[November 6th, 2007]
What makes a machinima film “good”?
Posted by Michael
I am sure it has been discussed before, but there are certainly a lot of different answers to the question what makes specifically a machinima film “good.” This is yet another go.
For the sake of the argument, let’s not pull back and simply say that machinima – like every other form of art – is simply too diverse to even talk about the issue. It so happens that there are more and more machinima film festivals and when judging films – what are the criteria to apply? Can you simply put a machinima film next to a classic animation and use the same idea of “good”? Is there some quality that is more specific to machinima and can only be achieved in that format? So the question might also be: what makes a machinima “better” than traditional animation techniques?
Below four possible answers. Or more precise: four longish questions about the topic that would greatly appreciated your feedback.
l’art pour l’art ?
In the beginning … machinima pieces were recordings of in-game performances. Machinima as tools for clan strategies and bragging movies are far from dead as the success of gamecasts prove. This machinima comes from the game and is made solely for the sake of gaming. Watching a Doom God at work can be a thing of beauty and has its own value. Here, the value of machinima is the fact that this game can only be properly presented and re-created in the form of a demo recording.
The virtual performance in the game is so extraordinarily good that it is worth an own documentary. Bungie praised the Halo 3 recording features focusing on that point. “Record your best stunts in-game and impress your friends.” All very good for watching Song Byung-Goo, “Stork”, battling it out in StarCraft or for Brandt’s DanceVoldoDance; but watching an average player or a repetitive series of stunts in Matrix style for more than a minute? Not that this form of machinima has no value. Its value is that of the home video, made for you and your friends. Good for the producer and his/her friends – not good for anybody else.
Yet sometimes the game parts are so well presented, that the film can become a representation of a bigger issue related to the game world. Play itself is a cultural activity and playing Halo on an expert level might reach the same status of aesthetic pleasure we get from watching a basketball star perform a slam dunk. That is when a machinima about the physics in Halo (like Glass’ Warthog Jump) can be so pure and game-focused that it tells something about the game and beyond. Likewise, BlackShark’s Project 1K is a good example of how the game can celebrate itself in ways that are amazing, beautiful – “good.”
We might call it the folk art of machinima – done by the people who really play the games and see machinima as something that evolves out of their play. Strangely enough, this art form is disappearing, it seems. Where are these pure recordings of play in today’s festivals? An offspring of it is the live machinima category but often live machinima performances, such as Tra5hta1k by the ILL Clan, are not anymore about playing the game but about playing a TV show.
narrative/ academy awards?
If machinima reaches out to larger audiences then an audience of five buddies enjoying their clan’s recorded win over another team cannot be the ultimate measure. One can question whether this “reaching out” is really necessary. Maybe machinima can and should stay in its niche, but the fact is that a lot of machinima certainly tries to reach new audiences beyond the hardcore gamer.
Machinima films try to shine in the traditional domains of cinema such as editing, design, directing, cinematography, sound – see Ricky Grove’s post on acting in Bloodspell as a good example. In that case machinima knocks on the door of traditional film productions and competes with their standards. If one wants to check the piece’s quality, you only have to check the categories of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Our very own Academy of Machinima Arts and Sciences plays with that reference and copies a lot of the award categories in the idea of the Mackie. The outcome, then, is a traditional film as Paul suggests on machinima.org :
By combining the techniques of filmmaking, animation production and the technology of real-time 3D game engines, Machinima makes for a very cost- and time-efficient way to produce films, with a large amount of creative control.
This is what seems to be the standard for the machinima film festivals at the moment. Machinima is seen as a fast and inexpensive way to make traditional movies. Nothing against that in principle, but are crucial areas such as editing, directing, and cinematography really the inherent strong points in machinima? All of these are pretty difficult beasts to handle, even for the most experienced machinima producer. They are already difficult in real film productions, but adding the extra challenge of a buggy game engine certainly does not help. That is why new tools are so important.
But there is also another caveat here. If comparison with commercial film production or even the independent film industry is the ultimate standard, then we have to embrace the commercial side of machinima more.
