Machinima

Machinima () is the use of real-time computer graphics engines to create a cinematic production. The word "Machinima" is a portmanteau of the words ''machine'' and '' cinema''. According to Guinness World Records, machinima is the art of making animated narrative films from computer graphics, most commonly using the same engines used by video games.

Machinima-based artists, sometimes called Machinimists or Machinimators, are often fan laborers, by virtue of their re-use of copyrighted materials (see below). Machinima offers to provide an archive of gaming performance and access to the look and feel of software and hardware that may already have become obsolete or even unavailable. For game studies, "Machinima's gestures grant access to gaming's historical conditions of possibility and how machinima offers links to a comparative horizon that informs, changes, and fully participates in videogame culture."

The practice of using graphics engines from video games arose from the animated software introductions of the 1980s demoscene, Disney Interactive Studios' 1992 video game ''Stunt Island'', and 1990s recordings of gameplay in first-person shooter (FPS) video games, such as id Software's '' Doom'' and '' Quake''. Originally, these recordings documented speed runs—attempts to complete a level as quickly as possible—and multiplayer matches. The addition of storylines to these films created "''Quake'' movies". The more general term ''machinima'', a blend of ''machine'' and ''cinema'', arose when the concept spread beyond the ''Quake'' series to other games and software. After this generalization, machinima appeared in mainstream media, including television series and advertisements.

Machinima has advantages and disadvantages when compared to other styles of filmmaking. Its relative simplicity over traditional frame-based animation limits control and range of expression. Its real-time nature favors speed, cost saving, and flexibility over the higher quality of pre-rendered computer animation. Virtual acting is less expensive, dangerous, and physically restricted than live action. Machinima can be filmed by relying on in-game artificial intelligence (AI) or by controlling characters and cameras through digital puppetry. Scenes can be precisely scripted, and can be manipulated during post-production using video editing techniques. Editing, custom software, and creative cinematography may address technical limitations. Game companies have provided software for and have encouraged machinima, but the widespread use of digital assets from copyrighted games has resulted in complex, unresolved legal issues.

Machinima productions can remain close to their gaming roots and feature stunts or other portrayals of gameplay. Popular genres include dance videos, comedy, and drama. Alternatively, some filmmakers attempt to stretch the boundaries of the rendering engines or to mask the original 3-D context. The Academy of Machinima Arts & Sciences (AMAS), a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting machinima, recognizes exemplary productions through Mackie awards given at its annual Machinima Film Festival. Some general film festivals accept machinima, and game companies, such as Epic Games, Valve, Blizzard Entertainment and Jagex, have sponsored contests involving it.

History

Precedent

1980s software crackers added custom introductory credits sequences (intros) to programs whose copy protection they had removed. Increasing computing power allowed for more complex intros, and the demoscene formed when focus shifted to the intros instead of the cracks. The goal became to create the best 3-D demos in real-time with the least amount of software code. Disk storage was too slow for this, so graphics had to be calculated on the fly and without a pre-existing game engine.

In Disney Interactive Studios' 1992 computer game ''Stunt Island'', users could stage, record, and play back stunts. As Nitsche stated, the game's goal was "not ... a high score but a spectacle." Released the following year, id Software's '' Doom'' included the ability to record gameplay as sequences of events that the game engine could later replay in real-time. Because events and not video frames were saved, the resulting game demo files were small and easily shared among players. A culture of recording gameplay developed, as Henry Lowood of Stanford University said, "a context for spectatorship.... The result was nothing less than a metamorphosis of the player into a performer." Another important feature of ''Doom'' was that it allowed players to create their own modifications, maps, and software for the game, thus expanding the concept of game authorship. In machinima, there is a dual register of gestures: the trained motions of the player determine the in-game images of expressive motion.

In parallel of the video game approach, in the media art field, Maurice Benayoun's Virtual Reality artwork ''The Tunnel under the Atlantic'' (1995), often compared to video games, introduced a virtual film director, fully autonomous intelligent agent, to shoot and edit in real time a full video from the digging performance in the Pompidou Center in Paris and the Museum of Contemporary art in Montreal. The full movie, ''Inside the Tunnel under the Atlantic'', 21h long, was followed in 1997 by ''Inside the Paris New-Delhi Tunnel'' (13h long). Only short excerpts were presented to the public. The complex behavior of the Tunnel's virtual director makes it a significant precursor of later application to video games based machinimas.

