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Machinima - Spielbergs with a Joystick
securitas writes "The Toronto Star's Murray Whyte writes about the growing popularity of machinima as the birth of a new type of filmmaking and artform. The article largely focuses on Red vs. Blue but also discusses Jim Munroe's My Trip To Liberty City, in which 'Munroe adopts the genteel perspective of a Canadian tourist while meandering the seamy, violent streets of the game Grand Theft Auto.' The most interesting comment comes from the Academy of Machinima Arts and Sciences' Paul Marino who compares machinima to garage bands."
In Burns's house in Austin, Tex., they gather to `shoot' the episodes using the game console's record function.
Is my Xbox missing something, or is this a lovely little piece of misinformation?
Paul Marino who compares machinima to garage bands.
How do you mean Paul? I didn't realize Machinima animation artists wore trashy clothes, made a lot of teeth-splintering noise, got famous for 6 months to a year, and eventually died of overdose.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
You keep thinking that. I'll be sitting here trying to develop a business model.
So you can choose what scene will pop up next and follow the story in what ever form you like? (as far as the DVD is going.
(notice not posting anonymously)
Wow, I'm impressed! We have a real tough guy right, folks, one who ain't afraid to take direct negative moderations in the face and stand the tremendous pain without so much as a wince.
A true modern poet warrior. You Sir are just my complete hero.
As a director, a movie it's a image story you want to tell, this is just another way, but you still need creativity to do it.
I'ts like making remixes with your old tape deck machine and only one turnable in the early 80's.
What part of that took balls?
Machinima people don't seem to know how to write, draw, sing, dance, direct, film or much of anything else very well.
See? They ARE like garage bands.
While your opinion may be that it sucks, a very LARGE number of people think there is some very decent machinima out there, Red Vs Blue being the best example. I think it is one of the funniest cartoons I've seen on the net and the way they produce it shows that they put a lot of effort into planning it out.
You also seem to not understand that they aren't necessarily doing it because they're huge fans of the game, it just happens to be their medium. What an extremely ignorant post.
If you think you can do any better, then please, by all means do so, until then I suggest you not comment on how poor you think the quality of their work is.
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
Before, there was bacially no possibility to create any animation in the same way you would create improvised theatre. ( which is an art form, by the way... )
Of course, most of what we see today is still quite rudimentary, if not to say downright crap. But the potential is there.
- 1337poll.tk - check it out!
Go make a better machinima, then. I dare you. I mean, since you apparently can "write, draw, sing, dance, direct, film" and everything else better than anybody currently making machinima, I'm sure it'll be a instant classic. Or the next web fadjoke. If you are actually comparing machinima to a Hollywood movie, you are (a) stupid and (b) missing the entire point. Nobody who makes machinima is claiming that their machinima is better than anything Hollywood puts out. That's nuts. Comparing the two is nuts. They know that, I know that, everybody seems to know that but you.
Popularized massively by the quake videos, featured on GameSpotTV on ZDTV.
Red Vs. Blue was great. For about the first 'season'. There were a lot of cute inside jokes about Halo, like the limitless amount of ammo, and some amusing stuff about capture the flag in general("You asked for it? Why didn't we try that?")
However, they then promptly ran out of material. It has now degenerated into a lot of homosexual potty humor(you know, the kind that homophobes make? An entire episode consists of them playing with the android's, um..."switch") and so on. Much of the episodes are just so far out to lunch plot-wise it's like watching a bunch of frat boys trying to do their own version of Whose Line Is It Anyway (which is no great surprise, reading the blog and looking at the author photos. They all seem perpetually stoned). Any clever new ideas have been so severely beaten to death they've long since ceased to be funny.
Basically- it was great because the early episodes were well written and had purpose. Now, however, the plot sucks. Machinima is a nice way to do animation, but it's not even remotely impressive on its own; not even slightly. Watching some poorly written script that consists mostly of a bunch of identical halo characters talking to each other(and these conversations go on for a half episode sometimes!) is downright boring, and I've gone from a huge fan to "oh, they released a new ep? Hmm, well, I guess I'll download it".
