Machinima Spotlight: Voices

As I have addressed in previous posts, one of the hurdles that machinima faces as a fledgling art form is the same issues of representation all previous forms of media have had to overcome through their histories. When you look across the vast majority of machinima out there, the creators tend to represent that early gaming demographic that excludes both women and people of color. And as the ubiquity of home computing continues to grow and the gaming population proceeds to explode, we can only hope that this trend of homogeneous representation will be amended. But when we look through the history of any medium, these are simply part of the growing pains that each new medium undergoes. When we examine the trajectories of both Film and Television, they each demonstrate early tendencies to marginalize those who were not part of the dominant group. So while the landscape of machinima still largely encompasses the demographic of the early adopters we continue to see new voices emerge, representing not just different subjectivities but entirely new ways of envisioning what we can do with this ever-growing means of expression. I want to preface today’s Spotlight by saying that I have not chosen Katy Fosk’s Voices simply because she is a woman, but rather because she has created a unique piece here that illustrates some of the more inventive things being done with the “pro” machinima software out there: Moviestorm and iClone.

Molotov Alva Set to Blaze New Trail on Cinemax

As discussed last fall, the purchasing of the machinima “documentary” series, Molotov Alva, by Cinemax represented a very important moment both in the history of machinima as well as Second Life. Though a number of machinmators have seen some commercial success from their work, this marks the first real substantive support by a media outlet to invest in machinima as sustainable programming for audiences outside of the gaming world. A number of the detractors felt that much of the hype associated with this piece and it geting picked up by Cinemax was due in large part to the growing buzz around Second Life. As companines continue to invest in this virtual space, hoping that it will be the next MySpace or Facebook, there appears to be future possibilities on the horizon for machinmators willing to tackle what some have considered a problematic platform for making machinima. Regardless, this kind of widespread exposure for machinima can only help to engender a new space within the larger media ecology for machinima to grow. While viewers may simply take it in as animated programming, and at the end of the day all machinima is animated filmmakng, the folks at Cinemax can bear witness to the inexpensive production costs that will eventually be the reason why more media producers will choose this form. So be sure to check out the premiere of the series on May 15 @ 8 pm EST on Cinemax. As for the many who do not subscribe to Cinemax, if you wait till about 8:35 EST, the show is only a half hour, I am sure the internet gods will grant your prayers and it will be on You Tube shortly there after.

Machinima Spotlight: God of Machinima

Before delving into this week’s spotlight, I want to put forth a caveat so that my biases are clear. As I have previously mentioned, I think that we tend to gravitate towards machinima that are created in games we enjoy. Which is why I particularly enjoy films based in Half-Life 2. Having said that, I am a huge God of War fan and would place the series in my top three favorite of all time. I have been a long time fan of Greek mythology and often wish I could have Blades of Chaos chained to my wrists. So that’s out there now. I came across this week’s spotlight doing a search for God of War machinima and followed the hyper link trail that eventually led me to the God of War: Chains of Olympus website. Turns out they have created an interface that allows you to cut clips from the game together, add voice over, subtitles and music to create your own machinima for a contest called Become a God of Machinima. Machinima on the Sony PSP tends to be pretty far and few between because its hard to get much control of the game engine and only recently could you actually output the video for capture. But what is most interesting here is that the folks over at Sony have recognized the growing popularity of machinima and have tapped into the craze by creating this contest, which even as a devout fan I can see as an obvious marketing ploy. Regardless, some of the videos up on the site are quite impressive and I found today’s spotlight choice particularly enjoyable. Simply called God of War–Machinima, this 48 second short does a nice job of showing off the rather impressive graphics of the prequal to the God of War PS 2 series, Chains of Olympus. And the voice acting is very exceptional.

Licensed to Suck, Again.

Earlier today the folks over at Next-Gen released an analysis of the data they presented yesterday about the top 100 selling games of last year and offered several interesting observations about the future of the industry. One of the less shocking revelations and yet perhaps most depressing was the dominance of licensed titles versus original material. Of course this makes sense. Just like any other form of media, people like what they like and they like it again and again. So repackaging it in a new format is not so much about being unoriginal as it is about being fiscally savvy. I can sadly admit that I was one of the 3.3 M gamers who bought Transformers last summer. And like most, I was positive that it was going to suck. But as long as I got to press the Y button and make Optimus Prime transform with that sound that sits in the top ten sounds of all time for many of the men from my generation (all together now: KOK-CHI-CHA-CHA-CHE) I was willing to drop my $60. And while the game certainly had some fun moments, it was largely disappointing. Of course it is real easy to blame the developer for creating a substandard game, but the problem that most of these games suffer from is the lack of full scale development pipelines that allow for them to make games as amazing as they can. In the case of the Transformers game, developed by TT Games, I want to believe that every person on that development team held those characters and that sound as near and dear as I did, and they wanted to capture that in a gaming experience (and as a side note, TT Games re-envisioning of the Star Wars franchise in Lego form is perhaps one of the most creative and enjoyable licensed properties out there, so licensed properties work sometimes).

Machinima Spotlight: Retaliation – Episode 1 “Calm”

Last week Activision released a new map back for its widely successful shooter Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. As both a fan of the shooters in general and the COD franchise in particular, I thought I would explore what sort of machinima was being made with this rather powerful engine. Machinima.com recently held a trailer contest in conjunction with Activision as a promotional effort leading up to this release. The game has been out since last November and has found both critical and commercial success, so the release of a new map pack is an attempt to ride out one of the gaming success stories of 2007. Unfortunately most of the trailers felt exactly like you would expect trailers designed to hype a game: like marketing. And that is no disrespect to the machnimators who created the wining trailers. If anything, they demonstrated a media savvy sense of giving Activision what they were looking for. But unfortunately that looks a little more like marketing than filmmaking in this instance. I instead opted to choose another film shot in the gritty world of modern combat that does an excellent job of capturing the unbelievable images Infinity Ward’s new engine has produced. The series is called Retaliation and this is the first of what I hope will be many episodes by a machinimator named Connery Kappeler.

