Machinima (muh-sheen-eh-mah) is a blend of filmmaking, animation and game development that originated with video recordings of shooter games such as Quake and Doom. It is a popular form of filmmaking using 3D videogame technology to create movies of inworld action — literally on location in cyberspace. A convergence of filmmaking, animation and video in a virtual space, machinima pushes the frontier of audiovisual narratives and is created from the virtual environment – where computer-generated images do not require animation skills. Machinima is used to depict scenes with characters but more often in gaming and Second Life (See also MUVEs or Massively-Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games (MMORPGs).
Machinima can be script-driven, where cameras, characters, effects, etc. play in real-time. Machinima can be made with tools that game developers use to create characters and scripted events. In machinima roles change: characters are actors and the server doubles as camera, and records everything. Some use a combination of these approaches to create the film, recording custom assets in real-time. Since filming takes place at a data level, it allows greater flexibility in editing, by creating playback within the game engine itself. YouTube has a number of machinima channels.
References
Thanks to Mary Jane Kearns-Padgett for co-authoring this post.
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Yvonne Chan
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