When we talk about fan filmmaking, many words come to mind. ?Easy? isn't one of them. Creating a fan film?or any film, really?is a long and difficult process. Especially if we try to make it a good one.

More than professionals, amateur filmmakers find themselves tightly constrained by budget and time. As a result, the quality of nearly every aspect of the production process is similarly limited. A notable exception is the script: unless you're planning to hire an veteran screenwriter, more money is not going to affect how well-written a film is.

Locations, props and wardrobe, and equipment are another story. As fan filmmakers, we struggle to recreate the fictional universes built by crews with a hundred or a thousand times our budgets. We find ourselves limited to the locations around us?e.g. the ubiquitous dense forest?or we employ time-consuming (and often unconvincing) compositing techniques. Accurate costumes and props, while feasible, are prohibitively expensive. The digital age has enabled us to gain access to many of the editing and special effects technologies used by Hollywood, but the learning curve is tremendous and results are often disappointing. Amateur directors discover that finding qualified actors is hard enough without asking them to interact with an invisible digital character in front of a bluescreen set.

A limited pool of time and money forces the practical fan filmmaker to reconsider her ambitious, epic screenplay in favor of something simpler, more do-able, and unfortunately, less original. Consequently, everyone suffers: the filmmakers, the viewers, and the hobby.

Nobody ever said filmmaking was supposed to be easy. It isn't. But what if we could make some of these problems go away?

There's a production technique out there, invented a few years ago, that meshes with fan filmmaking so cohesively that you'd think it was designed with fan films in mind (it wasn't). It addresses most of the aforementioned problems while offering additional, often surprising, advantages. It's not a panacea, but it's certainly worth a closer look. I'm talking about machinima, the process of making movies out of games.

Machinima 101

Machinima is the name of both the process and result of creating animated films within a realtime virtual 3D environment. It's different from live action filmmaking or traditional 3D animation, but it draws on both and marries the two concepts in important ways (including the word ?machinima? which is a combination of the words ?machine,? ?cinema,? and ?animation?). The result is an innovative, relatively new technique for enabling machinima filmmakers (machinimators) to very quickly jump in and get involved with making movies, using just a computer, software, and people.

Making machinima involves setting up actors, costumes, and locations inside a computer game (instead of real life) and recording the results for later editing. Unlike traditional 3D animation, actual people (actors or puppeteers) manipulate the characters in real time rather than keyframing every 3D model's movement. Moreover, the game itself comes with resources like character models, level designs, and audio clips ready and waiting to be used. As a result, a machinimator can get usable footage much more quickly. In many ways, the process of coordinating actors in a machinima production is similar to live action filmmaking: leadership, people skills, and communication is still essential. On the other hand, because the filmmaking is done entirely within a game, a single person can do the acting for every character and combine the footage later on. The final film is put together in editing software like Adobe Premiere, and dialogue clips provided by voice actors get included at this point. Distribution channels mimic those of fan filmmaking: at film festivals, at conventions, and especially over the Web.

Machinima vs. filmmaking

(For a brief, visual overview of how machinima differs from conventional filmmaking, check out this short video, Inside the Machinima.)

Machinima continues to grow in popularity because its hybrid production techniques offer a number of general advantages over traditional 3D animations or live action films:

1. It's much faster to get started than traditional 3D animation, because characters can be animated in real time, by people, instead of via complex software packages and tedious keyframing. Character behaviors in machinima can also be scripted, but this is less common.


2. Games provide built-in resources, which provide a strong jumping-off point for machinimators. In live action films or traditional 3D animations, most assets must be created from scratch. It's still possible to create original characters, levels, items, etc. for machinima.


3. Since most games have physics engines, interactions between objects in machinima are already built-in. Character models often have a collection of useful animations already associated with them. Most of the time, traditional animators need to manually depict the way balls bounce, cars drive, doors open, people move, etc.


4. Theoretically, a machinimator can create an entire film by himself, with no outside assistance from other people. This is almost impossible in live action filmmaking. In addition, a machinimator can recruit actors from around the world to coordinate for filming online?only an Internet connection is needed. By contrast, unless special effects are involved, live action shooting requires all personnel to be physically on location.

It's not all roses, though. Machinima has several important disadvantages to consider when compared to traditional 3D animations or live action films:

1. Because they have to be rendered at 30 frames per second, the best game graphics don't look as good as the best traditional animations. Of course, both styles continue to improve in quality.


2. Game engines provide convenience at the expense of flexibility. A notable limitation of most games is character animation. Comparatively, games can't offer a wide range of convincing facial emotion or complex body movement, so action and comedy machinima are more common than dramas.


