Matrix: 4x1 is a popular machinima short. © Strange Co. 2003.

Another place you’ll find machinima is as a game tie-in with a new television show, Game Over, produced by Carsey-Werner-Mandabach and currently airing on the UPN Network. The game, Game Over in Machinimation, which debuted on www.UPN.com, was produced by Fountainhead Entertainment (www.fountainheadent.com), and tells a story about the main protagonist from the TV show, Raquel Smashenburn (voiced by Lucy Liu), a modern working woman juggling family and her job as a monster-fighting agent. Players can choose to play in either first- or third-person mode. There are six levels to the game. Players can also use the built-in game tools (based on the Quake III engine) to produce their own take-offs on the storylines.

“The ability to play a game as a character from a television show, and then to take that character and make your own short film, is just plain cool,” says Katherine Anna Kang, Fountainhead Ent.’s ceo. Game Over in Machinimation can be downloaded for free from the File Planet (www.fileplanet.com) Website; there is also a link from www.UPN.com. The game was sponsored by GameFly (www.gamefly.com). “We are the leader in the game rental space, making games easily accessible to the masses, says Jung Suh, co-founder of GameFly. “Combining our strong following of dedicated gamers with UPN’s loyal viewers, both the Game Over show and the Game Over in Machinimation game are teed up to be an extremely popular union.”

Another form of machinima was presented at the NextArt portion of the Florida Film Festival in March, 2004 (www.floridafilmfestival.com), where the zany ILL Clan (www.illclan.com), a New York-based animation studio, presented a live 3D animation show, On the Campaign Trail with Lenny & Larry Lumberjack, which featured two characters, Lenny and Larry, as they held a “Town Hall Meeting” as part of their campaign for the presidency. The animated characters were controlled and voiced by the ILL Clan performers (who have a background in improv comedy), and interacted with the audience. “And unlike the actual candidates, you can ask them anything you want, and they’ll give you an honest answer!” noted Matt Dominianni, animator and voice of Lenny the Lumberjack.

The ILL Clan produced a similar machinima show, Common Sense Cooking, for the 2003 Florida Film Festival, where their pioneering work was documented by the Discovery Channel.

The ILL Clan was also responsible for machinima productions for Spike TV, a division of MTV Networks. The company created short animated vignettes, co-directed by David Kaplan and Dan Torop, to introduce The Video Game Awards (VGAs). Each animated intro was created by game designers around the world. “By tapping the resources of the public gaming community it allowed us not only to produce animation quickly and effectively, but also to support the efforts of a lot of talented 3D designers,” says Frank Dellario, president of the ILL Clan. The use of machinima shorts as interstitials is reminiscent of how the animated show The Simpsons started out — as interstitials for the Tracy Ullman Show, where these short clips proved so popular that they were greenlit as a full-length primetime show.

This type of usage for machinima — generating short clips to try out in one venue, then using the resulting successful feedback to get approval for a full-out show or game — may become a prime application for this genre, especially in an age where TV shows, videogames and films represent huge gambles for studios, which are increasingly reluctant to try out new concepts that do not already have a proven track record in some other format (and thus seem hell-bent on flooding us with either unending sequels or re-workings of old TV shows).

Machinima production for TV does not stop with shorts. An animated drama to be made for broadcast television has just been commissioned by Scottish media groups. Called Rogue Farm and based on a story by sci-fi author Charles Stross, the machinima-based film tells the story of a near-future couple that is hidden in a technologically advanced but deserted area, and whose marriage is threatened by their reactions to a strange new threat — a “rogue farm.” “Machinima is a powerful technology, which is why we have been developing and shouting about it for the past few years!” says Hugh Hancock, director of the film and head of Strange Company (www.strangecompany), the animation company that is producing it.

Strange Co. also produced the popular machinima shorts Ozymandias and Matrix: 4x1. Rogue Farm was financed by the Newfoundland funding scheme, run jointly by Scottish Screen (www.scottishscreen.com), Scottish TV and Grampian TV (www.grampiantv.co.uk).