Wicked Cinema

As I stated in my last post, Valve Corporation was largly inspired by all kinds of horror films.  One of the biggest goals for the art direction of this video game was to make it seem like the player is right in the middle of a horror flick.  This meant that they had to make the various environments around the game in a specific "filmic" way.  The art direction used five specific ways of creating this atmosphere: color, correction, film grain, vignette, and local contrast.  Some examples of what they did include:
For the color, they simply dimmed down certain spots in the game's environment while they enhanced the color on specific items to catch the player's attention (health, blood, exits).  While working with the film grain effect during the cinematic parts of the game, Valve realized that the effect added both a heightened sense of feeling/authenticity, but if used too much the players (at least game testers) got tired of it fast.  Therefore, Valve evened this situation out and let the darker parts get grainy, but the lighter the screen got, the less grain appeared.  Altogether, Valve wanted the player to have a "visually unique experience" every time they play, based upon their performance.  Blending all of the effects together in the end made the game look a lot more realistic and cinematic for the user's enjoyment.