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Written by RAF-Blackace
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Wednesday, 08 October 2008 |
122 HITS
Machinima has reached a critical point.
Traditionally Makers of
Machinima have made films for a select audience, ie, players of the
game they made the film from. This has been true for World of Warcraft,
Second Life, Half Life and even IL2.
When we made Faith Hope and
Charity we tried to cross this boundary and attempted to make something
that would appeal to everyone. I believe we succeeded in the aim, but
the audience was still not there.
So, why are there so many poor World of Warcraft films out there seemingly famous.
Simple,
WOWC is played online by 15 million people, if only 7% of those people
watch the film it gets views of over 1 million and it becomes famous.
So these films have a massive audience, and the critics have assumed it means they are good, they were wrong.
Now things are about to change.
At
Cambridge these films were rejected out of hand by both the critics,
and the audiences. Even the professionally made WOWC films were
virtually booed off stage as absolute rubbish. The guys at the top who
run this stuff have now realised that this can no longer continue.
A
massive switch is going to happen in the following months which will
try to encourage machinimators to stop making films for select
audiences, and to start making main stream content with a good story.
If they do not, they will get no recognition any more at either film
festivals or by critics. Viewing hits will no longer cut the mustard,
it will be content and story.
IL2 movie makers take note. Now is
the time to start considering making films for more than the IL2
gamers. If your film has good commercial content, and a good story. It
has every chance of getting fair commercial recognition on a par with
any WOWC film.
Every one of the people who I spoke to at
Cambridge is now convinced this is the way it is going to happen. This
included Producers, Directors, Academy members, Industry professionals,
the BBC and the critics.
Time to blossom fellers
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Last Updated ( Wednesday, 08 October 2008 )
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Written by triniscourge
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Thursday, 28 August 2008 |
588 HITS
Disclaimer: I am by no means an expert in anything I am about to write about. As a matter of fact I am barely even an amateur. Forgive me if I sound like a pretentious dick.
I have been fortunate enough to be able to display all of my creations here at gamerztheatre.com and so today I give a little back. The following is an article about what I have learnt over the past two years and the methods I now use when creating machinima.
PREPARATION/PLANNING
When I first started making machinima a little over 2 years ago,
preparation and planning played little part in the process. Clips were
dragged, music was added and voila! I had created something unique.
However as unique as it was, it still fell painfully short of what I
wanted it to be. I jumped headlong into making more 'unique' creations,
but always felt dissatisfied with the result. At that point I decided
to do a little (and I do mean little) research into principles of
photography and film making. Apart from all the technical terms and
techniques I learnt, the most helpful thing I learnt was the importance
of preparation and planning. A good storyboard/flow chart can transform
that mundane montage into a film with gravity and meaning.
IMAGERY/SCENE COMPOSITION
The most powerful tool at your disposal as a machinima creator is the
use of imagery. The nature of our medium allows us freedoms that even
million dollar directors don't have. The direction of your imagery is
as important as your storyboard; how are the actors positioned in the
environment? What's occuring in the background? How does the background
relate to the foreground. These are questions that I now ask myself
with every scene. The entire process takes much longer, but the payoff is worth it.
POST PRODUCTION/EDITING
Editing can be the most crucial part of machinima/film creation. As
stated before, a good storyboard helps greatly with the flow and
cohesiveness of your scenes and can make editing a lot easier.
As important as imagery
is, it can fall flat without a good color palette. Slight corrections
in contrast, brightness and the balance of reds, greens and blues can
evoke a different response from the viewer. Here are some examples from
my latest trailer:
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Last Updated ( Monday, 08 September 2008 )
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