Instead of just leaving it to their 15 minutes of fame and wandering off to do something else with their lives, or moving on to a new game (there are plenty, after all- imagine what they could do with GTA:VC!), they're just churning out the same stuff, ep after ep.
Please help metamoderate.
You sound like a pseudointellectual who's a little miffed that there's an art form out there that you don't 'get', when you believe you are supposed to 'get' all art because that's, well, the artsy thing to do.
The following statement applies to not only this subject, but other "what's the point" kind of posts: if you need to ask, you're not part of the intended audience.
Artists invest their whole life, not a week/month/year, to often make things that are much more harshly criticized than I do to Machinima.
I do appreciate the person's comment who said "Its a new form of art like improvised theater". Notice, I never said that it wasn't art, just that there hadn't been anything that was particularly well done throughout. There is potential for there to be great art there, but as an artist would tell you, the potential for art exists in all things.
Also notice I don't tell other people how to think (or how to mod), I just offer an opinion.
Here's an example of flamebait:
Were you moded up because you said something insightful or something predictable.
Has anyone else wondered what will happen when it becomes truly simple for EVERYONE to make movies, games, music etc. ? I mean, what will it be like when absolutely everyone can express what they want as they want it, even without technical skills? That's part of why I love the idea of machinima so much.
With Machinima, you do still need some technical skills, but you don't need cameras or locations, or a whole lot of photogenic actors. You can create the effects yourself (within the limits of the game engine). I don't think I have any sort of directorial talent, but I still dream of the day when I can just mess around with it, just for fun.
I imagine that if it ever does become super simple for people to create things like music and games and movies, we'll just get lots of crap. But maybe we'll get some gems. Maybe people will be less frustrated if they can express themselves artistically in some way. (Of course, some will be frustrated when they realize they have no talent and no audience.)
For an example of one man's vision, you can check out the anime Voices of a Distant Star, which was written, drawn, animated and I think scored by a single crazy guy.
"But I trust in the people's capacity for reflection, rage and rebellion." -Oscar Olivera
The most amazing thing about RVB is not anything about it being machinima. It's the exact opposite- the fact that it's filmed in a game is utterly irrelevant. They have good writing, good acting, and good direction, and that's why it's good. They could have done it in Halo or Quake or a 3D modeling program or a 2D animation program or with live actors. Machinima is not different from normal moviemaking at all, there's no difference in the skills and talents you need. It's just cheaper than production-quality CG, and it lowers the barrier to entry to the world of film, which is otherwise unchanged by its presence.
RED ONE: You know what really pisses me off about these melee battles?
RED TWO: No, what's that?
RED ONE: Our life expectancy is about 60 seconds.
RED TWO: Yes, it kind of makes the dental plan seem irrelevant.
RED ONE: (gets fragged)
RED THREE: Hi, I'm here to replace Red Two. I'm Steve, what's your name?
RED TWO: Does it really matter?
RED THREE: Guess not. Incoming!
RED TWO: (Dies)
RED THREE: (Dies)
I'm not saying group think is required. Some other people have said they didn't like Red VS. Blue, and that's fine - that's their opinion. But saying that everybody who does machinima is completely devoid of talent in a long list of areas is, well, flamebait.
Instead of an unpublished novel, now everyone will have an unpublished movie in their drawer.
Um, try reading my name sometime. I'm not the same person you were initially responding to, so, uh, maybe you shouldn't talk about intellegent responses. ^_^
A very large number of people think that this is some very decent pop music, too.
As for the "you can't comment until you've done better" argument, I'll just say that I've never found that one convincing. People will whine about anything no matter their level of experience.
True story.
re: "My Trip to Liberty City"
The cool thing about machinima is that it helps lower the barriers to entry for creating a movie. It looks a bit kitschy now, but with advanced HW acceleration coming down in price I think 10 years down the road we'll see some very interesting work.
Now what would be great is applying the open source model to work on larger productions. I'd love to see a faithful movie version of LOTR. Done by fans, so no one has to watch Legolas shield-surfing or pointless changes to fit it into a 9 hour trilogy.
