Gamers the NextGen of Music Video Directors?
Interesting article over at MTV.com looking at how people are recreating popular music videos using machinima (mainly focuses on Sims2).
Making machinima — movies created with and staged within the digital environments of video games — is nothing new: It's even got its own "Video Mods" show on MTV2, now in its second season. Movies can be found on numerous sites, most prominently, Machinima.com.I was just thinking about this the other day, how probably the closest equal to a machinima filmmaker is a music video director. The reason for saying so is the music video is a short form production where you can totally break all the rules and explore the visual expression of the music. Camera rules, continuity, story, physics, logic, everything. And where music videos allow you the freedom to be as structured in the rules of filmmaking or creatively aesthetic as you wish, I think a lot of machinima makers are exploring the same path within the bounds of game engines and virtual environments. Which is why I guess it makes sense why music video's are a popular form of machinima production.
But with recent games, such as "The Sims 2," including official in-game recording options and robust tool-sets that actively encourage game-players to become movie directors, do-it-yourself music videos have proven to be among the most popular kinds of homemade machinima. Music videos — including Flemons' series — represent more than a third of the nearly 1,300 machinima movies on Sims99.com.
posted by 3dfilmmaker @ 2:09 PM
3 Comments:
At 9:07 PM,
Booklad said…
Fascinating article at MTV. And after watching most of the Music Video (which is very good), I'm excited that machinima is becoming more and more a part of popular culture. As for your comment about the machinima creator being like a music video director; I think you are partially right. My take is that it takes knowledge of what film/writing techniques you are throwing away, to be effective in a film. Most machinima directors don't even know the basics of filmmaking. One reason this MTV video is so good is that she copies the shots made by a professional director. Not at easy task, but not original either. I guess what I'm trying to say is that machinima is still in it's infancy and we really don't know what sort of aesthetic is most interesting (or popular) for machinima yet. I think we are going to find out pretty soon though. Still need that one big film to do the trick. The Sims2 music video scene sure goes a long way towards making machinima better though. Thanks for posting the article!
At 11:32 PM,
3dfilmmaker said…
Ya, with the machinima/music video correlation. I was thinking along the lines of visual exploration without being too criticized by the viewers (logical) mind. They can always fall back on the 'well its a video' or 'well its a machinima film'.
I totally agree that machinima is in its infancy in meeting general filmmaking guidelines, but that infancy is also a new license to explore and test new filmmaking rules. There's a lot of possibility toward experimentation into the next level of visual storytelling. Much like the Matrix bullet time, (Hollywood) filmmakers took the latest technology and brought something new and cool (at the time) to the filmmaking scene. I think machinima filmmaking will allow us to explore and possibly define the next generation of visual storytelling that is 'outside the box' of what we could ever explore before. I do believe all serious machinima filmmakers should get the basic techniques down though. Those are the tried and true from the last 100+ years. Its whats beyond that that interest me and filmmaking in a virtual environment where you can control every single variable (including time, physics, teleportation, etc. etc.) gives a lot of creative possibility to more aspiring filmmakers than ever before.
Love'n the feedback gtoon. Thanks!
Ken
At 10:32 AM,
Booklad said…
You are right about machinima being a new direction for filmmakers. I'm also very much in favor of throwing away the rules and making new, imaginative machinima films that are not like the pablum that we cue up for at the local cineplex. And as the tools get better (and less intimidating) we will see more interesting films in the future.
Sure am glad your site is back up. Excellent design and content. Thanks, Ken.
Post a Comment
<< Home