Hollywood Goes Gaming:

Danielle Fishel—Actress and Xbox Freak

Published May 9, 2007

Hollywood actress Danielle Fishel began her television career with a small stint on Full House before breaking out in Boy Meets World. Gamers may be more familiar with her starring roles in the National Lampoon Dorm Daze movie franchise, but she has an extensive filmography. The same team behind the Dorm Daze films has created a videogame adventure called Gamebox 1.0 now available on DVD from Lionsgate Home Entertainment. Fishel stars in the film in a dual role. She is Kate, the girlfriend of the main character and videogame tester Charlie Nash (played by Nate Richert), and she is also the digitized Princess in the videogame world.

Inside the game world Danielle Fishel plays Princess.

Inside the Game World
To create the three videogame worlds within the film, most of the movie was shot in front of green screens. Since it was also a low budget feature, the entire movie was shot over three weeks with 18-hour shooting schedules. That much green screen work was new to Fishel.

"I've done a small amount of work in front of a green screen before, but not every single scene," said Fishel. "It took some getting used to because you're not really interacting with anything in particular. It was an entirely different experience for me. Luckily, we had great directors and a good group of actors to interact with, otherwise I would have gone crazy."

"We did a lot of improvisation which fleshes
out the characters for games. You have to go
from one character to another and you end
up talking to yourself."

Throughout the film, the character of Charlie can be seen playing an Xbox® in the real world, when he's not virtually sucked into the Gamebox 1.0 world. That system, which requires only a head contraption at first (and later nothing at all), is a prototype sent to Charlie with three different game challenges.

"The games we were playing in the movie don't exist, but the concepts of games are always the same," said Fishel. "You have to play through the levels. The first game console I had was the original Nintendo. I was a little too young for Atari. I used to play Super Mario Bros. It was the goal of the entire game to get to the princess. I remember going through each level and beating the bosses. Even though the games didn't exist in the movie, that concept has been around forever."

Fishel said one of the reasons she got the part was because David and Scott Hillenbrand, the directors, knew she was a big gamer.

"This is my third movie with the Hillenbrands," said Fishel. "I'd worked with them on the Dorm Daze movies. They approached me with the concept of how would you like to play the princess in a videogame. I love working with them and they knew Nate and I were friends, and it was nice to be able to work together."

Fishel plays Kate in the real world of Gamebox 1.0.

Girl Gamer
Fishel describes herself as an "Xbox freak." She's graduated from Xbox to Xbox 360™ recently.

"I love games," said Fishel. "I've always been into videogames. I used to play all of the Tony Hawk's Pro Skater games on Xbox. I was a master of them. I got a little bit into Halo®. I guess it's pretty stereotypical of boys, but I'm a videogame nut."

Fishel logs a lot of hours playing Tiger Woods PGA TOUR® 07 on her Xbox 360. She and her boyfriend are both big gamers.

"I've played on Xbox LIVE® several times too, so I get to play against other players around the country and across the globe," said Fishel. "The competition is pretty feverish. Unfortunately, there are a lot of ways for people to cheat. If you're kicking their butt on hole 11 and you're playing 18 holes, they can just turn off their machine and it screws up your game and it screws up your handicap. But, overall, you find some pretty nice people who are just looking to have a good, solid match, so that's a lot of fun."

Fishel is hooked on Tiger Woods PGA TOUR 07.

Despite her love of gaming, something she had in common with the cast and crew of Gamebox 1.0, there wasn't any time for fun and games on set. Fishel said everyone worked very hard and there was no down time to play. At least, not until the movie was over. Then, everyone went over to Richert's house to game.

Gaming Influences
With Gamebox 1.0, Fishel said the creators tried to model the "Crime Spree" game in the movie after Grand Theft Auto. There are three games in the film, including one based on Resident Evil and another inspired by Halo.

"It's amazing what they can do with videogames today," said Fishel. "It's pretty crazy to think about how far we've come. We're almost to the point of I don't know how much better it can really get. Everything is so interactive now. Most games now play like virtual reality. When I play that Tiger Woods game on Xbox 360, I feel like I'm standing on a real golf course."

After two years of post-production, Fishel's happy with how Gamebox 1.0 came out.

"When you're filming it in front of a green screen you have no idea how it's going to turn out," said Fishel. "You're just hoping against all hope that it's going to turn out as great as the directors are envisioning it to be. So when I actually saw it, and I saw how great the graphics were and it really looks like we were videogame characters, it was just remarkable."

Article by John Gaudiosi