134: Hey Kids, Let's Make a Movie: Machinima

[Cat Rambo]

Hey Kids, Let's Make a Movie: Machinima

"They didn't start very complicated. In the early 1990s, Doom allowed users to record their play sessions. At first players swapped clips to compare and study matches and speed runs, and when Quake followed with more advanced recording tools, player clans began to do it wholesale.

The Quake community produced the first widely viewed machinima in 1996 … the videos were known as 'Quake movies' at first, and it would be a few years until machinima earned its proper name."

Cat Rambo dissects machinima.


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[Allen Varney]

Always good to see machinima articles; it's amazing how little attention the field gets relative to its immense potential. I'll barge in to Cat Rambo's article thread to plug a couple of machinima-related articles I wrote last year for The Escapist: "Speed Thrills [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/issues/issue_68/396-Red-vs-Blue-Makes-Green]," about speedrunning.

 

[alzheimers]

--Cat Rambo dissects machinima.--

More like "Butchers the English Lanuage while Mangling the Concept of Machinima." This has to be the worst description of the art I've ever read, and considering it's been bordering on the mainstream for a couple years now there's really no excuse. It's not even as good as a cut-n-paste of the Wikipedia entry; it's completely devoid of any useful information or news of any kind.

For example, the article doesn't even mention the contributions of teams such as Rooster Teeth, whose popular "Red Vs. Blue" series not only brought Machinima to widespread notoriety but actually influenced the feature sets of the Halo sequels. Features such as being able to record an entire play session and share that with anyone -- features mentioned in other articles in this very issue.

Also not mentioned are projects such as Anachronox: The Movie. The creators of the game used the principles of machinima to edit scenes of their wildly imaginative but commercially unsuccessful game into a full length movie. While graphically it's not quite up to Pixar standards, the edit gives casual fans a way to enjoy the game and it's story without having to sit through the 20-some odd hours it would have taken to play through it. (One would wish Square/Enix would take note). The quality of the voice acting and animation is so good the project ranks higher on my list of "Video game Movies" than anything Uwe Boll ever produced.

These examples doesn't even go into how clans and corporations in MMOs have started using machinima as recruitment tools and propaganda. In games such as EVE Online that have a heavy PvP element, image and style rank just as highly as victory. A good video edit of a tough battle can sway public opinion and rally other teams to your aid in the hopes of being included in future productions. Lets not forget plain-old marketing; the new World of Warcraft commercials feature notable b-list celebrities talking over animations of their in-game characters. And who hasn't heard of Leeeeeeeeroy Jenkins?

This is obviously a subject that the author of the article cares little about, knows even less about, and is trying to come across as an expert of without doing any research beyond a casual google search. I'd ask fans of Machinima to help fill in the blanks with replies of their own, because there is so much left out of this article that really deserves to be mentioned.

 

[Khakidoo]

I don't know much about Machinima, but I know I love Jovial's Sims2 Alice Series
http://simspremiere.com/onejovialsim/Jovial_Sims2Machinima.htm

 

[Cat Rambo]

Thanks for filling in some of the blanks, it's much appreciated! Unfortunately, I had a limited amount of words, and some bits from the original, such as a reference to Red vs. Blue, didn't make it into the final version, sad to say.

I'm relatively new to machinima -- I'd been a Red vs. Blue fan, but beyond that hadn't paid much attention to them until I hit Mike Booth's World of Warcraft ones, which I thought were terrific fun. An article about them seemed like a good fit for an issue with the theme "Make Your Own Fun" and I can't say that having to watch a lot of them while putting the article together was a particularly tedious task.

Thanks for the links - any there others people would particularly recommend?

best,
Cat

 

[GradonSilverton]

I am sorry, but alzheimers post was very accurate... the lack of reference to Red vs. Blue and/or Rooster Teeth makes this article irrelevant at best. I think a follow up or edit would be the best way to go.

Otherwise, everything alzheimers said covers anything I would add.

 

[Khakidoo]

http://z-studios.com/blog/2006/07/05/10-reasons-ts2-rocks-for-machinima/
http://www.machiniplex.com/

 

[Joncybernet]

There's a machinima contest involving Jonathan Coulton here:

http://www.machinima.com/rustlers_mmvc/

 

[killereddy]

machinima is so stupid, you can just creat a youtube account and do the same thing, there are almost no good machinimas at all. 95% of them are stupid and should not be allowed on the internet. 3% of them are ok and the final 2% are amazing. it is just the same thing as youtube...

your exactly right, that's why I made my website. it let's people give feedback and help make Machinima. It's http://machinimahelp.org