''Doom''s 1996 successor, '' Quake'', offered new opportunities for both gameplay and customization, while retaining the ability to record demos. Multiplayer video games became popular, and demos of matches between teams of players (clans) were recorded and studied. Paul Marino, executive director of the AMAS, stated that deathmatches, a type of multiplayer game, became more "cinematic". At this point, however, they still documented gameplay without a narrative.

''Quake'' movies

On October 26, 1996, a well-known gaming clan, the Rangers, surprised the '' Quake'' community with ''Diary of a Camper'', the first widely known machinima film. This short, 100-second demo file contained the action and gore of many others, but in the context of a brief story, rather than the usual deathmatch. An example of transformative or emergent gameplay, this shift from competition to theater required both expertise in and subversion of the game's mechanics. The Ranger demo emphasized this transformation by retaining specific gameplay references in its story.

''Diary of a Camper'' inspired many other "''Quake'' movies," as these films were then called. A community of game modifiers (modders), artists, expert players, and film fans began to form around them. The works were distributed and reviewed on websites such as The Cineplex, Psyk's Popcorn Jungle, and the Quake Movie Library (QML). Production was supported by dedicated demo-processing software, such as Uwe Girlich's Little Movie Processing Center (LMPC) and David "crt" Wright's non-linear editor Keygrip, which later became known as "Adobe Premiere for Quake demo files". Among the notable films were Clan Phantasm's ''Devil's Covenant'', the first feature-length ''Quake'' movie; Avatar and Wendigo's ''Blahbalicious'', which the QML awarded seven Quake Movie Oscars; and Clan Undead's '' Operation Bayshield'', which introduced simulated lip synchronization and featured customized digital assets.

Released in December 1997, id Software's ''Quake II'' improved support for user-created 3-D models. However, without compatible editing software, filmmakers continued to create works based on the original ''Quake''. These included the ILL Clan's '' Apartment Huntin''' and the Quake done Quick group's '' Scourge Done Slick''. ''Quake II'' demo editors became available in 1998. In particular, Keygrip 2.0 introduced "recamming", the ability to adjust camera locations after recording. Paul Marino called the addition of this feature "a defining moment for chinima". With ''Quake II'' filming now feasible, Strange Company's 1999 production ''Eschaton: Nightfall'' was the first work to feature entirely custom-made character models.

The December 1999 release of id's '' Quake III Arena'' posed a problem to the ''Quake'' movie community. The game's demo file included information needed for computer networking; however, to prevent cheating, id warned of legal action for dissemination of the file format. Thus, it was impractical to enhance software to work with ''Quake III''. Concurrently, the novelty of ''Quake'' movies was waning. New productions appeared less frequently, and, according to Marino, the community needed to "reinvent itself" to offset this development.

''Borg War'', a 90-minute animated Star Trek fan film, was produced using Elite Force 2 (a ''Quake III'' variant) and Starfleet Command 3, repurposing the games' voiceover clips to create a new plot. ''Borg War'' was nominated for two "Mackie" awards by the Academy of Machinima Arts & Sciences. An August 2007 screening at a ''Star Trek'' convention in Las Vegas was the first time that CBS/Paramount had approved the screening of a non-parody fan film at a licensed convention.

Generalization

In January 2000, Hugh Hancock, the founder of Strange Company, launched a new website, machinima.com. Coined by Anthony Bailey in a May 1998 email to Hancock, the term is a misspelled portmanteau of ''machine cinema'' (''machinema'') which was intended to dissociate in-game filming from a specific engine. The new site featured tutorials, interviews, articles, and the exclusive release of Tritin Films' '' Quad God''. The first film made with '' Quake III Arena'', ''Quad God'' was also the first to be distributed as recorded video frames, not game-specific instructions. This change was initially controversial among machinima producers who preferred the smaller size of demo files. However, demo files required a copy of the game to view. The more accessible traditional video format broadened ''Quad God''s viewership, and the work was distributed on CDs bundled with magazines. Thus, id's decision to protect ''Quake III''s code inadvertently caused machinima creators to use more general solutions and thus widen their audience. Within a few years, machinima films were almost exclusively distributed in common video file formats.

