NEW YORK — Film productions often struggle with changing weather, the threat of the crew going into overtime, or a day of blackout. Less common are concerns about plaster slipping off the top of a blimp.

But that was one of the quirks of making “Grand Theft Hamlet,” a documentary about a pair of British actors, Sam Crane and Mark Oosterveen, who, while inactive due to the pandemic, decided to stage “Hamlet” in the world his violent virtual. “Grand theft auto.” When Shakespeare wrote of “the slings and arrows of scandalous fortune,” he may not have envisioned the menace of a loose python in a bar or Hamlet struggling with “being” on a helipad. However, “Grand Theft Auto” might be an oddly fitting place for a game where almost everyone dies.

“The first time Sam did a bit of Shakespeare in that space, he said, ‘I imagine that’s what it was like in Shakespeare’s time at the Globe, when people would throw apples at you if you were rubbish,'” says Pinny Grylls. who co-wrote and directed the film with Crane, her husband. “No one really follows you, but every now and then they look around and listen to the poetry.”

“Grand Theft Hamlet,” which Mubi will release in theaters in January, opens with Crane and Oosterveen’s avatars running from the police and entering an outdoor amphitheater. One says aloud, “I wonder if you could stage something here?”

They’re not the only ones who have floated around virtual spaces and wondered if they could be rich scenery for a movie. In “The Remarkable Life of Ibelin,” which debuted on Netflix Friday, director Benjamin Ree delves into “World of Warcraft” to tell both the life and virtual life story of Mats Steen, a Norwegian gamer who died of Duchenne muscular dystrophy in old age. 25.

“Knit’s Island”, which aired on Metrograph at Home, takes place almost entirely within the survival game DayZ. The filmmakers went in with “PRESS” badges on their avatars’ chests and sought interviews with players with high kill counts. “Don’t shoot!” cried one during a close-up. “I’m a documentary maker!”

All three documentaries enter the realms of video games with curiosity about what might be discovered within. For them, the surreal life in these virtual spaces and the possibilities for real human connection are as worthy as anywhere else.

“Filmmakers want to make movies about the world we live in. And more and more people are living in these virtual online gaming spaces,” says Grylls. “As filmmakers, we’re just holding a mirror up to the world and saying, ‘Look what’s going on here.’

As the gaming industry has emerged as the dominant form of entertainment (by some estimates, it surpasses film, television, and music combined), the lines between movies and video games have become increasingly blurred. This doesn’t just happen in big box-office movies like “The Super Mario Bros. Movie’, but also in the smaller films known as machinima (a combination of ‘machine’ and ‘cinema’) that use game engines to create their own narratives.

But “The Remarkable Life of Ibelin,” “Grand Theft Hamlet” and “Knit’s Island” are first-of-its-kind forays into bridging the gap between virtual and cinema.

“This is just the beginning,” says Grylls. “We are right at the foot of it. It’s nice to think we’re part of that evolution of cinema.”

Reconstructing the life of Mats Steen

When Ree first read about Steen’s story, he was extremely moved. When Steen died in 2014, his parents, Robert and Trude, felt that their son had missed most of his life. As Duchenne muscular dystrophy, a rare disease with no treatment, progressed, Steen’s life was increasingly relegated to playing video games from a wheelchair in their basement.

But after Steen’s parents posted the news of their son’s death on his blog, they were stunned by the response. Messages poured in praising Steen, known to most as the outgoing Ibelin Redmoore of “World of Warcraft.” Ree rewinds his film to start over, retelling Steen’s story using thousands of pages of archived text to animate Ibelin/Steen’s vibrant life in the game. In the game, Steen, as Ibelin, experienced his first kiss.

“I thought: Is it possible to translate that enormous archive and recreate real events with real dialogue and real characters, but also invite everyone in?” Ree says. “He actually came of age within one game. And I was so curious: how was that? He experienced friendships, love – all things that I can recognize in my own life growing up.”

Ree knew that in order to make a movie about Steen’s life, he had to illustrate it through “World of Warcraft.” Although not a gamer himself, Ree sought out players who posted fan videos on YouTube. Rasmus Tukia, a 28-year-old self-taught 3-D animator, led two other animators in rendering the game environment with the same models used for the gameplay videos.

“They were all YouTube gamers and this was their first job,” says Ree. “We’re doing something completely new here. If this works, a lot of credit goes to these YouTubers.”

Ree’s goal wasn’t to exactly mimic the game — which can be awkward or too jerky. So for three years, without the permission of the game’s producer, Blizzard Entertainment, they animated the experiences of Steen/Ibelin in “World of Warcraft”, but with a slightly more cinematic touch. Along the way, they showed drafts to Steen’s online friends for feedback.

“When I showed them the film after working on it for three and a half years, the response after the screening was, ‘This is exactly how we remember Ibelin,'” says Ree. “Then they said, ‘But you made a mistake. Ibelin liked women with skinnier clothes.'”

It wasn’t until the film — a small, independent Norwegian production before Netflix acquired it — was nearing completion that Ree reached out to Blizzard. He went to their offices in California to check it out for executives.

“I was so nervous. I haven’t slept in days. I didn’t have a plan B. I had to take a few extra doses of asthma medicine to be able to breathe before the meeting,” says Ree. “I showed them the film and immediately after I saw they were crying. The boss came back and said, “This movie is fantastic. You will get the rights.”

Shakespeare on a cargo plane in “Grand Theft Hamlet”

Crane, a seasoned stage and screen actor, originally started what became “Grand Theft Hamlet” as more of a side hustle, a way to keep busy while theaters were closed during the pandemic. As he posted videos, people responded with enthusiasm, as did the game’s maker, Rockstar Games.

“They talked to us about how they designed the game to be used like that, as a sandbox, as a creative space,” says Crane.

But little about how to make “Grand Theft Hamlet,” which won best documentary at SXSW in March, has been determined. For starters, almost every audition or rehearsal in the game ended in bloodshed. Someone with a gun usually showed up and chaos ensued.

The filmmakers had some benchmarks, such as Joe Hunting’s 2022 documentary “We Met in Virtual Reality” and the work of artist Jacky Connolly, who used “Grand Theft Auto” to make the existential nightmare short “Descent into Hell “. But little about how to make a movie set entirely in a game world was prescribed.

“We kind of worked out every aspect of it—putting a piece inside that world, learning how to capture the images in that world, then how to edit all those images,” Crane says. “We were learning as we went.”

That also meant freedom. At one point, they realized they could essentially perform Shakespeare “on a billion dollar budget.” Theirs is the first “Hamlet” to feature the car from “Back to the Future” or a cargo plane. Meanwhile, Grylls, an experienced director, experimented with camera positioning.

“I realized: OK, let’s try to make things a little quieter and more cinematic,” she says. “When I discovered that there was a phone in the game with a camera on it, I was able to take close-ups and wide shots. and a kind of cinematic language.”

The game is not over

As “Grand Theft Hamlet” has been screened at various film festivals, Crane and Grylls find themselves in the surprising position of being celebrated for a film they made mostly in their bedroom on a PlayStation. Like their forays into the virtual world, something done in physical isolation has found an ever-growing community.

Ree, who spoke from a festival stop in San Francisco, traveled on “Ibelin” with Streen’s parents. A life that once seemed peaceful and lonely has reached the whole world.

“They watched the film at every screening,” he says. “In a way for them, the film is part of the healing process, but also part of the grieving process. They’ve now seen it over 150 times.”