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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?
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 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/
"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."
It's great that things like DV and Machima have made it easier for movies to be made without millions of dollars in budget...but as we should all already know - having a lot of gear and money to throw at a bad story doesn't make for a good movie. And you can have the crappiest production values in the world (Clerks), but if the story is compelling, that doesn't matter. If you've got a good story and know how to tell it, you can shoot your film on one of those old Fisher Price camcorders that recorded on audio cassettes.
That being said, I have always found the work of ill clan to be pretty entertaining and well done. Perhaps it's because the creators are all skilled improvisors and know how to tell stories. Or maybe just because I think lumberjacks are inherently funny.
Photography, technology, and my dog Scout - http://mattstratton.com
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?