Raising the bar in writing, acting, directing – all the typical award categories – is definitely a great idea. The only problem is: if one concentrates on these categories alone the result would be a good traditional film in the best possible case. The fact that this film is made using machinima techniques would be a mere technological side remark.
So as much as these traditional quality criteria are necessary (oh, yes, they are very necessary), they also somehow lead away from the origin of the beast, the unique je nes sais pas of this new “thing” that is machinima.
experimental/ game?
In one way or the other, all machinima pieces are experimental but then there are those that somehow include the game-ness in the experiment and push it in terms of content and expression. When something like the modified G-man speaks to us using the voice of Bush in The Tyrant, then the film is interesting not only for the style and presentation but also for the way that Munson creates parallels between the current US president and the evil mastermind of the Half-Life universe. Combine that with the soundtrack taken from another video game (Silent Hill) and the media-mesh-up generates a new and invigorating piece (Jones blogged about that a bit earlier).
Another example is The Photographer by Kirschner. I always wondered about the strangely appealing “blood” shots he used; so when he visited us earlier this year I asked him about those shots and Friedrich explained that the movement of the NPCs in the street scenes were basically generated from the same algorithm that drives the movement of those blood cells. Because Kirschner still releases his pieces as live-processed uMods, this process is actually performed in real-time. We look at a live connection between different images and performances that is based on the use of the underlying game engine.
A third example reaches even deeper, namely into your graphic card and render algorithms. During his visit to Atlanta, Julian Oliver created a kind of Quake drawing program ioq3aPaint:
The program works by NOT cleaning up the screen and adding a smudging blur of moving polygons that are generated as game-AI bots move through abstracted Quake worlds. He did make some recordings of it but they never made it to any machinima site I know of. Nevertheless, ioq3aPaint is another example of combining game technology and artistic expression in an experimental machinima. The images are truly “moving” and constantly morphing into new shapes – but only due to the underlying game engine.
These pieces are only possible in machinima and highly unique. Because these examples let the game somehow affect the machinima piece (via content or technical performance) in a significant way they are “good.”
artistic/ social?
How could you distinguish between experimental and “artistic”? How could you imply that there is a machinima film without a “social” component? You can’t really, but stay with me for second.
Selectparks occasionally features New York-based artist Brody Condon and I knew about his Elvis (which has a heavy “game” influence, namely UT’s Karmaphysics) and some of his non-digital pieces were mentioned when we looked for the 10 most innovative machinima films earlier, but his latest work looks really impressive. One of those borderline cases where art installation and machinima/ game art overlap. He describes his work in a 2005 interview with EDGE:
‘I took the 3D model from the game and altered it, which is how I generally work. I don’t usually make new things, but operate on the level of creative consumption. Think about it: game mods, Legos, sampling and mixing, etc. We don’t really create anything anymore, we just consume creatively. It’s a perfect example of how our culture has changed in the era of late capitalism.’
And that sounds pretty close to the original machinima philosophy of re-using existing content in new ways – emergent or transgressive play. But Condon attempts to reference the game parts back to some social or cultural “reality.”
Here is one: the cross-referencing to the real hospital. Games, game art, and machinima that deal with these kind of cross-references can be more relevant, which can indeed makes them “better.” Yet, his latest pieces point in even another direction: namely referencing existing art in and through machinima.
Condon will exhibit his “Three Modifications” (Nov 15- Dec 20) at Virgil de Voldere in New York. Each piece runs on a customized computers and actually makes a point of its game-reference on the level of the hardware. The whole thing cannot be reproduced properly on TV or in a cinema – it is hardwired machinima. The gallery describes his work as:
For 3 Modifications, Condon modifies current computer games with strategies and tools taken directly from online participatory subcultures to create slowly animated, transfigured works that are like moving paintings. The subversive tactics of hacking and the intervention into commercial computer games that characterize the artist’s previous work, however, have given way to a critical examination of the politics of representation.
