Machinima

Do you know Machinima (wiki) ? Somebody on a mailing list that I subscribed told me about it, and it once again reinforced my belief that being in Japan, it's not easy for you to know such new (some people will read as 'freak') things that are starting to happen abroad (or already started a few years ago), although it's somehow related to your major. Maybe it's just me, but I am glad I subscribed to these mailing lists.

Anyway, what is machinima ? Simply speaking, it's a movie made by using in-game characters (or the characters in your game) as actors or actresses. But wait, they are not alive, how can they be actors/actresses, you said ? True, they aren't alive, but you as a "movie director" can give directions to the game characters so that they perform the motions that you want, just like a real movie director does to human actors/actresses. So it's a CG movie, you said ? Not exactly, because in a CG movie production, you create everything by yourself, but in a machinima movie production, you use facilities or scripts already built in a commercial game, and just direct the game characters (and the camera). Imagine something like a level editor, if you will.

Okay, theory understood (I hope). Looking at the machinima movies in machinima.com however, it's not easy to connect yourself with machinima movies, to enter the movie world, like how we feel like we are in the world of the story when we are watching a cinema. I believe that the cause is, apart from most of the videos being made by amateurs, game characters don't look alive easily to common people, and it doesn't even to me, who play games. But, these things will soon change as more advanced graphic capabilities are developed, like PS3 (wiki) for example.

Thanks to an article by Michael Agger however, I found several great machinima movies ! This is the one that I like the most so far.



Internet is not (only) for p*rn ! is what I'd like to yell there :). Anyway, doesn't it remind you of a Disney movie ? And, I personally think that the same movie can't have the same effect if they are performed with real humans, so this new medium has its own market.

Other examples are not so straightforward, since it assumes that the watchers have played a similar game before, like in this Red and Blue, you have to understand the concept of the red team, and the blue team first, which is (strangely ?) sounds alien to common people, and even several casual gamers. I have only seen its first episode, but you know what, the number of episodes reached 100 ! And I think it's interesting, since in the first episode, one of the game characters were wondering, why they are there, if there is a God (you) telling them to do things, and stuff, like when people wonder why they were born.

If you are interested and want to find out more, there is a page in HowStuffWorks.com that will tell you more. I don't think that the research that I am doing about motion capture data (wiki) is directly related to it, but they certainly have a little connection.

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