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Harmonium: The Musical
Harmonium: The Musical - Interview: A moving story for both deaf and non-deaf music lovers
Our David Caballero got a bit emotional and quite challenged in LA when learning about The Odd Gentlemen's new sign language musical for Netflix. In this ASL-interpreted conversation with co-creator Matt Daigle, creative director Matt Korba, and interpreters Cass del Castillo and Wolfe we learn about the story of the two Matts and protagonist Melody, about the deaf dev team, or about making a musical, gesture-based game for both deaf and non-deaf people.
Audio transcription
"All right we are in LA covering the Summer Game Fest. We are at Netflix's very special, very inclusive, very interesting, very touching area and to me this is first time this interview is gonna be a little bit complicated but I I love to talk about Harmonium and the story of Melody and the story of Matt. So first of all thank you so much for joining us guys. I would like to know how this came to be. What was the reasoning behind this adventure, this is this a story and what was personal into it and what was just motivation for others?
So yeah this has been a project we've been working on for quite a while now. We I was a huge fan of the Daigle's comic. They have a comic called That Deaf Guy which is about themselves essentially in cartoon form. It's about a hearing wife and a deaf husband and it has a very similar style of humor to what I like and how I write and what I loved about it is it was very inclusive whether you are deaf or non-deaf. The jokes were funny, they were visual and it kind of invited people into the culture a bit and so we started collaborating on this project and then that just grew and grew and grew as we hired more deaf animators, deaf designers, deaf writers, deaf storyboard artists and it's just been a crazy fun journey for everybody."
"So same as that book that you mentioned, this game is for both for deaf and not deaf people and I enjoyed that you guys designed the mechanics like that but not in a fully educational way. It's also in a way to share sign language and to share gestures and to share expressions. So how do you guys work on that double approach? Who's gonna be for that one?
Well the process is usually written in English and then translated into ASL because that's the way things usually happen and the star of this game happens to be a deaf protagonist Melody and her entire performance is done in ASL and we wanted the game to be enjoyable for everyone. We wanted it to be visually inclusive. Folks are expressing themselves with their face and their body. That's really important in manual communication. Now you understand ASL and English are not the same language. So what we try to do is to capture the meaning and the intention of the person and the character and then express that in ASL and in English simultaneously."
"An element of the game of course, seeing the title Harmonium, seeing the protagonist Melody is the music and I know that to you Matt music is also very important. So what can you tell us about, I mean I've tried it out, I've seen how how you step on the on the piano stones, I've seen how you draw some notes for a fantastic character. What does music mean in the whole experience again for both deaf and not deaf players?
The entire goal of making the musical was that it be a visual experience as well. So you do see there are colors and vibrations and expressions that explode from things when they're touched to represent the music. Handshapes are the greatest part of communicating with a deaf person in ASL. We wanted to include all of those things as well. It's visually accessible for Melody to see the enjoyment of the music around her. And for the gamer, deaf gamers, they can enjoy it visually and they're learning about music at the same time."
"Something that I really love from what I've seen from the game is the animation and the presentation. Of course animation is very important in this project I guess because you have to clearly show sign language and other gestures of the characters themselves. But something I also like is other than looking beautiful is that despite being a 3D project, you guys are using some humor from the old school cartoons. So what can you tell us about the whole visual presentation here? We have kind of a crazy animation pipeline. We opted at the beginning, instead of going with motion capture, to do it all by hand, which is rare to see ASL animated for the whole game like this. We wanted to do that so we can keep it stylistic. And our pipeline is basically we write the script together in English and ASL at the same time. We go back and forth with ASL oftentimes leading. And then Matt is our ASL master. He will shoot reference videos. Our character is Filipina. So we also have two deaf Filipina actresses that will then take the ASL and act it out for our animators. And then we have an animation team with two deaf animators on it and they'll kind of lead the charge and animate it all in ASL. Matt will do the final check and then it goes into the game. So it's a pretty wild, long process, but this is the result that we end up with."
"And I know I only got a glimpse of the puzzles themselves. I know this is an adventure, this is narrative, and this is also about solving puzzles and finding nodes and being able to complete Melody's story. So they look really fresh to me, really interesting in terms of gameplay mechanics. So what else can you guys tell us about the puzzles players can expect from this game?
Sure. So not only is the story, you know, it was important to have representation in the story and the features of that. We have a lot of accessibility features in the game. But that kind of also worked its way into the mechanics and that was only possible because we had a deaf designer and we kept changing and modifying and revising. So, you know, we did King's Quest a couple years ago and at its base this game is an adventure game like that. It's got exploration, puzzle solving, narrative choices, but we're using American Sign Language as the base of the puzzles, which is something we never would have discovered without the large collaboration we've had. So oftentimes in the game someone will sign something to you using ASL classifiers, which is a very visual way of describing something, and then the player has to look at that and parse that and figure out how to solve, like, an escape room style puzzle or play a certain musical sequence and we just build from there."
"Okay, so I started saying how this was touching and moving to me. It's not just because Melody's story and how she wasn't born deaf and she lost her hearing when she was six years old, but also the story of you guys and how inclusive and how moving the whole project seems to me. So I just wanted to ask you how you personally feel about this project and if this is the feedback that you're getting from players who are really trying out the game that is really, really something else to them. So the game just means so much to me because the story is authentic. It's being told from an authentic life experience, not only mine, but those of many people in the deaf community. We've never seen animation with clear sign language before, with full facial expressions and bodies moving to express the characters. Also including tidbits of culture and it represents a sort of a mass collection of authentic experiences that are told through a game. Fantastic. I don't know if there is any other story about this game that you want to share, any specific thing that we didn't touch upon from the brief time I had with it. So anything that you would like to share, now is the moment, please."
"I think we're excited to get the game in more players' hands and release the game and it's been a long, crazy journey for us that I'm sure we could spend hours on describing all the crazy ups and downs, but we're very happy with the reaction we've been getting and we want to make more stuff like this so we hope that it does well.
We're very excited and thank you for being here with us.
When can we expect to play Harmonium and is it going to be available on Netflix, of course, and on smart devices, I can guess."
"So we haven't announced the release date yet, but it's not too far away, it's not just around the corner. It'll be available on Netflix on all the mobile devices and it'll be available through Game Pass on the Xbox family of consoles and PC.
How does it play on Xbox with a controller?
So with the controller, Melody has a wisp, so the interactions that you did today with touching, she has a magical wisp, she takes out her baton and it's very fun to move it around and you can use that to interact with the environment."
"I didn't know that, so thank you so much for your time. I'm really looking forward to playing with the music, to playing with volume, without volume, to looking forward to the puzzles themselves and most above all, looking forward to learning about Melody's story. Thank you so much.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you."
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