Art-speak? Indeed. But a machinima like Resurrection re-interprets existing art and art practices through machinima. Only live machinima can deliver Condon’s interpretation, no Pixar or Disney studio can create the effect in their next blockbuster. Such a pure approach combined with the necessary artistic background seems to offer another quality of machinima as it somehow re-frames the existing art practice.
so what ?
Breaking machinima down into three categories is plain cheating. Most “good” machinima pieces have a bit of everything, but as machinima is moving into the world of commercial film and TV production I suggest it makes sense to keep in mind that there are quality criteria of machinima that are unique, do not aim at inexpensive and faster traditional film production circles, and should see more attention when we try to decide what makes a “good” machinima.
I obviously miss tons of important points and details. That’s why I would love to hear what others think, so if you have really read this far please drop an opinionated line below.
Posted: November 6th, 2007 under site News.
Comments: 20
[Comments]
Comment from Ricky Grove
Time: November 7, 2007, 2:20 am
I think your three category treatment of machinima is an excellent way to discuss the idea of a “good” machinima film. Of course, you end up branching into many other topics and ideas, so the three categories you come up with are really just launching points to imagine/debate/discuss with yourself (and us) what I think is the core of your post: what makes machinima unique? This is a bedrock question that those of us who are inclined to try to make works of art out of our machinima films are going to have to answer
if we want to make films that aren’t simply copies of TV shows, hit Hollywood films or other popular machinima.
Almost two years ago I wrote a longish post at mprem in which I attempted to grapple with the some of the same questions; why use traditional film models for your machinima films? What specifically does machinima do that a traditional animation or live action film does not?
As you point out, machinima filmmakers trying to re-create traditional filmmaking have to learn and master the tools that allow you to create films like this, but then, as you imply, why make machinima films like this? Why not just simply make a live action film? Or a traditional animated film? Surely it can’t be because it’s cheaper and faster?
You and I are very much of the same mind when you consider the idea of machinima as a unique movie-making tool that can create art in a way that no other medium can. This is the area where machinima will have some kind of impact on other artists. No, films like these (Kirschner’s Journey, Person 2184) will not be a part of the media marketplace like RvB, but will be influential in another, more important way: they will inspire and provoke other filmmakers (and perhaps animators or live action filmmakers, too) to try their hand using this unique tool.
Forgive me for this lengthy reply, but you’ve brought up ideas/issues that have been bubbling in my mind for quite a long time. Bear with me here.
Machinima films are, by nature, a social medium, but they can be created outside of a social setting. Look at the distinction in film creation within machinima production itself; one form is based on scripting with little or no production crew, the other is similar to live action and is shot within the game world with a fairly large crew. Your look at Condon’s artwork is an interesting example of someone trying to bridge the gap between the world of the plastic arts (painting, installations) and the world of virtual art (3d scripted scenes). I’d have to see the piece to be sure, but it seems to me that his work is art. It owes a bit to Bill Viola’s installations, but it’s pretty unique at that.
Your last point is the most important for me because you remind us (the machinima community) that if we decide to move in the direction of commercial and professional success, we shouldn’t forget that machinima can be a unique art form. And that festivals and those that judge for them should consider pay more attention to films that don’t necessarily fit into the traditional film mode. These are excellent points that I think everyone should consider.
I hope to write more on this topic, or perhaps have a “round-table” discussion on the topic at machiniplex in the near future. Care to be a part of one?
Comment from Michael
Time: November 7, 2007, 6:20 am
Thanks for the speedy reply. And great to hear some support. If you could link to the mprem post, that would be great.
Sure, the more discussion, the merrier. For example, I would have loved to come to the Machinima Europe festival to discuss all-embracing topics like this one.
Comment from Overman
Time: November 7, 2007, 10:49 am
A great and thought-provoking article, Michael, thank you. I think you’ve done a very well balanced job of machinima taxonomy here by keeping a broad approach that does not feel confining.
I greatly appreciate your treatment on the cultural value of game-rooted machinima and the compelling artistic value of the pieces in a more experimental vein – pieces we both would like to see more of.
