Hugh Hancock of Strange Co. has been preaching the gospel of machinima for years. Rogue Farm (right) is the first broadcast machinima drama. © Rogue Farm.com Ltd.

Deus Ex Machinima: How it’s Done
There are two basic ways to produce machinima. It can be script-driven, where characters, effects and cameras are directed by scripts for playback in realtime. Unlike normal animation, the action is driven by events, rather than keyframes. For instance, a storm effect could come on at the moment a character exits a building. The second method (which is predominantly used) is to record the action in realtime within the virtual environment, with virtual cameras and lights positioned much as in normal filmmaking. It is this ability to shoot live that gives machinima its advantage for short production times.

A live director should feel right at home in this environment, and an animation director will enjoy the ability to give a direction and have it executed immediately, rather than in weeks or months down the road. Multiple takes can be done in realtime and then edited in post for the final product. Post-production can take advantage of the fact that all the data relevant to each scene has been captured — the location of the characters and set pieces, the camera angles and light values — and these can then be modified in a “what if” interactive process. It’s as if the director can retroactively adjust his camera angles or lights without having to call back the cast and crew.

Could these guys be the next U.S. leaders? Lenny and Larry Lumberjack run for president. © 2000-2003 the ILL Clan Inc.

The first step in generating a machinima project is choosing which game engine to use. Popular game machines include Unreal Tournament (either the original or 2003 edition), Half-Life, Warcraft, and the real genesis of the whole industry Quake (now in versions I, II or III), created by id Software (www.idsoftware.com) of Mesquite, Texas, which created the classics Doom, Wolfenstein and Quake.

As a beginning machinimator, you can work with an existing game as it is, and simply do a run-through of your favorite game, having your characters interact soulfully and meaningfully instead of hacking and slashing each other, and then record the output of the game to a video source such as a DV camcorder, after which you edit the video. After you get your toes wet, you can then go onto the professional track and create detailed scripts and storyboards, generate entirely new characters and sets [or buy them from sources such as Turbo Squid (www.turbosquid.com)], and use the game engine toolkit to fine tune the movements, lighting, camera angles and other features, and add precise lip-sync and appropriate audio, with more extensive post production to align with your directorial vision.

Professional quality production involves recording at the data level, instead of as simple video. Recording the data that describes the details of each scene — the exact locations and motions of each character and model, the camera movements, the locations of light and other physical properties — generates the most flexible form of machinima, as it creates a product that can play back within the game engine itself, and is ameliorable to future modifications by gamers.