Actually, I suppose you could start now as long as you picked open formats for storing the movie elements(dialog, movement, models, etc). Then you can change the renderer over time as things get better.
Imagine a machinima Gutenberg project - producing free versions of all the classic stories Disney ripped off.
http://www.masturbateforpeace.com/
intelligent is spelled with an i
I am the last person who should have made this comment...
"As for the "you can't comment until you've done better" argument, I'll just say that I've never found that one convincing. People will whine about anything no matter their level of experience."
I usually don't go there either - most people who review stuff don't claim they could literally make a better piece, but when the "review" consists of a long list of things that the artists suck at, well, it is tempting.
This sounds an awful lot like that "rock and roll" all the young pups are talking about. Likewise, it takes little talent to perform, as all it is is a bunch of grunting and screaming and loud crashing. It will never take off I tell you, as sooner or later people will realize that these rock stars are a bunch of no talent losers who couldn't play music to save their lives.
Sound familiar?
Did I ever say "I agree with every opinion expressed in Lord Whatshisface's post"? No. I do agree with the general opinion (very general) but I do not agree that the parent should be modded down. And even if I was in the same category, you said that I (myself) said he should be modded down, which would still be wrong.
Well, it just so happens that one of my friends goes to the California Institute of the Arts where there's a professor by the name of Eddo Stern who has been doing this since the early 90's...he then cofounded C-Level in 2001.
(oh, and here's the link to the page with the date of his latest lecture at CalArts, just search for his name...)
I read this story in the Toronto Star this morning and .. oh yeah. Never mind.
Didn't MTV have some shows like this?
I think it was called VideoMods
Can anyone find it? It was great show - the took virtual characters and made them dance to the music
... if you think base potty humor is the epitomy of a laugh, and community theater is the height of complexity.
For what it is (a good chuckle), it's pretty good. For anything more... well, go read a book, watch some shorts... even watch an x86 demo! The writing may be entertaining for awhile, but it's the same thing over and over, and it never evolved.
You quite definitely don't need to know how to cook to know that something tastes terrible. And you don't need to know how to do machinima to watch one and say it sucks. (Or that it's good!)
You also missed the flipside of your argument -- if you can't comment on it until you've done one, then you shouldn't say it's good, either, because what do you know?
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
Blahbalicious, Ranger gone plaid..
:) I'd love to see an open-source machinima OpenGL engine..
Some other one I cant remember the name of that was 4 hours long..
Then they can just distrib the movie as a little binary with a data file.
Its always disappointed me that RvB hasn't done a better job with compression and size choices.
They really need to offer a smaller version for the modem people. Lots of my friends love RvB, but have a modem and can't wait forever to download it.
All the sound it voice, why didn't the quicktime qualicomm voice compression? 9:1 or even 20:1 compression.. And 44khz?
Please.. The voice recordings are horrible.. 11khz would do just fine.
But other than that is freaking hilarious.
Talent hits a target no one else can hit; Genius hits a target no one else can see.
"But saying that everybody who does machinima is completely devoid of talent in a long list of areas is, well, flamebait."
Gotta say I agree. Frankly, people with a creative spark can make something entertaining with just about anything. Remember the Star Wars kid trailers that hit the net last year? I don't remember a fancy term like machima being used for that. It was a creative outlet, and it was exhausted. We all had a few good laughs, though because some peeps stepped up to the plate and demonstrated some talent.
I'm a little surprised that this is being considered as a new genre. I mean we've had puppets for years, this is essentially a digital extension of it. Eh oh well.
"Derp de derp."
See me scrolling through those pages, watch the flames appear as I type them...
I think, therefore I am...I think.
"Does anyone else have the balls to stand up and say Red vs Blue SUCKS?"
Yes. I also have the balls to stand up and say "Linux blows goats!" Unfortunately, few would honor either of our sets of balls for it since niether of us were smart enough to provide a thoughtful rationale for why we have that opinion. I guess balls alone really aren't enough for this world.
"Derp de derp."
God, that is awful. 4 people standing around moving their heads up and down. It's reminded me a lot of "Stimpy's Cartoon." If that's the state of the art, the art has a long way to go.