The only thing I take a little bit of issue with is the description of machinima which takes after traditional narrative forms. Yes, it’s cheaper and faster; as Ricky alluded to above, those are the most often used adjectives to describe machinima’s advantage in the entertainment arena. But I may divert a bit from some of my colleagues here in that I don’t think those things in and of themselves are narrative machinima’s greatest virtues.
What is central to this brand of machinima’s greatness (or potential greatness) as a medium is the way in which it fosters and nurtures the democratization of the filmic storytelling medium. And the resultant disenfranchisement of the gatekeepers who have seized control of this aspect of our culture. This is indeed largely tied to budgetary requirements – an area where machinima has a clear advantage over even traditional indie film; the relatively meager funds required to make machinima, coupled with internet proliferation, are obviously what make it such a fertile democratic medium.
But it’s more than that. Machinima, moreso than any other approach to film, is deeply rooted in the remix culture, the culture of found/remade art, the culture who is not just emulating the traditional forms, but repurposing them. Reinventing them. RE-CREATING them. In the richest sense of the word, Machinima IS itself GAME.
So I guess I’d posit that sculpting and focusing on the narrative form does not lead as far away from machinima’s essence as one might think. That essence is inescapable. But I do not think that good machinima necessitates a flaunting of the uniqueness of the technique. I stand by my long-standing notion that, outside of our own circle of enthusiasts, most viewers are not interested in what technique is used, but whether what they are watching is entertaining, compelling, or in some cases just feels “new.”
An analogy for consideration from the world of computer programming: It is considered good practice to keep one’s data and one’s program code in separate spaces. (The code is what does something to some stuff, the data is the stuff to which something is done). Modern web standards, for example, are built around this model (XML houses the data, HTML/CSS is the code which determines how that data will be displayed). Now I can choose to keep that same data and present it with Flash code instead of HTML… but ultimately, people are going to come (or not come) to my website if they want to get to my data; the code I use to present that data is important to enhancing (or harming) the user’s experience perusing my data, but ultimately if I do something neat-o which is only possible in Flash, that has secondary importance vs. whether the website facilitates a working connection to my data.
Story / concept / idea is our data, and machinima is the programming code we’ve chosen to DO something to it. I do not think the code is UNimportant – certainly there are some nifty things we can do with our code that cannot be done with other forms, things that are of great interest to our fellow programmers – but it is generally less important than the data. Isn’t it?
[Not to play contrarian to my own arguments here, just an interesting aside... if we look at what has happened in the actual implementation of code+data on the web, we find that in many many cases code and data have bled together; we find HTML web pages which contain data and code comingled in one document. This might seem like an interesting aspect of the analogy to play with regarding machinima; what happens when the code and the data are mixed / inseparable? In machinima's case, is something new born of that union? Where it breaks down is when we acknowledge that as far as web development goes, this practice is considered extremely shortsighted, as it makes migration of a site to new and improved technologies staggeringly more difficult down the road.]
Comment from Hugh “Nomad” Hancock
Time: November 7, 2007, 11:31 am
Wow, a lot of well-reasoned and lengthy posts here. This probably isn’t going to be one of them!
I’ve actually just got a couple of quick points I want to make.
1) I’m surprised that you didn’t mention Quake done Quick in your section on gameplay skill. As the first hit Machinima, really, of any kind (directed by Anthony Bailey), these are still the game-skill videos to beat for me.
2) (Warning – rant incoming, and this may be a bit off-topic) Why exactly do we think it’s a side-note that Machinima allows faster and cheaper production? Conventional narrative Machinima – yes, making traditional narrative films fast and cheap – changes the way that the entirety of our collective culture works.
Firstly: “Just” faster and cheaper implies that Machinima’s maybe half, a quarter of the price of conventional film production.
BloodSpell would have cost approximately $40 million to produce as a Hollywood film. It would theoretically be possible to produce it for $6m – probably in an anime style – but you’d be making at least as many compromises as we made making it in Machinima, frankly.