Koinup Lures SL Fans with Machinima Contest

Yesterday marked the first day to submit your Second Life machinima as part of Koinup’s promotional contest to both provide another outlet for films based in Linden Lab’s growing online community as well as draw machinimators into their social networking site dedicated solely to user-created content. If you are unfamiliar with Koinup, it attempts to merge Machinima.com with Facebook to provide this online venue for those who share the interest of using their games to create their own content. Though the site offers the option of subscribing to a specific “world” such as SL, WOW, or The Sims to name a few, the content seems to largely come from Second Life. And given the fact that both WOW and The Sims both have rich sites dedicated to machinima made in these games, it makes sense to target the more nascent SL machinima community. The contest specifically seeks machinima music videos and requires that entries use a selection from a list of artist who have provided their music for the contest so as to avoid the usual IP issues that arise when machinimators opt to use mainstream music that they do not possess the rights to. The contest runs until April 29th and winners will be announced on May 6th. Two winners will be selected by judges while a third will be selected by the Koinup community.

Virginia Tech Machinima: Education, Commentary, or Memoriam?

 

 

Last week I came across this machinima film posted on YouTube by Skatedawg27 thanks to Paul Marino over at Thinking Machinima. Entitled Virginia Tech Massacre, the piece uses the new Halo 3 engine to dramatically retell the events of last spring’s terrible tragedy. My first impulse was to add it to the Machinima Spotlight section, which I have been trying to better maintain these days after a long hiatus, but I found myself having very mixed feelings about the film. As most of you know, I have been pushing and advocating for more politically and socially minded machinima since I began this site. In fact, most of my recent academic work reflects this desire to see the boundaries of the medium we all hold dear to expand beyond in-game jokes and Red vs Blue knockoffs. So rather than spotlight the film and review it, I thought I would offer a few thoughts about it and invite my readers to share their views on the film. There are already some interesting dialogs taking place in the blogosphere about it, but I thought it important to get a sense of what many of you think.

Machinima Spotlight: The Snow Witch

I’m back! My apologies for the rather lengthy hiatus. I have been doing a lot of traveling for various conferences and have been actively pursuing a faculty position on the academic job market.  But things have settled down and I want to get back to both writing (as well as playing videogames). Part of the traveling I did recently took me to Leicester in the U.K. for the very first machinima film festival in Europe. Spanning three days, the festival was a great testament to the growing community surrounding machinima.  I even had an opportunity to chat with Bernie Burns about the success of Rooster Teeth and the Red vs Blue series. There were so many entries this year that truly pushed the boundaries of what machinimators are now capable of doing. I highly recommend checking them all out if you get a chance. A complete list of the nominations is available at the festival website.   At least be sure to check out the winners which are available on Machinima.com. The film that ran away with the most wins, including best picture and best direction, was the feature length film by Nanoflix (an Australian production house) entitled Stolen Life.  It’s a great film and I would love to spotlight it, but it is only available as DVD and I like to keep this space for machinima readily available for the readers. Therefore, I chose to spotlight the film that one best story: The Snow Witch

 

Machinima Spotlight: Cantina Crawl XII

I know it’s been a little while since my last post. I was in Tokyo the past week both for the Tokyo Game Show, and I also presented a paper on Videogame Activism at the University of Tokyo for DiGRA. A few comments on TGS: Drake’s Fortune lived up to the hype generated from this year’s E3. Having had a chance to play it, I can attest that its a title that will make me finally happy that I own a PS3. It’s a beautiful game that plays like a Tomb Raider meets Gears of War. I also finally got to play Assassin’s Creed (on the Xbox360) and was very impressed. It’s a stealth action game, but has a unique context sensitive gaming mechanic that opens a number of possible playing styles. In addition the city is massive and fully explorable. On the other end of the gaming spectrum, DiGRA is the largest international gathering of gaming researchers that meet every two years to share in their work. I had the opportunity to meet a number of the people I have been citing for the past years in my own work and hear their new research.

Book Review: Machinima For Dummies

Say what you will about the Wiley Press series of For Dummies books; that they are a reflection upon a fast-food culture that equates seeking knowledge to perusing the candy counter at a late night convenience store, or they embody the dissolution of our once famed Protestant work ethic into a penchant for shortcuts. Nonetheless, in this current age of information aggregation where a singular source no longer holds the same clout it once did, such a model of knowledge building can no longer be written off as lazy. It may still be too soon to say this is the smart way to learn, but we can certainly agree that it is likely the most efficient way to learn something. And given that machinima as an “area of study” (perhaps one day we’ll say discipline) exists primarily in pockets of wisdom spread across the web, a Machinima For Dummies book seems more than justified. Enter Hugh Hancock and Johnnie Ingram.

Those more familiar with machinima know Hugh has been a fixture on the scene since the early days, and most of you in-the-know have likely heard the story of how he misspelled machinima with the i instead of the e (machinema) as Anthony Bailey had first intended. If you haven’t heard it, it’s detailed in the book with that distinctive self-deprecating humor that Hugh is known for. Having played important roles in machinima’s history from his work at Machinima.com to the establishing of Strange Company, there are few who could be said to have more expertise in machinima (I should note that both Paul Marino’s book as well as Morris, Kellend & Lloyd’s book are important early editions to the rather non-existent body of machinima literature, so check them out as well). The co-author Johnnie Ingram made a name for himself as a site editor for Machinima.com and served as assistant director to Hugh on Strange Company’s feature length machinima film BloodSpell.