A few days ago, I posted a short entry sharing the fan film "Portal: No Escape."  Since then, some interesting facts have been turning up about the short, which has surpassed the production quality of most fan films out on YouTube currently.

First off, if you're getting that "I swear I've seen her before" vibe when you see the lead actress, then you've probably watched a lot of daytime soap operas.  The actress taking up the Portal gun is none other than Danielle Rayne.  She has gone on record to say that the role she is playing is not Chell.  She is whoever the director and writer of the short claims she is, but she is most definitely not playing the role of Chell.  This has many fans of the game to believe that the short may actually take place some time after the Portal 2 Co-Op story.  (Those of you who know what that ending is can glean what I'm talking about.)

The creator of the short film is, surprisingly, a TV commercial director named Dan Trachtenberg.  He currently co-hosts The Totally Rad Show, among other things, and reportedly started production on this film two years ago.  This means he wrote this story some time between the plots of original Portal and Portal 2.  The short was premiered at a recent Comic Con (which one, I have yet to figure out), and a week later, it was uploaded to YouTube on Trachtenberg's account.

Probably the most surprising credit to learn in the past few days is that the music composer is Mike Zarin, who scored the original music for the Inception trailer.  He's the guy, according to /film, who is responsible for the “BRRRRRRRAAAAAWWWWRWRRRMRMRMMRMRMMMMM!!!” sound that influenced Hans Zimmer's final soundtrack for the film.  And that's saying a lot.

The special effects in the short were done by Jon Chesson, who has quite a lot of experience in the field if you go by his IMDB page.  Among his credits include TV shows V, Falling Skies, and True Blood.  To his credit, he did a nice job in adapting the look of the portals, making them more polished and visually stunning for a live action setting.

Since its internet release on August 23, the short has won over 4 million views and was even shown on cable television in its entirety!  Sure, it was on G4's Attack of the Show, but still.  The a majority of the comments all say the same thing.  "Give this guy a dump truck of money and make this into a feature length movie!"

As an article on GIGAOM points out, this may actually happen.  Valve is very close to the fan community when it comes to the Portal franchise.  This short surely has made its way to some key people's desks--or at least their desktops--and clearly shows that if you pick the right person, you wont end up with just another shitty video-game-movie-adaptation bomb.  They already have a director with a very unique vision, as well as a team behind him that can clearly take care of the special effects needs to pull off all the visuals.  The question then become if Valve is willing to sign the movie licenses over and green-light the feature production.  And if so, will we see and hear GlaDOS, who has been edited out of the short?

Time will tell.

Oh, an in case you still haven't seen the short film, here you go...