So, BloodSpell was “Just” 3,000 times cheaper to produce using Machinima. Three THOUSAND! That’s like saying that the Gutenburg press was “just” a faster way to copy a book. It’s like suddenly releasing a car that can travel four hundred thousand miles on a tank of gas, or a new source of power that emits little enough CO2 to reverse the Greenhouse effect. That’s not a small improvement, that’s a gigantic fucking revolution.
Second: That doesn’t “just” change the costs for conventional media industries. That doesn’t “just” mean that a few more films will get made every year. That changes the entire bloody model of the dominant narrative form worldwide. I’m not exaggerating when I say that this is Gutenburg press-level stuff. This changes storytelling altogether: it makes creating a long-form narrative film not significantly harder (and maybe even easier) than writing a novel or publishing a comic.
Pre- Machinima, making a film like BloodSpell would have taken the entire fortune of a fairly rich man. No-one can afford to do that unless they’re super-rich or a corporation.
Post-Machinima, where we are now, making a film like BloodSpell is taking a year off work – or two years without another hobby – and not getting your kitchen re-modeled. Anyone can do it if they’re fairly dedicated.
Enabling a very significant fraction of the world – like, billions of people – to tell the stories that they’ve been unable to tell, destroying a monopoly on the dominant storytelling form of the century (no, games aren’t there yet; depending on who you ask, they aren’t a storytelling form at all), converting the world from a read-only to a read-write paradigm (in Lessig’s words) – that ain’t a side-note.
(Incidentally, I also take issue with your argument that cinematography is harder in Machinima than real life. I don’t have dolly tracks, cranes, steadicams, or helicopters in Machinima – it’s a hell of a lot easier to shoot in than real life.)
3) On a related note – “If comparison with commercial film production or even the independent film industry is the ultimate standard, then we have to embrace the commercial side of machinima more.” Why? Most people in the commercial film industry – and certainly in the indie “industry” – would say that the commercial side of conventional film is a necessary evil, not an end goal.
Comment from Ricky Grove
Time: November 7, 2007, 12:56 pm
I figured you’d come out guns blazing, Hugh. We’ve had this argument before when I made my post at mprem.com. I respect your opinions, but I disagree with them for the most part. Basically, I think you are resorting to hyperbole when you state that machinima is “a gigantic fucking revolution”. If it’s such a revolution, why have there been so few feature films made in machinima? And if it’s so much faster, why did it take you three years to create Bloodspell? Average feature film production time is about 2 years now, how much time did you save? And I’m not completely convinced that your figures (40 million?) are all that accurate, Hugh. Sure you saved a bundle of money, but does it really foster a revolution? Who else is stepping up to the plate and following your lead? No one at this point.
And the use of the word “just” is entirely apt. No one is saying that machinima is a side note, you are over-reacting here. My point is that if a machinima film like Bloodspell re-creates the traditional narrative film then what is unique about it? Michael’s point (and I think Phil’s as well) is that machinima is at it’s best when it’s part of the re-mix culture, re-working and creatively blending elements that we are familiar with into new forms and new shapes. If you are simply remaking a traditional form, then the only benefit is cost (as you point out). And this isn’t the revolution you are talking about because it still takes a team of skilled people to make a feature film in machina. I don’t agree with your notion that “anyone can do it if they’re fairly dedicated”. Coding a tool for lip-sync is not something that the “fairly dedicated” can do, nor is the extensive animatics and re-recording sessions for audio that you went through in Bloodsell.
I don’t want to belabor this post, so I won’t go into more detail. We simply have different ideas on this topic. I do welcome a debate with you, however. Perhaps on the next monthly meeting with Phil.
Comment from Hugh “Nomad” Hancock
Time: November 7, 2007, 1:42 pm
I’m going to try not to side-track this discussion – please feel free to continue discussing “past” me on the main topic of this thread.
Sure, making a feature film still takes labour – but it’s now about the same amount of work, maybe about double the work of writing a good novel. That’s something that’s open to anyone, if they’re dedicated enough.
