Machinima for Dummies: The Future of Machinima 2007 - Essay from Amsterdam Fantastic Film Festival

The Future of Machinima 2007 - Essay from Amsterdam Fantastic Film Festival

Hugh "Nomad" Hancock — Mon, 16 Apr 2007 17:57:00 +0100

I was asked to write a response to Paul Marino’s 2004 summary of the Machinima scene, from our perspective in 2007, for the Amsterdam Fantastic Film Festival.

Since they’ve been so kind as to let me re-post it online for people who won’t be at the festival, I thought I’d post it here.

BTW - the Fantastic Film Festival’s Machinima section sounds very cool. Attend if you can. Sadly it’s over the last week of writing this book for us, or we’d be there!

Second BTW - I wrote this a few weeks ago, before Machinima.com fixed its spam problem. However, I still don’t think my comments are inaccurate.

As you read this, it’s 2007, not 2004. “Diary of a Camper” was created more than ten years ago. No major Machinima producer has typed “demorecord” into Quake for almost half that time. And in four months, I personally will have been working in Machinima for a solid decade, watching it change from a hack to a minor gaming hobby to an Internet sensation to - what?

Machinima is in a strange place right now. Machinima techniques are diversifying to the point that it’s hard to even define the medium. Over half the Machinima Film Festival awards in 2006 were won by pieces which made enormously extensive use of conventional 2D animation techniques, layering, rendering and keyframing tiny clips of game animation together. “Edge of Remorse”, which won two awards, barely touched a game engine, merely making use of the art assets of “World of Warcraft” and not shooting in the game itself.

There is no one single Machinima community. Debates rage around “outside-in” Machinima versus “inside-out” - films that use Machinima purely for its technical advantages versus films that are based inside the world and community of the games that they exploit. Machinima.com, still the largest Machinima site, has aligned itself firmly with the gaming world, showing “frag videos” and game trailers. Much of the Machinima community has deserted it as a result, and you’re more likely to see an advert for “Brittany Spears Spreading” on the Machinima.com forums than a debate over Depth of Field.

Meanwhile, “top-end” Machinima productions now frequently take years to complete - “Bill and John Part 2”, unquestioned winner of the Machinima Film Festival 2006, took over two years to complete, for a twenty-minute film. “BloodSpell”, my own Machinima feature film, took three years, the same development time as a conventional animated feature.

The glass ceiling of Machinima becomes ever more obvious. Rufus Cubed, the creators of “The Return”, were offered the opportunity to develop their award-winning short into an animated series - the dream of every indie producer. But because “The Return” was set in and used art from “World of Warcraft”, the project depended on the goodwill of the game developer, Blizzard. When they decided that they didn’t want to spend time on a non-game project, Rufus Cubed couldn’t work on the animated series any more, even though there was money waiting to develop it. They were left with no way to do anything with “The Return” but to return to the same unpaid, amateur level they started.

The only obvious exit for most successful Machinima creators is into the games industry. And so more and more talented Machinima producers are hired to produce films for computer games, turning their talent at filmmaking in games to improving interstial cutscenes. It’s a way for them to use the skills they’ve learned and get paid - but their work is unlikely to ever enter the professional film world, and their independent Machinima projects suffer as a result.

The debate over Machinima echoes that over mashups, fanfic and found art as a whole. Some people believe that there should be, or already is, a way for producers to make money from the films they create, even though they use art created for another purpose, without the permission of the creator of that art. Others believe that it is inherently wrong to profit from found art, and demand that any professional Machinima production should create all its own art, characters, sets, and special effects - thus removing one of the major attractions of Machinima creation.

Some few people can make money from slipping through the legal cracks, negotiating with games companies, with a light touch on the tiller and a copyright lawyer on speeddial, but the total number of people employed full-time making Machinima as film rather than game adjunct is less than 25 worldwide.

Technology is starting to catch up with the problem of art creation. In-home motion capture continues to slide tantalisingly closer to reality. The Nintendo Wii shows the potential for Machinima creators to act in their own movies, eliminating the need for expensive, time-consuming, highly technical hand animation. But it’s not here yet. Tools for character creation continue to develop apace - but still tied to game engines with restrictive licenses. Professional Machinima packages have started trickling to market. These products promise to offer the same advantages as game engines for Machinima production - available, modifiable art and a real-time 3D engine - but without the legal hassles or game-engine limitations. But they’re still incomplete or in beta-testing, and we won’t know their true effect until one of the several contenders reaches maturity.

Every few years Machinima hits a strange dead-end point, a point where it must change and evolve. It changed from being “Quake Movies” to being “Machinima”. It changed from being entirely first-person-shooter game based to being a wider technique. And now it’s going to change again.

Will Machinima be the medium of the 21st century? Will it democratise film-making, and do all those other wonderful, utopian things that Paul, I, and many others have written and talked about over the last decade? Or will it become nothing more than a reaction to a truly creative medium, that of games design, with game players creating skits or fan-fiction based on their favourite games, and the promised advantages of Machinima for creation on the creator’s own terms vanishing in a cloud of restrictive licensing and alternative technology?