3. Coordinating people online during a machinima filming session poses a number of unique challenges. Being in the same place as the cast and crew is usually easier.


4. If the writing sucks, it sucks infinitely worse in a video game. Unlike a snazzy summer blockbuster with polished visual effects, machinima visuals aren't likely to distract anyone from lackluster plot or character development. Likewise, audio quality (especially for dialogue) counts, big time. George Lucas said that sound is half of the movie-going experience. In machinima, it's probably two-thirds or more, depending on how good it looks.

With these pros and cons in mind, let's take a look at machinima's production process, keeping in mind what you already know about how to make animations and films.

Machinima production techniques

By comparison, machinima might actually seem more straightforward compared to animations and films, simply because (at present, anyway) there's very little post-production work being done outside of the game engine. In fact, there's a whole purism movement going on that discourages any kind of external editing, but it's beyond the scope of this discussion. According to the book Machinima by Matt Kelland, Dave Morris, and Dave Lloyd (which I've heavily consulted for this article), there are four basic techniques for producing machinima: AI, puppeteering, recamming and scripting.

Before we discuss these techniques, it's worth noting that machinima's pre-production phase strongly resembles that of traditional animation or filmmaking. Storyboarding is essential, and as I mentioned earlier, a strong script forms the cornerstone of successful machinima. Characters must be fleshed out and assigned voice actors?it's interesting to note that unlike traditional animation, machinima dialogue is usually looped over the edited footage in post-production. If additional assets are required for the machinima piece, such as new costumes or locations, these must be designed in Photoshop, Maya, or other familiar software packages with artistic flair, careful planning, and an eye for detail. For the experienced animator or, to a lesser extent, live action filmmaker, there is little new to learn for this stage of machinima production.

Production itself is accomplished in one of four ways (rarely, a combination of them): AI, puppeteering, recamming and scripting. Different techniques are appropriate in different situations?none is definitively better than others.

AI is the simplest, requiring the machinimator to simply record actions in the game like a documentary cameraman or reporter. No script is needed; the game's AI (artificial intelligence) does all the acting itself. The main advantage of this technique is its simplicity.

Next is puppeteering, probably the most commonly-used technique. With puppeteering, the machinimator assigns each role to a real person (the puppeteer or actor), who controls a character or camera within the game, in real time. The results are recorded with video capture software. Just like real acting, the puppeteers must know their cues, requiring practice and rehearsal, and usually lots of bad takes and extra footage to sift through during editing.

Recamming is similar to puppeteering, but instead of recording the results as video files, they are saved as game files. This method allows a given ?take? to be replayed and tweaked within the game, as often as necessary, until the desired result is obtained. Only then is the actual video footage recorded. Through recamming, a single machinimator can finish a shot with multiple characters by puppeteering one character at a time.

Finally, scripting is employed to do things puppeteers can't normally do, such as precise, complex character or camera movement. Scripting requires a lot of time, but offers maximum control of a scene. If not done properly, scripting can produce results that look strange and rigid, compared to the immediacy granted by puppeteering.

Once footage is collected using one or more of these techniques, it is usually assembled in video editing software, where music, sound effects, and dialogue are added. The finished film is rendered as a single video clip for distribution on the Web or DVD. The speed with which machinima can be made lends itself to serials, and many machinima groups choose to release short episodes of a story on a regular basis.

Examples

Before we go any further, let's look at some examples of machinima, including a few fan films. Notice the stylistic and technical differences between each piece?what works and what doesn?t. Compare these fan films to their live action and animated cousins.

• A Great & Majestic Empire, episode 18 (Star Wars fan film series)


• Matrix 4x1 (The Matrix fan film series)


• Red vs Blue (award-winning, commercially successful machinima series)


• A Few Good G-Men (A Few Good Men parody)


• Mission: Slightly Difficult, part 1 (Mission: Impossible parody)

Done? The first thing I noticed was that machinima can be just as entertaining as any other kind of filmmaking. The second thing I noticed was that, with respect to quality, machinima fan films are surprisingly similar to other kinds of fan films. In other words, I?ve seen better, and I?ve seen worse. These machinima fan films fit in just fine with the fan filmmaking culture most of us are used to. They aren?t a different animal?just one we haven?t seen before.

And while machinima fan films are new to us, they aren?t as new to the gaming community. A Great & Majestic Empire wrapped up in late 2004. Other Star Wars-themed machinima fan films (Star Wars: Falling into Darkness, Galaxy Far Away, Cantina Crawling) have come along since. These kinds of films are being made, but for whatever reason, the fan film community hasn?t embraced them yet. I think we should.

