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Video gamers: “Darkon” directors Andrew Neel and Luke Meyer followed a group of live-action role-playing gamers to create their new film, which is airing on the Independent Film Channel.

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What could possibly compel grown men and women to don medieval garb and head to a public park so they can beat the snot out of each other with foam maces, battle-axes and swords — without even getting paid for it?

Two Williamsburg filmmakers asked that very question and the answers they got were neither simple nor silly, as some might expect.

For their documentary, “Darkon,” co-directors Andrew Neel and Luke Meyer followed a group of Baltimore-based, live-action role-playing gamers in an effort to understand what motivates and sustains this eclectic group of weekend warriors who create characters, assume their personalities and act out adventures in a game with well-defined rules and elaborate story lines.

While some LARPers captured on camera insist their participation is nothing more than recreation, others describe life in the Realm of Darkon — a make-believe world set in a bygone era — as a way to escape mundane jobs, belong to a community of people with similar values and interests, and be the heroes they wish they were in real life.

“Obviously, we thought the subject matter was amusing, but, I think, more than that, we were charmed by what they were doing and why they were doing it,” Neel told the Brooklyn Paper in a recent phone interview. “In editing, we were delicate about portraying them in a way that would allow people to laugh with them and not at them.”

Despite the fact that a large portion of the general public doesn’t even realize these kinds of groups exist, live-action gamers frequently find themselves mocked by those who do know about them, but don’t get why they do what they do.

It is no shock, then, that Neel and Meyer found themselves working hard to gain this particular community’s trust by convincing them they wanted to honestly portray who they are, not play their activities for laughs and paint them as ridiculous.

“Luke and I dealt with that head on, right in the beginning,” explained Neel. “They have their Senate meetings every couple of weeks and so we addressed the Senate and told them what we were doing and why we were doing it and that we realize that it would make sense if they were worried about us, because people see them as dorks.

“But we told them we didn’t really see it that way and that we wanted to make something more exciting than that. … It took a while to gain their trust and I think, some people, we never did fully gain their trust. But the majority of people, I think, really became pretty comfortable with us being around.”

Woven in between the interviews with gamers and footage of them playing, are scenes from a fantasy film that somewhat mirror the action of the game and what the players might be imagining they look and sound like on the field.

“It was a highly subjective film. We were creating a fictional fantasy movie within a documentary. We were trying to recreate the experience of playing the game — recreate the experience in their heads of what it was like to play the game,” said Neel, grandson of Greenwich Village portrait painter Alice Neel (1900–1984). “There was never any commentary because we didn’t want the audience to abstract the activity. Although there is an anthropological element to it, we didn’t want it to be some sort of dry analysis of why they were doing it. We wanted to lull the audience into getting invested in the characters and the narrative and, maybe, breaking down some of the barriers and preconceptions that people have about these people and what they are doing.”

Since winning the audience award at last year’s South by Southwest Film Festival, how have audiences reacted to “Darkon” and were they even aware this sub-culture existed?

“Hipsters are very aware of the movie. It obviously has some sort of hipster objectification appeal,” said Neel. “It’s kind of surprising how many people are like, ‘Oh, yeah, I know those people.’ Everyone has seen them in the park, gotten glimpses of it and been like, ‘Oh, my God, the guys with the sticks.’ People, obviously, weren’t aware of it in a comprehensive way, but people kind of knew what it was, at least.”

Neel knows a little something about hipsters, having lived and worked in Brooklyn for about eight years.

“When I moved out here [from Vermont], it’s where all of the interesting stuff was going on. It’s where the artists and filmmakers lived and a lot of my friends were out here. No one could afford to live in Manhattan any more, so everyone went to Brooklyn,” noted Neel, adding that the area has changed significantly over the years. “Of course, it would be hypocritical of me to complain about it. As much as I do complain about it, I’m certainly part of what and why it’s changing. It’s becoming gentrified, it’s becoming yuppified and sterilized a little bit, but so is the whole city.”

©2007 The Brooklyn Paper

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