Beyond Machinima

Fantastic article up at Gamasutra: "Beyond Machinima: Rudy Poat and John Gaeta on the Future of Interactive Cinema". Its a great overview of some work that is being done today toward the future of real-time interactive cinema.

Finally, you have John Gaeta and Rudy Poat - these guys want to get you off of the couch and into an interactive cinema experience, and who better to do it? John and Rudy both worked on The Matrix - John won an Academy Award for his effects which include "Bullet Time," and then went on to work on What Dreams May Come. John is currently working on a few projects and Rudy is a Creative Director with EA Vancouver. We sat down with Rudy first, to talk shop about the new process they've created.

...They could all be chatting with each other on a mic, at the same time, and the camera could be recording all of that data and streaming it straight to film. It's pretty neat. I know the machinima guys are using game engines to make these little movies. They all log in and do these stunts while recording them. We're actually building it that way from the ground up. The big thing for us is the content and not the engine.

Working on Mass Effects has me thinking a lot about what the Next Gen of Machinima is. You see people like Peter Jackson, ILM and John Gaeta doing serious exploration into this and with their headway a big picture starts to become clearer. Remember, these 'little' machinima films made by the community are the cutting edge of this grand new medium. Everyone who brings their machinima work outside the surface limitation of the game engine are helping lead the way to a greater world of cinema and entertainment. We all inspire each other toward something greater.