Dunno if anyone remembers this, but when I was younger I used to watch Blahbalicious, which is one of the most hilarious things I've seen in a long time. It's a feature movie made in Quake, and it's incredibly funny.
(no, I didn't make it)
Originally conceived for the Xbox game console as an alien-splattering, intergalactic shoot-em-up, Halo is one of the most popular games of all time.
I think it was running on the Mac long before it ran on the Xbox (and is finally running on Macs again after MS delayed it's release for half a decade.)
http://www.macworld.com/1999/07/bc/18halo/
A lot of people think that putting a lot of time into something makes it better. It doesn't - it just means you put a lot of time into it. Remember Sin?
That's a common misconception about art, I guess.
I cant' wait until that engine becomes available and you can make movies with it...
You can find more info, and a download link, right here : http://www.machinima.com/displayarticle2.php?artic le=411
The thing about the release of a product or a method which allows a larger audience to participate in creation is, that product is available to everyone, including the people who excelled at similar work with the previous methods. They can then take advantage of these tools, and have the experience of the past, and the ease/accessibility of the new product. Talented musicians for example, will always be talented - sure, they might grow slightly in number, but for the most part, talent lies within the person, and not the tool.
Q: What do you think about American Culture?
A: I think it's a good idea.
(adapted from Gandhi)
i think its somewhat fallacious to assume that distribution of these personal and custom arts will fit into the framework of widely-known works
yeah probably a good portion of it will be subpar
but i also think its likely it will be created for a much smaller and more personal audience
i imagine that this is how things like homestarrunner and red vs blue started and only gained a wider audience through word of mouth
after being created and shown to a close network of friends those friends showed it to theirs etc
this is afterall the idea behind the blogs, wikis, sites like slashdot and the internet at large is it not? extensibility, customization, etc
utilizing these ideas through new technologies only allows for these new artforms to be created and although (given the lowering cost of access) everyone can use it, this only means that more people have a hobby, which previously was limited to those who could afford it
i can see that there could be a large number of unknown artists (if you will allow) creating works that most arent aware of despite access to via the net
(for example im pretty sure my parents have never heard of red vs blue or probably even slashdot for that matter)
but for those looking for something along those lines (or any others determined by them), it is out there, available
i hate to put forth naively the ideals of democratization that arose with the internet but it isnt hard to imagine that someone can produce work on their own for fun and consequently getting enough recognition to live off of it
[this is infact what happened with the 'brothers chaps' of homestar renown]
and that aint a bad thing
Does anybody remember the old (early 90s) DOS game, Stunt Island? Essentially, the game provided an island full of a number of different sets, such as a city, an oil rig, a canyon, and so forth. The player could position cameras and props around these sets, and create event triggers for things like camera pans and object movement. The game also had an editing mode where you could splice together taped footage and insert sound effects. The game had a bias towards airplane stunts, but could be used to film virtually any sort of movie. Back in middle school my friend and I actually used it to create a short documentary about battles from World War II. Stunt Island was greatly loved by those who used it, and it still has somewhat of a cult following.
My question is, why hasn't anybody created something like this more recently? Although FPS game engines work for this, they certainly aren't designed for it, and there's quite a bit of roughness involved when one actually tries to create a movie. 3D animation modelers can also be used, but generally someone creating a movie has to focus on too many low-level details.
I'm actually considering starting up an open-source project this summer to try to create such a movie-creating tool, making heavy use of pre-existing graphics libraries like OGRE. Would anyone else be interested in helping out with such an endeavour?
I watched it for a while, thought it was funny, and they made some good jokes about how Halo is stupid, and fps games in general... but after watching a lot of episodes I just couldnt stop thinking "when are they gonna get to the fireworks factory?!" And then they never got there.
(the quote's milhouse watching the itchy and scratchy and poochy show in the simpsons), also Halo really is stupid.
Maybe we should have listened to our grand-pappys.
I must have made a million movies in that game. I wish I still had it :(
Agreed, parent of parent should be punished for calling for moderation. Moderators should mod based on content, not on instructions/requests of other posters.
