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."

Comments

Record Function?

[RexHowland]

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?

Socialization of the media

[AMG]

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.

Red Vs. Blue was good...but...

[SuperBanana]

The article largely focuses on Red vs. Blue

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.

Re:Red Vs. Blue was good...but...

[mstra]

I guess it's like anything else. You can remove the barriers to entry, but you still have to know how to tell a story.

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.

Re:Its new, its shiny, it smells like a truck stop

[Grey Ninja]

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?

Re:Super easy movie making?

[AndroidCat]

Rewind to 1987.

Has anyone else wondered what will happen when it becomes truly simple for EVERYONE to do professional-quality desktop publishing? I mean, what will it be like when absolutely everyone can express on paper what they want as they want it, even without technical skills? Using whatever font they want, different point sizes, 300 DPI, right-justification, kerning, possibly even with pictures included with the text?