(Article also published at the Ideas Factory website)

 

Machinima, a portmanteau of the words machine, cinema and animation, is a flourishing art form where videogames players use characters, scenarios and tools within games to create animated short movies. It introduces a way of producing animation in real-time that is exceedingly flexible and cost-effective, and gives audiences a chance to collaborate actively in the creation of content with more possibilities than limitations. Machinima might be the quickest, easiest and most affordable way to create an animated film.

 

 

All an aspiring Machinimator requires is a videogame, a device to play it on and some way to capture the footage of the game play. Some of the earliest Machinima shorts were developed by just putting a video camera in front of the TV screen! Historically, creators exploited in-game glitches to great comedic effect, but today a game pad or mouse can perform startling panning shots and a cheat-code book can easily change elements from characters' appearances to the in-game weather. Consequently any game player can potentially become a movie director and produce shorts with stunning visuals and complex narratives with no previous knowledge of 3D design or programming. In little time anyone can set a scene, squander hundreds of spaceships or kill the good guy without breaking the bank or creating uproar amongst film execs.

 

While there have been elements of machinima present since the early days of computer gaming, this relatively new art form owes much of its current boom to the game mod scene in the late 1990's. Software titles like first person shooters Doom and Quake offered their players the option to locally modify how the games looked and to export video files of the game play to another medium, like video. Modern Machinima is much less complicated; the methods of production and the techniques utilised by machinimators makes it just another film genre, albeit created using alternative means. Machinima is a genre in its infancy whose potential implications are still to be seen.

 

 

In fact, it is gathering popularity in high places: George Lucas' team allegedly used video games to create Machinima sequences to help pre-visualize scenes in the most recent Star Wars films. MTV also is using videogames to produce remakes of existing videoclips.

 

In game, film and television circles, there's a lot of talk about what this movement may represent in the future. Most significantly, what has emerged is that it is audiences who are the active players in the development of the content. It is they who have chosen to make the transition from being gamers to producers. If you don't like what you're watching, don't just switch to another channel: create your own show!

 

Thousands of people have access to easy to use and affordable film production and distribution tools. There is huge gap in the bounty of output that can be filled by forward-thinking, talented machinimators. The medium provides individuals - independent of their gender, age or location - the opportunity to produce short animated films, which can brim with rebellion and visual flair.

 

 

The Ill Clan are pioneers in a new way of puppeteering. They are renowned for the creation of live comedy pieces where they move the games' characters while they add voice-overs live. The result is a series of hilarious shorts full of acidic social criticism.

 

Javier, producer of the Cantina Crawl series set in the Massively Multiplayer Online Game Star Wars Galaxies, meets with friends in bars and clubs in the virtual world and choreographs dance routines which they all perform together. He records the game play, edits the footage and adds the music. The outcome is a series of stunning music clips where Aliens and Jedi Knights dedicate themselves to swinging their hips.

 

Rooster Teeth is a group of friends who started recording an episode using glitches in the Microsoft XBox game Halo in 2003 about the misadventures and moral dilemmas of a group of soldiers. After two years they have produced over 50 well-received episodes of Red vs. Blue, available to download online. They have millions of fans worldwide. The team have also created a soap opera using the wildly popular game The Sims 2 called The Strangerhood.