And actually, I think you’re underestimating the growth in long-form Machinima. We’ve seen three feature-length Machinima projects this year alone. With tools like Moviestorm (where it would be entirely possible to create a feature in a month – I might actually try that) you don’t need to go to the sometimes baroque lengths we went to with BloodSpell.
The production time is the same, sure. The difference between now and 10 years ago is that I don’t need the production time, the dedication, AND a medium-sized fortune.
Anyway, I now leap off my hobby-horse!
Comment from Hugh “Nomad” Hancock
Time: November 7, 2007, 1:46 pm
On a note perhaps more related to the main debate: how do we factor in the contextualisation of a lot of Machinima?
For example, I’ve recently watched Nhym’s latest movie Hard Like Heroic. It’s of very little interest to anyone who doesn’t play WoW. On the other hand, to those who do it’s side-splittingly funny.
“The Return” loses a lot if you don’t play World of Warcraft. “Quake done Quick” ain’t really interesting if you didn’t play Quake. Even BloodSpell works within the genre norms and conventions of the fantasy and to a certain extent RPG genre.
Fairly judging movies that are this context-specific seems to be one of the big challenges that Machinima-wide contests have. Of course, it’s a problem for the wider film and TV world too – witness Buffy and the Emmys – but how do we go about this? Is it part of the “artistic/social” element we mention?
Comment from Ricky Grove
Time: November 7, 2007, 2:13 pm
Sorry, Michael, I forgot to give you the link to my old mprem post. Took me a bit to find it. Try this:
http://www.mprem.com/e107test/e107_plugins/userjournals_menu/userjournals.php?read.69
It’s at the old site, but I was able to get to it easily when I plugged it into the browser window. If you have problems, I can send you a pdf. Re-reading my post, I still hold to the ideas expressed there and to the fact that the topic is very much open to debate.
Comment from Ricky Grove
Time: November 7, 2007, 2:37 pm
yeah, I think we would hi-jack the post if we continued with our own debate, Hugh. Why don’t we continue our debate at Phil’s next machinima meeting on the 25th?
Meantime, your comments on “fairly judging” machinima have already been decided for the most part in the real world. Look at the nominations and the ultimate winners of the European Machinima Festivial. The great majority of both fit into the traditional main-stream models of entertainment (with Tom Jantol as an exception, but then the award was for “experimental” machinima). BEAST was never nominated; “Morning Run Amok” was never nominated and both are off center of the mainstream in style and content. It’s why I don’t care for contests based on popularity as they don’t work.
But as for an honest critical assessment of machinima films in general, it’s people like Mike Jones that I turn to and find inspiration from. Old critical models are not always useful in considering new media like machinima. Micheal’s comments on Friedrich’s work is a good point; Friedrich insists on releasing his films as interactive experiences. So how to bring an honest critical perspective to his work when you are participating in it at the same time you are evaluating it’s artistic merit?
I agree that this area is going to be a big challenge in the future and it’s posts like Michaels (and to some extent Larry Lessig’s TED conference speech) and debates with you, me and Phil that will help us to understand what we are up to with this art form that is machinima.
Comment from Erik
Time: November 7, 2007, 6:32 pm
Michael,
I hope this means the Machinima book reader is back on track!
I am however confused by how many ‘categories’ you are talking about or even if you are talking about categories at all.
-if this a conference paper you may need to sidenote the ongoing argument on essentialism.
-Danto is an obligatory reference.
-”And that sounds pretty close to the original machinima philosophy of re-using existing content in new ways – emergent or transgressive play.” Original means good?
-You change from ‘good’ to ‘art’.
-Not sure if sport is art, and if it is, this confuses the issue.
-there seems to be a schism between using the game engine as a realtime rendering engine and using it as a lower-fidelity carrier of more traditional art.
-if there are academy awards then machinima does not have to be compared to Hollywood standards, there are many types of ‘film’ that are judged on their own technical merits, such as clay animation.
-Summing up at the end of the article with the strengths/weaknesses/issues of these 3 (or 4?) approaches is recommended.