Machinima began to receive mainstream notice. Roger Ebert discussed it in a June 2000 article and praised Strange Company's machinima setting of Percy Bysshe Shelley's sonnet " Ozymandias". At Showtime Network's 2001 Alternative Media Festival, the ILL Clan's 2000 machinima film '' Hardly Workin''' won the Best Experimental and Best in SHO awards. Steven Spielberg used ''Unreal Tournament'' to test special effects while working on his 2001 film '' Artificial Intelligence: A.I.'' Eventually, interest spread to game developers. In July 2001, Epic Games announced that its upcoming game '' Unreal Tournament 2003'' would include Matinee, a machinima production software utility. As involvement increased, filmmakers released fewer new productions to focus on quality.

At the March 2002 Game Developers Conference, five machinima makers—Anthony Bailey, Hugh Hancock, Katherine Anna Kang, Paul Marino, and Matthew Ross—founded the AMAS, a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting machinima. At QuakeCon in August, the new organization held the first Machinima Film Festival, which received mainstream media coverage. '' Anachronox: The Movie'', by Jake Hughes and Tom Hall, won three awards, including Best Picture. The next year, " In the Waiting Line", produced by Ghost Robot, directed by Tommy Pallotta and animated by Randy Cole, utilizing Fountainhead Entertainment's Machinimation tools, it became the first machinima music video to air on MTV. As graphics technology improved, machinima filmmakers used other video games and consumer-grade video editing software. Using Bungie's 2001 game '' Halo: Combat Evolved'', Rooster Teeth Productions created a popular comedy series '' Red vs. Blue: The Blood Gulch Chronicles''. The series' second season premiered at the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in 2004.

Recent history

In January 2019, Machinima, Inc., which had shifted its focus away from machinima-based content into general video game-related fare in its later years, abruptly discontinued their YouTube channels, with all their videos set to private. This came shortly after then-parent company Warner Bros. (via its owner, Time Warner) was acquired by AT&T; leading to the subsequent formation of WarnerMedia. On February 1, 2019, Machinima officially announced that it had laid off its 81 employees and ceased remaining operations. The company stated that certain employees were being retained to work for AT&T's Otter Media holding company, and that Russell Arons was "assisting with transitional activities as she explores new opportunities". The closure resulted in 81 layoffs from the company.

An opinion piece from ''Wired'' UK blamed the company's collapse on an "obvious misunderstanding of what Machinima actually was, or what traditional media companies were even buying when they purchased a ontent network, with the possibility of future machinima distribution networks of that size emerging being slim.

On March 6, 2024, Rooster Teeth general manager Jordan Levin notified employees that the company would close over the next several months. In an email, he cited reasons for the shutdown including "fundamental shifts in consumer behavior and monetization across platforms, advertising, and patronage", with it being reported that the number of subscribers to Rooster Teeth's "First" service had dropped to around one-quarter of their peak and that Rooster Teeth as a whole had been unprofitable for a decade. Then-parent Warner Bros. Discovery (formed from the sale of WarnerMedia from AT&T into a Reverse Morris Trust merger with Discovery, Inc. in 2021.) would gauge interest in ''Red vs. Blue'', and the studio's other intellectual property (including ''RWBY'', and '' Gen:Lock'').

Within the timeframe between Machinima Inc., and Rooster Teeth's respective closures, Australian animator Luke Lerdwichagul would gain prominence from his ''Super Mario 64'' and ''Garry's Mod''-based comedy series, ''SMG4''. He would eventually form the independent animation studio Glitch Productions with his brother, Kevin, while continuing to work on the series.

Production

Comparison to film techniques

The AMAS defines machinima as "animated filmmaking within a real-time virtual 3-D environment". In other 3-D animation methods, creators can control every frame and nuance of their characters but, in turn, must consider issues such as key frames and inbetweening. Machinima creators leave many rendering details to their host environments, but may thus inherit those environments' limitations. Second Life Machinima film maker Ozymandius King provided a detailed account of the process by which the artists at MAGE Magazine produce their videos. "Organizing for a photo shoot is similar to organizing for a film production. Once you find the actors / models, you have to scout locations, find clothes and props for the models and type up a shooting script. The more organized you are the less time it takes to shoot the scene." Because game animations focus on dramatic rather than casual actions, the range of character emotions is often limited. However, Kelland, Morris, and Lloyd state that a small range of emotions is often sufficient, as in successful Japanese anime television series.