Or will it just be absorbed into the world of film and animation as a whole, its techniques diluted and enhanced, with the most successful creators embracing the mixed-media methods of “Edge of Remorse” - or indeed “300”? Will we even be able to distinguish what is Machinima and what isn’t, in five years’ time, when “Return 2” finally appears with live-action actors, composited frames, hand-animated monsters and a game-engine background? Will we be replacing “Machinimation” with “Anymation”?

It’s going to be an interesting time.

"The Future of Machinima 2007 - Essay from Amsterdam Fantastic Film Festival" by candyrosh

Fri, 12 Jun 2009 06:40:37 +0100

hi sir…….. Binary Picture Show is proud to announce their new blog, “Gnews”, the new home of Lady Mainframe. The unique Machinima show is back, and better than ever, with frequent releases (rather than one long show every 2 weeks), as well as a new presenter to ensure that the news can be delivered as fast as possible.

Gnews offers fans the latest in video game news, delivered by streaming video and conventional text format. Now catching up on the biggest events in the industry is not only easy, but much more entertaining. Thanks to the Machinima techniques employed, video posts are made shortly after the news is received, making sure you’re kept up to speed, on time. candyrosh

oakville dentist–oakville dentist

"The Future of Machinima 2007 - Essay from Amsterdam Fantastic Film Festival" by Mu

Fri, 20 Apr 2007 21:27:20 +0100

heheheheh.  An analogy comes to mind:

Some surfers were out in the water when they caught sight of a small but interesting-looking tidal anomaly. The surfers paddled over to check it out and were rewarded with one helluva wave, one that no one had seen before nor had the foresight to describe. The kind of ride a surfer talks about on their death bed.

Some other surfers were on the beach and saw the whole thing. One of them remarked “boy, I bet they wish they were on the beach so they could see that.” -

No, not really.  No matter how good the view is from the beach, I'm very glad to be out here in the waves.

"The Future of Machinima 2007 - Essay from Amsterdam Fantastic Film Festival" by Tom Jantol

Tue, 17 Apr 2007 10:23:59 +0100

“Some people believe that there should be, or already is, a way for producers to make money from the films they create, even though they use art created for another purpose, without the permission of the creator of that art. Others believe that it is inherently wrong to profit from found art, and demand that any professional Machinima production should create all its own art, characters, sets, and special effects - thus removing one of the major attractions of Machinima creation.”

Well, they are some other strange appearances; producers who believe you can make money from the films, but they legally bought models or any kind of assets on huge amounts of markets designed specially for that: to allow author of any kind to buy art of any kind for use in commercial work of any kind. There are free (or under convenient licence) assets everywhere, also. Of course, some things called games but free of copyrights issues are also everywhere. In general, to make copyrights free Machinima movie (and potentially profitable)is easier then people are aware (or want to be aware, but this is another subject). About the future of terminology, I think that Machinimation and Anymation can and will peacefully coexist in laud but healthy competition. Anymation.org site is on the way, by the way.

"The Future of Machinima 2007 - Essay from Amsterdam Fantastic Film Festival" by Hugh "Nomad" Hancock

Tue, 17 Apr 2007 07:39:44 +0100

Ken - I guess my worry is that whilst people in your position get to use their technical filmmaking skills, I’m a bit worried about the amount of creative freedom you’ll get.

The promise of Machinima is that everyone can write and direct, to me. And having done some work producing cutscenes for games, whilst it was very enjoyable and interesting, our creative freedom was very limited indeed.

I’m just being selfish. I want to see “output of Ken Thain’s brain”, and I’m worried that I won’t get to!

"The Future of Machinima 2007 - Essay from Amsterdam Fantastic Film Festival" by Nova

Tue, 17 Apr 2007 07:26:28 +0100

Very insightful article, and I couldn’t agree with you more. I’d noticed a few of these things myself, but hadn’t been able to put it into words… just more of a feeling based on what I’d observed. You also hit on some things that were quite eye-opening.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts!

"The Future of Machinima 2007 - Essay from Amsterdam Fantastic Film Festival" by 3dfilmmaker

Tue, 17 Apr 2007 01:44:02 +0100

In regards to those of us whose moved in to the game development arena with Machinima. “It’s a way for them to use the skills they’ve learned and get paid - but their work is unlikely to ever enter the professional film world.”

You make that sound like a bad thing. Whose to say a facet of the ‘future of machinima’ has anything to do with the professional film world? Maybe the revolution of machinima is just a reflection of the larger social shift of entertainment as it moves away from traditional media? As the technology continues to get into the hands of the people, it has the potential to grow into any unlimited number of directions.

Then again, that’s just part of the “It’s going to be an interesting time.” fun part.

Ken

"The Future of Machinima 2007 - Essay from Amsterdam Fantastic Film Festival" by Hugh "Nomad" Hancock

Mon, 16 Apr 2007 20:51:13 +0100

Thanks, Paul - I couldn’t find it on a quick search. Added your link to the article.

Yeah, it’s a weird time, and a weird change.

"The Future of Machinima 2007 - Essay from Amsterdam Fantastic Film Festival" by ILL Robinson

Mon, 16 Apr 2007 19:43:39 +0100

Here’s the original article for reference:

http://digitalmedia.oreilly.com/2004/09/08/machinima.html

As it were, I still believe in the original article’s message, though I agree with most of Hugh’s thoughts - it’s funny how a couple of years change shift the perspective.