From DM6 to Park City: Machinima at Sundance

Moe Napoli writes "Machinima producer/author Paul Marino recently posted on his blog that he will be attending Sundance later this month (Jan. 26th to be exact) to moderate a panel discussion about the rising artform of machinima (using 3D games like Half-Life 2 for filmmaking purposes). Amongst the panelists will be Red Vs. Blue/The Strangerhood creators Burnie Burns and the Rooster Teeth team (also featured in the Jan. 2005 issue of Wired), who will also present a live demonstration of how they produce their hilarious RvB machinima series. Pretty cool to see Sundance embrace this new form of independent filmmaking and even cooler to see how far it has come since some gamers started making Quake Movies."

Comments

A Question To Movie Makers

[teiresias]

So my question to movie makers is this.

If you insist on making game based movies (Resident Evil, Mario Brothers, the upcoming Doom, etc etc), why not actually use the graphics engine that the game was based on?

Seriously, with the exception of older games the graphics engines are right up there. Throw in some good voice acting, a little airbrushing to give it that Hollywood glow and bam you've got a film. And suprise suprise, it'd be fairly accurate to the game. Am I the only one who see's profit here?

Re:A Question To Movie Makers

[mblase]

Seriously, with the exception of older games the graphics engines are right up there

Define "up there". Hollywood CGI standards are not "Half Life 2" or "Doom3", it's Pixar and Dreamworks. In addition, remember that animation is still, for better or for worse, largely for G and PG stories in America.

There's no profit to be made in a movie that looks exactly like a game. Anybody could throw that together. What makes a movie unique is using real actors, real sets, and really expensive special effects -- not to mention real writers and real directors, which, let's face it, most games are sorely lacking.

Re:A Question To Movie Makers

[Megaweapon]

Huh? There are two reasons Hollywood makes movies based off of games. 1) An already established storyline that some people will be familiar with. 2) It saves Hollywood writers from having to come up with anything original. It's a combination of marketing and idea recycling. Who in their right mind would go pay to see a movie that was rendered on an NES? (Citing your Mario Brothers example... Besides, if that were the case then we'd all miss out on Samantha Mathis)