Another difference is that machinima is created in real time, but other animation is pre-rendered. Real-time engines need to trade quality for speed and use simpler algorithms and models. In the 2001 animated film '' Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within'', every strand of hair on a character's head was independent; real-time needs would likely force them to be treated as a single unit. Kelland, Morris, and Lloyd argue that improvement in consumer-grade graphics technology will allow more realism. Similarly, Paul Marino connects machinima to the increasing computing power predicted by Moore's law. For cut scenes in video games, issues other than visual fidelity arise. Pre-rendered scenes can require more digital storage space, weaken suspension of disbelief through contrast with real-time animation of normal gameplay, and limit interaction.

Like live action, machinima is recorded in real-time, and real people can act and control the camera. Filmmakers are often encouraged to follow traditional cinematic conventions, such as avoiding wide fields of view, the overuse of slow motion, and errors in visual continuity. Unlike live action, machinima involves less expensive, digital special effects and sets, possibly with a science-fiction or historical theme. Explosions and stunts can be tried and repeated without monetary cost and risk of injury, and the host environment may allow unrealistic physical constraints. University of Cambridge experiments in 2002 and 2003 attempted to use machinima to re-create a scene from the 1942 live-action film ''Casablanca''. Machinima filming differed from traditional cinematography in that character expression was limited, but camera movements were more flexible and improvised. Nitsche compared this experiment to an unpredictable Dogme 95 production.

Berkeley sees machinima as "a strangely hybrid form, looking forwards and backwards, cutting edge and conservative at the same time". Machinima is a digital medium based on 3-D computer games, but most works have a linear narrative structure. Some, such as ''Red vs. Blue'' and '' The Strangerhood'', follow narrative conventions of television situational comedy. Nitsche agrees that pre-recorded ("reel") machinima tends to be linear and offers limited interactive storytelling while machinima has more opportunities performed live and with audience interaction. In creating their improvisational comedy series '' On the Campaign Trail with Larry & Lenny Lumberjack'' and talk show ''Tra5hTa1k with ILL Will'', the ILL Clan blended real and virtual performance by creating the works on-stage and interacting with a live audience. In another combination of real and virtual worlds, Chris Burke's talk show '' This Spartan Life'' takes place in ''Halo 2''s open multiplayer environment. There, others playing in earnest may attack the host or his interviewee. Although other virtual theatrical performances have taken place in chat rooms and multi-user dungeons, machinima adds "cinematic camera work". Previously, such virtual cinematic performances with live audience interaction were confined to research labs equipped with powerful computers.

Machinima can be less expensive than other forms of filmmaking. Strange Company produced its feature-length machinima film '' BloodSpell'' for less than £10,000. Before using machinima, Burnie Burns and Matt Hullum of Rooster Teeth Productions spent US$9,000 to produce a live-action independent film. In contrast, the four Xbox game consoles used to make ''Red vs. Blue'' in 2005 cost $600. The low cost caused a product manager for Electronic Arts to compare machinima to the low-budget independent film ''The Blair Witch Project'', without the need for cameras and actors. Because these are seen as low barriers to entry, machinima has been called a "democratization of filmmaking". Berkeley weighs increased participation and a blurred line between producer and consumer against concerns that game copyrights limit commercialization and growth of machinima.

Comparatively, machinimists using pre-made virtual platforms like ''Second Life'' have indicated that their productions can be made quite successfully with no cost at all. Creators like Dutch director Chantal Harvey, producer of the 48 Hour Film Project Machinima sector, have created upwards of 200 films using the platform. Harvey's advocacy of the genre has resulted in the involvement of film director Peter Greenaway who served as a juror for the Machinima category and gave a keynote speech during the event.

Character and camera control

Kelland, Morris, and Lloyd list four main methods of creating machinima. From simple to advanced, these are: relying on the game's AI to control most actions, digital puppetry, recamming, and precise scripting of actions. Although simple to produce, AI-dependent results are unpredictable, thus complicating the realization of a preconceived film script. For example, when Rooster Teeth produced '' The Strangerhood'' using ''The Sims 2'', a game that encourages the use of its AI, the group had to create multiple instances of each character to accommodate different moods. Individual instances were selected at different times to produce appropriate actions.