This little thread seems to be an excellent example of people modding according to their likes/dislikes and not according to the quality of thought. The original post basically said 'machanima is not a genuine artform or at least has not yet produced anything significant' and for holding this view has been modded back to the stone age. The respondent, on the other hand, like machanima and as such is 'insightful.'
My 2c.
Read Pynchon.
If you can find a game "backup" on some retro gaming site, it installs and runs nicely in the dosbox emulator.
This would have more validity if the people doing this wrote their own 3D engines. The current set up is more like ... well, some idiots messing around in a 3D game whilst making MST3K type observations. Funny/entertaining? Possibly. Art? Unlikely.
The only act of creation involved is manipulating the art someone else has already created. If I, for example, made a glossy book full of pictures of fine paintings with witty or deep and meaningful captions, is that art? Whatever it is, that is basically all machanima is at the moment: using someone else's creation to tell a story.
Improvised theatre, incidentally, doesn't usually take the form of, for example, rearranging the lines in Hamlet and calling it your own. It doesn't rely on someone else's creation for its entire existence.
Read Pynchon.
The first few episodes are awesome, but once the intial burst of creativity is gone they just keep making more episodes.
G4TV's PORTAL was the best Machinima ever. It still plays, but since it only made it to 3 seasons, its not well known. Not to mention it was so...controversial.
It was all MMORPG-based Machinima. The first episodes were kinda bad, unfocused, but Dave really got his act together after episode 5 or 6.
Anyways, check it out! Hopefully his new show will be just as good... PORTAL
Does that mean they'll replace FPS weapons with walkie-talkies too?
However there has been a lot of really well done low budget fan films over the past few years. In fact I know someone that made videos from Battlefield 1942 from in game where the graphics are boardering on good high quality CGI work.
And I think that trend will continue. We used an Application called FRAPS in windows to pull video from games and save to a file on the Harddrive as we were making a music video using Rogue Spear: Black Thorn for a broadcast class once and then switched to Macs and added sound and such in iMovie.
I think the major thing here, is that the technology has increased to the point where its become easier and cheaper for creative people to share their ideas. But still, it takes quality writing and acting skills to pull these things off, otherwise it is no different than anyother form of eye candy that Hollywood puts out.
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
I'm not going to dispute that there is a lot of work that goes into machinima movies. But there are some serious IP issues with some of the Machinima out there. For example, if you take a video game, and create a derivative work based on that video game, who owns the work? Well, under American copyright law, the creators of the video game do. And that's true weather you spent five minutes or five years making it.
There are other issues with it that are tied to the idea that gamers are just cretins who sit in their mother's basements playing their [insert gaming platform here]. Is that justified? I suspect it's not. But it's there none the less.
If I were going to seriously suggest something that I thought could improve the state of this very interesting art, I would propose that someone (if they haven't already) create a movie making engine. Maybe based on one of the open source gaming engines that is specifically designed for movie making. Maybe that way Machinima could get some respect as a legit art form.
This signature has Super Cow Powers
Man, that game was supurb... really helped develop a sense of camera position, editiing etc. in the creation of a movie and narative... excellent, excellent game/sandbox.
Bush baaa-ad.
Wah... waaa-aa-ah!
Cmon! As a creative person you can't hold on to your medium as 'untouchable'. Stop being so pious. Of course they have the creativity. They came up with the idea in the first place. It happens in all creative mediums. Just like music did - going from traditional instrument players in a studio to people at home on a PC creating sample based music. If you have no creativity, people aren't going to like it no matter what what.
Compare what your saying to when they first introduced "talkies" to take over from silent films. I'm sure there were a lot of directors worried that the 'creativity' would be lost in the transition. And what does the mean today? Zip.
Sorry, I just was amused by the idea that you could get the mods to do stuff at your request.
it brings down the barrier, but doesn't raise people's skills.
I'd agree that it doesn't raise people's talent, but it does make it possible for everyone, talented or not, to practice the craft. And that will improve their skills.
The main gain is probably all those really talented people who never would have gotten close to making any movies that now get the chance to develop.
this is just another way, but you still need creativity to do it.
God damn, people on /. these days, can't even read the fucking POSTS they're responding to.
