolved across a trilogy of three full-length features lasting 60-70 minutes each. The new team, now called Hive Division, was immediately put to work, with storyboards, computer graphics tests, the search for locations and everything else needed to achieve a complete pre-production. In October 2006 the actual shooting started, and kept going on until all of 2007. Coinciding with another Hive Division meeting, on the 7th of April 2007 we released a new Trailer. The hype was encouraging: the attention from the media, the popularity amongst fan communities, and the number of views on YouTube rising above the million mark. Even better, work opportunities and partnership invites from other talented filmmakers started coming the way of Hive Division. We were in the shooting phase until the first months of 2008, when we faced a sudden stop due to an unforeseen event: the location where we had planned our last set of shootings has been demolished in advance. The missing scene, an action sequence of about seven minutes, was fundamental to the integrity and success of the whole movie and we decided not to release MGS Philanthropy until its completion. The search for a new location has been long and has put the whole team to a really hard test, but in the end we could find a very good solution that gave Hive Division the permission to use an old abandoned factory, perfect for the scene. The shooting needed a total of six days to be completed and were finished in March, 2009. The post-production was then completed in August, 2009 while the final mixing of the movie by Hybrid Two was completed at the beginning of September. MGS Philanthropy Part 1, AKA “The Overnight Nation”, was finally released on the Internet on September 27th, 2009. It was simply too long for YouTube (which then a 12 minutes limit), so we used a combination of P2P, eMule, Vimeo and Dailymotion ( here's a recent HD re-upload)
Catching our breath (2010 - 2012)

Following the release of Part 1, we needed a bit of rest. Also, we needed some time to turn our passion towards videomaking into a real profession. Philanthropy gave us a lot of visibility, and we took advantage of that to start a carreer in our various field of work. Some of the key elements of Hive eventually founded Hive Division S.r.l. (italian for “ltd”), to keep working together on both paying jobs and other narrative projects (like In Memoria). Other proceeded on their path as individual artists and professionals, like Daniel, Alessandro or Glenn.

We always kept in touch and always talked about eventually completing Philanthropy, but grim reality was in the way: we had to make a living (we still do!) and starting another two-years non-budget adventure didn’t seem like the best strategy to do it. Also, we had no idea what Hideo Kojima or Konami thought about our project, and we were reluctant to further provoke the sleeping giant.

So, in essence… not much happened, MGS Philanthropy-wise.
MGS Philanthropy Part 2 (2013 - now)

At the beginning of 2013, we finally had the chance to meet Hideo Kojima, who expressed his deepest appreciation for MGS Philanthropy and asked if and when we were planning to release a sequel. The subsequent discussion we had completely changed our mind on the project: the threat of a legal action by Konami was one of our main concerns and, after that warm meeting, we felt reassured and rewarded for all of our efforts.

Then, we thought about how to revive the project, which was in still in a years-long cryosleep, and we decided to run a crowdfunding campaign (the sort of dark magic that wasn’t around then we started the project!). In October 2013 we shot a 12 minutes long demo scene for Part 2, both to showcase the new standards of quality we reached during all these years and to promote the campaign. Just a few days before the scheduled launch date (October 21, 2014), we were contacted by the IP owners and warned about the risks we would face in continuing the project, because of the complicated situation with the Metal Gear film adaptation license. Therefore, we had no other choice but to stop the project indefinitely. We're very sad we will never be able to tell the whole story behind Philanthropy but, at the same time, we're very, very proud of what the project accomplished in its more than 10 years of existence.

Thanks so much for the support and appreciation you all showed us along this amazing journey!