Machinima and fan films

I said at the beginning of this article that machinima addresses several problems faced by fan filmmakers while offering additional advantages. Now that I?ve explained what machinima is, let?s examine some fan film-specific benefits in detail.

Games are specifically designed to create an immersive, authentic, virtual representation of a fictional universe. If that universe happens to be one in which we want to create a fan film, almost all of the work has already been done for us. Via the game?s assets, we have, at our disposal, a vast library of professionally-produced digital characters, costumes, sets, sound effects, music, and so on. Depending on the game, we may have instant access to realistic animation sequences, automatic lip-synching, realistic physics interactions, and other useful tools. All we need to supply is the story, the acting, and the editing?to many people, the ?fun stuff??and we can create a film pretty quickly and cheaply. This sounds like the ideal setup for producing fan films, and in many ways, it is.

Fan filmmakers have embraced the idea of serial or episodic fan films for years, but it?s never really been feasible. For example, IMPS: The Relentless, a live-action Star Wars fan film series, has kept audiences waiting over a year for the highly-anticipated second episode. High-quality fan films take so much time to make via conventional methods that many standalone projects never get finished, much less entire series. By contrast, A Great & Majestic Empire churned out 23 episodes in a year. Whether they?re any good is a matter of opinion, but at least they got made. Completion is a real achievement in the world of fan films, and any strategy for making it more likely, be it machinima or something else, deserves some room in the fan filmmaker?s bag of tricks.

Creative fans have occasionally resorted to producing audio dramas when a script proved too ambitious to be realized visually; a notable example is Second Strike. Consequently, a solid foundation of voice acting talent and experienced sound editors has emerged within several fan communities. Fan audio producers and fan filmmakers seldom combine their expertise on collaborative projects, instead forming islands of isolated ability. I propose that machinima fan films can and should bring these two groups of fans together under the common goal of producing entertaining, visually- and aurally-rich stories. I don?t suggest that audio dramas should be supplanted by machinima; on the contrary, both media enable valuable and unique interpretations of narrative. A machinimator might even opt to produce a visual interpretation of an existing audio drama. In any case, because the presence of well-crafted audio is crucial to successful machinima, it follows that contributions by the fan audio community are essential.

Most importantly, machinima offers the fan film community is the potential for innovation. Ten years after Troops, the way we make fan films has stayed remarkably constant. Likewise, the kinds of fan films we make, while more varied in genre, are surprisingly similar. Machinima offers us the opportunity to try something new?not just a novel way to make fan films, but a novel way to think about fan films. Suddenly, there?s a production technique that rewards certain kinds of ambitious writing and exposes a tedious lightsaber duel or over-the-top gunfight for exactly what it is. A machinima fan film, perhaps more than other kinds, makes storytelling the priority it should be. It places concept over costumes, dialogue over dueling, production over post-production, while sacrificing none of these things. By virtue of its own novelty, machinima begs us to try something new.

Always in motion is the future

By providing a brief overview of machinima, listing some relevant examples, and describing the potential benefits of machinima to fan films, I hope I?ve sparked some interest in machinima from the fan film community. I also wanted to raise awareness about a few machinima fan film projects that already exist, and encourage fan filmmakers to experiment with this avant-garde medium.

Machinima won?t replace other methods of fan filmmaking; I?d be surprised if it ever equals them. Machinima, live action, and animation are just different ways of accomplishing the same goal: to make a fan film. Each has its own advantages and disadvantages; the successful fan filmmaker will seek to understand them before embarking on her next project. At the end of the day, the whole point is to have a good time and make something of which to be proud. Machinima offers us a new way to do that.

A lot of people are calling machinima ?the future of film.? I don?t know about that, but I see machinima in the future of fan films.

References and further reading

• Hugh Hancock from Machinima.com on fan films as the future of machinima


• Interview with the creators of A Great & Majestic Empire


• Machinima produced with the Star Wars Galaxies game engine


• Wikipedia article on machinima


• Wired News: ?Machinima for the Masses?


• Wired News: ?Machinima: Games Act Like Films?


• Wired News: ?Machinima Marches Toward Amusing?


• Academy of Machinima Arts & Sciences


• The Machinima Film Festival


• Machinima (2005) by Matt Kelland, Dave Morris, and Dave Lloyd, ISBN: 1592006507

This series of opinions-editorials on the future of fan films, written by staff member Kurt Luther, will conclude with ?Growth.? In the meantime, we encourage you to discuss these ideas on our Jedi Council Forums.