In digital puppetry, machinima creators become virtual actors. Each crew member controls a character in real-time, as in a multiplayer game. The director can use built-in camera controls, if available. Otherwise, video is captured from the perspectives of one or more puppeteers who serve as camera operators. Puppetry allows for improvisation and offers controls familiar to gamers, but requires more personnel than the other methods and is less precise than scripted recordings. However, some games, such as the ''Halo'' series, (except for Halo PC and Custom Edition, which allow AI and custom objects and characters), allow filming only through puppetry. According to Marino, other disadvantages are the possibility of disruption when filming in an open multi-user environment and the temptation for puppeteers to play the game in earnest, littering the set with blood and dead bodies. However, Chris Burke intentionally hosts '' This Spartan Life'' in these unpredictable conditions, which are fundamental to the show. Other works filmed using puppetry are the ILL Clan's improvisational comedy series ''On the Campaign Trail with Larry & Lenny Lumberjack'' and Rooster Teeth Productions' ''Red vs. Blue''. In recamming, which builds on puppetry, actions are first recorded to a game engine's demo file format, not directly as video frames. Without re-enacting scenes, artists can then manipulate the demo files to add cameras, tweak timing and lighting, and change the surroundings. This technique is limited to the few engines and software tools that support it.

A technique common in cutscenes of video games, scripting consists of giving precise directions to the game engine. A filmmaker can work alone this way, as J. Thaddeus "Mindcrime" Skubis did in creating the nearly four-hour '' The Seal of Nehahra'' (2000), the longest work of machinima at the time. However, perfecting scripts can be time-consuming. Unless what-you-see-is-what-you-get (WYSIWYG) editing is available, as in '' Vampire: The Masquerade – Redemption'', changes may need to be verified in additional runs, and non-linear editing may be difficult. In this respect, Kelland, Morris, and Lloyd compare scripting to stop-motion animation. Another disadvantage is that, depending on the game, scripting capabilities may be limited or unavailable. Matinee, a machinima software tool included with ''Unreal Tournament 2004'', popularized scripting in machinima.

Limitations and solutions

When ''Diary of a Camper'' was created, no software tools existed to edit demo files into films. Rangers clan member Eric "ArchV" Fowler wrote his own programs to reposition the camera and to splice footage from the ''Quake'' demo file. ''Quake'' movie editing software later appeared, but the use of conventional non-linear video editing software is now common. For example, Phil South inserted single, completely white frames into his work ''No Licence'' to enhance the visual impact of explosions. In the post-production of '' Red vs. Blue: The Blood Gulch Chronicles'', Rooster Teeth Productions added letterboxing with Adobe Premiere Pro to hide the camera player's heads-up display.

Machinima creators have used different methods to handle limited character expression. The most typical ways that amateur-style machinima gets around limitations of expression include taking advantage of speech bubbles seen above players' heads when speaking, relying on the visual matching between a character's voice and appearance, and finding methods available within the game itself. '' Garry's Mod'' and Source Filmmaker include the ability to manipulate characters and objects in real-time, though the former relies on community addons to take advantage of certain engine features, and the latter renders scenes using non-real-time effects. In the ''Halo'' video game series, helmets completely cover the characters' faces. To prevent confusion, Rooster Teeth's characters move slightly when speaking, a convention shared with anime. Some machinima creators use custom software. For example, Strange Company uses Take Over GL Face Skins to add more facial expressions to their characters filmed in BioWare's 2002 role-playing video game ''Neverwinter Nights''. Similarly, Atussa Simon used a "library of faces" for characters in ''The Battle of Xerxes''. Some software, such as Epic Games' Impersonator for ''Unreal Tournament 2004'' and Valve's Faceposer for Source games, have been provided by the developer. Another solution is to blend in non-machinima elements, as nGame did by inserting painted characters with more expressive faces into its 1999 film ''Berlin Assassins''. It may be possible to point the camera elsewhere or employ other creative cinematography or acting. For example, Tristan Pope combined creative character and camera positioning with video editing to suggest sexual actions in his controversial film ''Not Just Another Love Story''.

Legal issues

New machinima filmmakers often want to use game-provided digital assets, but doing so raises legal issues. As derivative works, their films could violate copyright or be controlled by the assets' copyright holder, an arrangement that can be complicated by separate publishing and licensing rights. The software license agreement for '' The Movies'' stipulates that Activision, the game's publisher, owns "any and all content within... Game Movies that was either supplied with the Program or otherwise made available... by Activision or its licensors..."Quoted in Some game companies provide software to modify their own games, and machinima makers often cite fair use as a defense, but the issue has never been tested in court. A potential problem with this defense is that many works, such as ''Red vs. Blue'', focus more on satire, which is not as explicitly protected by fair use as parody. Berkeley adds that, even if machinima artists use their own assets, their works could be ruled derivative if filmed in a proprietary

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