General News – Machinima: moviemaking meets 3D game engines

Machinima is a process of making short films using game engines from games such as Quake or Unreal and characters created for those games as their actors. The results from this low-poly moviemaking practice are surprising: using camera framing and visual language from filmmaking adapted to game engines creates visual stories that are strongly tied to the characterstics of the engines themselves (themes, characters, environments, style of movements, low-poly geometry, sounds, etc.) and retain an air of familiarity for anyone who has played those games before. Here are some links on the subject: Wired article, Machinima.com, Machinima Film Festival. Sample movies: “Quad God”, “Apartment Hunt” (& “Hardly Workin'”). Check ’em out and judge for yourself.