Comment from Michael
Time: November 7, 2007, 9:14 pm
Good to hear different voices! I actually think it is necessary to have differing views of this question or it becomes pointless. So, I really do not think this should be somehow compromised and unified but kept open.
Still, a line or two about the remarks made: Gutenberg is way out of the picture. Just because CGI has become accessible does not mean it has improved its expressive range – just its production community. This is by no means bad or derogative but personal home videos are the result of cheap video cameras – there a bazillions of them – which does not make them better. This post was trying to look into what makes the few hundred productions outstanding and STILL typical for their production method. In fact, I think both have to be combined (and QdQ is definitely also up there, no doubt). The “Birth of a Nation” machinima would not be the perfect theater performance recreated but a quantum leap for its very own medium and expressive format. So I agree with Rick here.
I even think that this is the direction (albeit from a different angle) of Overman’s post – and I agree that the question of data and code is exactly what drives possible future venues of machinima. Maybe much more literally than he intended to write.
Erik: well, maybe I can make it a decent paper with more critical feedback. And you might be right: the “art” direction is a bit dangerous. I just got carried away by Condon. But clay animation (like Park) did go for the Oscars, so I am not sure they completely live on their own turf.
No summary here because I really do not know how to weight the points against each other. They seem to be too different and too close at the same time. No nice academic thesis > discussion > conclusion here, more an artistic blood bath.
Which is a nice pointer to the reader – the eternal thorn in my side … There is always hope.
Comment from Hugh “Nomad” Hancock
Time: November 8, 2007, 6:34 am
The printing press didn’t change the nature of the written word, either, so I’m afraid I don’t understand your reference there.
It’s not about being able to make moving pictures – people have been able to do that for decades – it’s about being able to tell the same stories as the studios.
Finally – how does this debate apply (aside from the game context issue) to the vast majority of Machinima? Sure, there is some work that runs interactively, or that changes as you view it, but the vast majority of Machinima, critically acclaimed or not (Bill et John, Edge of Remorse, Hardly Workin’, The Journey, The Return, Male Restroom Etiquette, Morning Run Amok, My Second Life, Beast, BloodSpell, Stolen Life, Snacky’s Journal, etc) is conventional linear narrative in a filmic structure – the audience doesn’t even have to *know* it’s anything other than conventional animation to appreciate it.
Sorry to continually question your premise here, and please feel free to tell me to shut up if I’m just not getting it – but I’m missing something right now.
Comment from Dxvid
Time: November 10, 2007, 12:06 pm
What is “good” about machinima is as loaded and fertile a question as that other famous question, “what is machinima?”! Everyone who takes part already knows what is good about it and everyone probably likes something slightly different from everyone else, so there may be as many “goods” as there are people taking part! For my own part the first answer that springs to mind is that it puts the art of animation within reach of most people, at least in the western world. An area of creativity is being thrown wide open with some amazing results! It is a revolution, in the sense that punk was a return to grassroots revolution in music and potentially just as explosive in that sound and picture is more potent than sound alone!
On a more practical note, in case you don’t have membership at mprem, the userjournals at the old site can only be read by members, but by anyone at the present site –
http://www.mprem.com/e107/e107_plugins/userjournals_menu/userjournals.php?read.69
Comment from Michael
Time: December 9, 2007, 9:28 pm
Sorry, something in Wordpress ate some comments, so I post them again: from Matt at Shortfuze
Good article, Michael! This gets right to the heart of what machinima is all about.
On the one hand, what makes a good machinima film is, of course, exactly what makes any film a good one: interesting story, absorbing characters, sharp writing, slick camerawork, well recorded and atmospheric sound, and so on. Those aspects are independent of the technology used to create the film.
(Slight digression here before I return – I have two, often opposing views on what makes a good film. There are the films I can watch over and over again because they’re massively entertaining, and the films that are powerful and have a lasting impact. Kelly’s Heroes and Schindler’s List. OK, back to machinima.)