Have a Google for this (and Quake 2 Done Quick and Quake III Arena Done Quick - which is the single player levels with bots). Basically they're beautifully recammed recordings of the game played as fast as possible on Nightmare/Hard+ difficulty.
When I am king, you will be first against the wall.
Way to cry on a internet message board you fucking douche. Seriously man, I hope you get colon cancer and die. Your machinima doesnt help the fact that you probably don't get laid, pussy. Fuck off.
Lot's of people, including me, would like to make 'films' of this kind...we all have favorite cartoon shows, for example, that we would like to give a different ending or improve according to our tastes...or to make crossover 'films' where heros from different and diverse series are put against its other. For example, lot's of people would like to do Star Trek vs Star Wars, or Mr T vs Batman etc.
So, if anyone has the guts, here is a killer app for you: a 3d 'film' making application, where the user inputs the 3d characters, the 3d objects, the 3d environments, the physics laws, the dialogs and the sound, and the application resolves the physics, moves the actors and objects around, etc. This would not be the classic 3D making programs like 3D Studio or Alias Wavefront, it would be a film making app.
For example, it would give the opportunity to the user to say 'have Mr T run from here to there, then say "I pity you full!"', or have Jean Luke Picard say "fire photon torpedos", then the Enterprise would fire...
It would be a great past time, as well as stepping stone for deploying any film making talent out there. I personally can't wait to film my own Star Blazers episodes, 'cause I like dramatic space operas too much.
The Movies.
Just wait until that game comes out later this year... its going to revolutionize machinima by bringing it to the masses.
I wonder how much longer it will be until someone produced a dedicated app just for doing machinima. The engine has to look good, and be easy to use, but realtime requirements don't really exist.
Currently, our 3d modelling and animation programs have interfaces that are designed around extreme control, but take *forever* to actually model something. If someone can produce an effective visual side to an animation with nothing more than some people walking around (but can't draw worth a damn or act well), having tools to suit them would be quite useful.
This could actually make an interesting open source project, maybe using something like Crystal Space. Tradtionally , games have not done well in the open source world because of the way games work. Until a game is about 90% complete, it's generally not much fun to play. Open source generally needs interested people using a piece of software and identifying features that they'd like to have -- and implementing those features. In a game, this unbalances things. In a game engine used for machinima, it's possible to later on add in a "flying" feature and still benefit from the existing software that doesn't have such a feature. In a game, adding "flying" would severely unbalance the game.
Crystal Space might be a good base for this.
May we never see th
This is not only a fad, but one based on an extremely silly premise (which happens to be a fallacy) - that this is a "budget"-quality ("garage band") method for those who can't afford real filmmaking equipment to break into the art.
For the price of a PC with modern FPS-capable GPU, RAM and CPU someone interested in filmmaking could easily buy the basics necessary to assemble a short film/trailer/fund raiser. El Mariachi was completed on Robert Rodriguez' credit card for less than $3000. Trey Parker and Matt Stone created the proto-"South Park" demos for less than that. "The Blair Witch Project" got started on $2000 and raised $14000 more to complete the film.
What this really is, is Yet Another method of making cut and paste 'art' for people somewhat interested in fooling around but far more interested in gaming and having a gaming PC than pursuing any sort of genuine filmmaking goals or attempting serious projects.
"Artists" who use FPS demos as a basis for their art are IMO about on the level of Ed Wood Jr. with his stock footage...
If I ever hear someone say "Are you into Machinima too?!", I believe I'll crack their skull.
Man, god forbid someone take away your right to bitch.
Methinks the gamers are just pissed off because they think that the internet should cater to their minority needs, and they don't like it to be pointed out that the world doesn't revolve around them and their (in the eyes of the public) nerdy little hobbies.
I mod down anyone who says "I will be modded down for this", regardless of the rest of their comment
Does anyone have or know where a mirror is for this so I can judge for myself?
At deep-discount stores you can get almost-free ripoffs of the classic Disney ripoffs of the classic public-domain stories (e.g., Aladdin). Uhh ... does that count? ;-)
Corollary to Moore's Law: The IQ of new computer owners is declining.