Machinima With A Political Voice

Moe Napoli writes "While machinima has long promised itself as a way to democratize animated filmmaking, it might finally be finding its way out of the steady stream of crass comedy and frag videos. Filmmakers with a desire to express their political views are using machinima as way of articulating their perspectives. One film that's gaining a lot of attention for its political message is The French Democracy, a machinima about the suburban riots in France, and made with Activision's recently released game/machinima app, The Movies. Additional commentary about the film is also on Clive Thompson's Collision Detection and Paul Marino's Thinking Machinima."

Comments

I knew this would happen...

[JamesInsomniac]

I knew people were going to take "The Movies" and make actual movies. Before, making machinima was hard and annoying. You needed a couple friends, a couple of X-Boxes, and a lot of free time. Now with this game, it has become so much easier to make machinima. I hope I see more political pieces like this. Maybe, just maybe, Machinima will be looked at as a higher art form...

Probably Not...

Re:This is news?

[Ape_the_Dog]

I think the news is that machinma can be used to spread political ideas now. Arguably, this is not the kind of movie I would watch for my own enjoyment, as the acting is a bit stale, but still, it's there now, and available to all - where before it was only available to those who really wanted to put a lot of effort into the thing.

It's also not entirely a gesticulated recap of recent events, as the movie shows you what happened, but also gives you background stories to three characters lives - detailing where the frustrations of the kids came from - something that whilst it might have been mentioned, had never been shown the news. Maybe you didn't watch the thing?