On the other hand, when you judge a machinima film, you do have to take into account aspects that are unique to machinima purely because of the means by which the film is created. Often, these are things that can only be appreciated by other machinimators because they understand how something was done. So, for example, if someone creates a whole game mod to make their film, or manages to pull off an amazing stunt, that’s impressive and deserving of applause, but only someone who knows the original game will even be aware of what they’ve done, let alone how hard it was to do.
It might be easier to think of the latter as “skilful” rather than “good”. We should certainly appreciate and applaud the technical skill and craftsmanship that goes into some machinima films, even if the film itself wouldn’t necessarily pass muster in first-year film school.
And we should certainly nurture that talent – a film-maker needs to develop both their story-telling skills and their filming technique. It doesn’t matter which comes first.
Comment from Michael
Time: December 9, 2007, 9:30 pm
Sorry, something in Wordpress ate some comments, so I post them again: from Ricky Grove
Somehow I’m not getting the updates to this thread as I just discovered the new responses today. Since Michael is allowing a wide latitude to this debate and since Hugh didn’t make it to Overman’s monthly discussion group, I’ll continue my responses here.
The point of Michael’s excellent post seems to have been lost in this debate. He posed a question to himself; what makes a particular machinima film good? And then he proposes four possible angles to answer the question. The area where Hugh and I have been arguing is the traditional vs the experimental. That the majority of machinima films have a “conventional linear narrative” only makes my point that most machinima filmmakers (and most amateur filmmakers in general) simply copy what they know: realism as it’s presented in film and tv. If, for example, the Quay Bros. films were presented as a weekly TV series, more people would try to make stop action films in that style. A good deal of what makes art in our contemporary culture has to do less with tradition, but more with personal expression vis a vis re-working traditional forms into new ones.
If you look closely at the list of films Hugh offers as examples of ‘convention”, you’ll see that almost all of them offer variations on the form that, while not necessarily experimental, are different from the run of the mill mindless nonsense that passes for entertainment on tv. Each film is a personal work of art particular to that filmmaker and requires more attention than say “Sex in the City”. Yes, you don’t have to have specialized knowledge to appreciate these films as you might in the examples of machinima type art he offers in his post. But…the range of artistic expression is very broad. You don’t have to go from traditional to avant-garde just like that. It’s almost as if the examples of brilliant animators like Svankmajer have been forgotten for the pap of Red vs Blue.
The way this debate applies to Micheal’s post is that it appeals to readers (and to filmmakers) to consider what makes machinima unique and to make films using those ideas. Our debate has to do with how each of us defines “good” (i.e. artistic) machinima. Certainly, subjectivity is a large part of our difference, but there are ideas worth promoting and defending here. That a machinima filmmaker can and should make films that are not the Mackie/European festival winners that copy the latest TV show or current fantasy blockbuster is a good idea. We have far too few examples of this in machinima. There should be a lot more. That anyone would question this idea is strange to me.
I support Micheal’s ideas in his post. And I hope to create machinima films in the coming year that realize some of the ideas he (and Phil Rice ) present. Do I care if anyone likes them? No, because it’s not about convention as a means to popularity, it’s about personal expression. And what I have to say has nothing to do with “Sleepless in Seattle” or “Heroes”. Machinima filmmakers need to move away from the entertainment models of Hollywood and look at the great tradition of art from Europe and Asia. We are in a renaissance of animation. Go watch Miyazaki’s “Spirited Away” and forget about Shrek 5: you’ll be a better artist because of it.
Comment from Ricky Grove
Time: December 18, 2007, 3:01 pm
Thanks for putting this up, Michael. I appreciate it.
It’s an abandoned topic now, unfortunately. Aw, well, maybe I’ll argue with myself!
Hope you have a happy holiday.
Comment from michael
Time: December 19, 2007, 11:44 am
I do not think it is abandoned but neither do I think there will be nice conclusion. It seems, that you (Ricky) and I are pretty much on the same page. Maybe one could rephrase the original question and put it a bit more dramatic: If Maya scenes become interactive – where will machinima be?
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