soulxtc
December 9th, 2005, 01:19 PM
Machinima? Don't be embarrassed if you've never heard of it. A month ago, Alex Chan hadn't either. But that was before Chan, a 27-year-old French designer, made a hot underground film that's introducing mass audiences to machinima -- a technique that involves using video game software to make movies (see BW, 12/19/05, "France: Thousands of Young Spielbergs").
Working on his laptop with a $70 video game, Chan produced a powerful 12-minute animated film about the recent riots in French suburbs in less than a week. The film, The French Democracy (http://www.machinima.com/films.php?id=1407), is winning plaudits from critics who say it could finally push machinima into the mainstream.
WHAT IS MACHINIMA? Broadly speaking, machinima means using characters, scenery, and sequences from a video game to create a film. The earliest machinima films, which date from almost a decade ago, were made by gamers who simply planned and recorded sequences from their games. One such creation, made in 1996, was a silent film called Diary of a Camper. It was a produced by a group of gamers calling themselves The Rangers, who captured a 90-second sequence from the popular game Quake.
Working on his laptop with a $70 video game, Chan produced a powerful 12-minute animated film about the recent riots in French suburbs in less than a week. The film, The French Democracy (http://www.machinima.com/films.php?id=1407), is winning plaudits from critics who say it could finally push machinima into the mainstream.
WHAT IS MACHINIMA? Broadly speaking, machinima means using characters, scenery, and sequences from a video game to create a film. The earliest machinima films, which date from almost a decade ago, were made by gamers who simply planned and recorded sequences from their games. One such creation, made in 1996, was a silent film called Diary of a Camper. It was a produced by a group of gamers calling themselves The Rangers, who captured a 90-second sequence from the popular game Quake.