Fancy making your own film but can’t afford such niceties as a cast, production crew and equipment? Replacing actors with computer graphics is an option, but one that won’t save you much money unless you have a source for computer graphics that’s cheap and convenient, like, say, a videogame ...
(Image: Julia, Brian Berndt - Half Life 2, published by Valve Software)
The technique of taking videogame footage and turning it into a film is called Machinima (pron: ma-shin-e-ma). Originating in January 2000 with the launch of machinima.com, the term is a contraction of ‘Machine Cinema’.
In the mid-nineties, Quake Movies emerged as a novel use for the landmark 3D-shooter’s gameplay recording capabilities. Instead of shooting rockets at each other, the player models bobbed up and down in front of the camera exchanging quips.
These movies were exchanged within the on-line Quake community and, despite being mostly filled with in-jokes, there were some undeniable stand-outs. Father Frags Best, a film about a man who suffers from a series of ludicrous flashbacks after returning home from the first Iraq war, is legitimately funny. But, whether or not they succeeded as films, their popularity was limited by the requirement that a copy of Quake was needed to watch them.
This changed in 1999 with the release of Quake 3, which, in order to prevent hacking, no longer supported built-in gameplay recording. The work-around was for Quake 3’s graphics to be captured directly, producing a standard video file. Other games, such as Unreal Tournament, were also recorded using the same technique. Thus the time was right for machinima.com, a site hosting movies made in any game, in video formats viewable with any standard video playback device or program.
People with broader filmmaking aspirations became attracted to the idea of making films with games. Games including The Sims and Grand Theft Auto, with their huge variety of 3D models and gameplay environments, offered a wealth of virtual actors and sets. Conducting the on-screen action with keyboard and mouse, the filmmaker was in control like never before. And, because the video generated was in a standard format, it was possible to apply post-production techniques using regular video editing software.
The first politically motivated Machinima was called The French Democracy, created by Alex Chan following the Paris riots of 2005 and reported on by the mainstream press. By making it in less than a week, which is the usual Machinima time-frame, Chan demonstrated the suitability of the medium for commenting on current events.
Perhaps the only Machinima to achieve widespread success is Red vs Blue, a series of over one hundred episodes made using the Xbox game, Halo. The group responsible, Rooster Teeth Productions, were able to incorporate humour that was genuinely funny without having to rely on in-jokes.
A deal was signed between Microsoft and Rooster Teeth to allow distribution of DVDs and merchandise, but that is not typical for Machinima. Although they generally don’t mind the free publicity, publishers of the games used in Machinima essentially own the derived works. Recently, Bloodspell, an 84-minute feature created by one of the founders of machinima.com, Hugh Hancock, has been denied DVD distribution by Electronic Arts, despite Hancock pledging that all proceeds would go to charity.
The future of Machinima, particularly for those who wish to make films for a non-gamer audience, is in real-time 3D engines such as iClone and Moviestorm, which are made available for the express purpose of amateur filmmaking and which bestow Machinimists with full property rights over their creations.
There is now a convergence between Machinima and the commercial filmmaking process known as pre-visualisation, or previs. Since the late 1980s, special effects shots have been rendered in previs for planning purposes, but in recent years this technique is being used as a replacement for storyboarding. The whole film is first made in previs before being recreated shot-by-shot as a live action film.
It seems that it is only a matter of time until a Hollywood film is signed for production based on the strength of its previs Machinima.
Alex Hutton
