Machinima is the process of creating animated films using 3-D graphics technology from computer or video games. The term can also refer to the films which are created using this process. Machinima is generally used for 2 main purposes. Its primary purpose is for entertainment. Whether it is telling an action, adventure or comedy story (and all genres of Machinima do exist) Machinima like most media exists first and foremost to entertain. Its second purpose though (and the reason why many video game companies both love Machinima and work actively to promote it through in game capture software and licenses that make Machinima fair use) is to promote the game itself. Whether the Machinima is about the games story (or even refers to it at all) the Machinima is filmed using a game and this has been proven to make people think, ‘huh, that game looks cool’ or what have you and buy it. One large example of this I will talk later is Red vs Blue.
The modern history of Machinima began in 1996 with the quake video, diary of a camper. Prior to this video Machinima was stunt or speed runs basically like a sports replay or highlight reel. What makes Diary of a Camper so important is that it introduced the idea of making actual films of video games with their own independent storylines rather than just filming the game itself. Following the release of Diary of a Camper Machinima has both gotten more popular and more mainstream and has come to be featured in other forms of media, like the episode of South Park, Make Love Not Warcraft which features extensive Machinima content of the game the episode is parodying, World of Warcraft.
Machinima #1: Red vs. Blue
In the History of Machinima Red vs. Blue is one of the most important works. It is a show that has been since its inception filmed from various Halo games. It has existed over the course of 11 seasons since its premiere on April 1, 2003. Over that time it has become wildly popular, and more significantly been embraced for promotional and advertising purposes by Bungie the makers of the Halo series of games it is filmed in. It was one of the first Machinima to have this happen and is historically significant for this reason. It also happens to be a Machinima I am personally fond of. Unlike the other two examples I have included two screenshots of Red vs. Blue instead of one. The first screenshot is from one of the more famous episodes of the first season (the where church dies and Tucker says “You killed church, you team-killing #$!#tard” is how most people remember it). The second screenshot is a trailer for the upcoming 11th season. By comparing the two you can see just how far video-game graphics and Machinima itself has come in that decade Red vs. Blue has been around.
Machinima #2 Massive
If you have eagle eyes you might have spotted that this Machinima is not in a video game at all and been confused. You would have been correct, Massive is a piece of Machinima creating software that was never intended for (or to my knowledge used) in a video-game at all. Massive was actually created by Hollywood for the Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers movie (and has been used in many movies since) for the purpose of creating more intelligent and realistic armies for the many large and epic battle scenes in the books. This one, the Battle of Helm’s Deep had over 70,000 Orcish Uruk Hai and human soldiers fighting and would have been prohibitively expensive to film with that many actors. It also would have looked awfully unrealistic done the way Hollywood previous filmed these things by duplicating every individual actor (playing a soldier) thousands of times to create a gigantic crowd. Instead Massive intelligently and indepently simulates each individual soldiers movements (on both sides) and their interactions and fighting. Its Artificial Intelligence makes the battle look believable by having soldier choose individually from a wide range of possible attacks and thus looks much more realistic than having hundreds of clones doing the exact same thing. It is a great example of the potential of Machinima technology outside of its traditional environment.
Machinima 3: An 8 Reenactment Bit Dungeons and Dragons
For my Third Machinima I chose something much less well known but totally hilarious. I thought it important to show that Machinima isn’t always epic battles and wacky sci-fi (though Red Vs. Blue is also sometimes a comedy) but it can also just be a silly parody. A second thing that An 8 Reenactment Bit Dungeons and Dragons demonstrates is that Machinima need not have anything at all to do with the game it was filmed. In the case of An 8 Reenactment Bit Dungeons and Dragons it was filmed using an early Final Fantasy game, yet besides using its sprites it has nothing to do with Final Fantasy at all. It is just an entertaining parody of Dungeons and Dragons players and common stereotypes about them. The most famous line from it, “I cast magic missile at the darkness,” has shown up in a few surprising places like the Borderlands 2 Expansion Tiny Tina’s Assault on Dragon’s Keep (itself a D&D Parody) where you can cast the spell ‘Magic Missile’, at a hidden area called ‘The Darkness’ to unlock a secret treasure chest.
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