Machinima: Films without Cameras

Animating Buzz, Woody and Sid for 1995's Toy Story cost thirty million dollars, while today's high-end computer generated imagery (CGI) can easily add up to a significant proportion of a blockbuster's budget. Yet many film-makers have found that you can make your own animated films using a home computer or even a games console, and they are turning to machinima to tell their stories.

Machinima, short for 'machine cinema', is the coming-together of film-making, animation and game development to create a new way of telling stories on screens.

Machinima makers are real film-makers, working with scripts, props and even actors, but instead of cameras they use the images generated in computer games or special machinima software. The beauty of the technology is that you don't need to be an experienced animator in order to create a multi-location 3d film with as many characters as you wish.

Successful Machinima short film 'The Apology' by Phil Rice.

Most machinima is made using off-the-shelf computer games like World of Warcraft or Halo, with actors using their game characters to follow a script while the director/cameraman observes and records them, using their game character's point of view as the camera.

But there are also special machinima programs like Moviestorm, which let directors set up scenes and animate virtual actors, even using multiple camera angles and specialised lighting. Machinima directors take the raw footage and edit it with cuts, fades and long shots just like a director working on film with real actors. They add voice-overs, music and sound-effects to tell a story, though distribution is normally online rather than through a glitzy cinematic release. That may change, however. This year the Cambridge Film Festival is featuring machinima alongside the latest films from Walter Salles and Werner Herzog.

Machinima techniques are also being used by directors as an alternative to story-boarding their scripts. Instead of flat images that convey the action, machinima can be used to 'pre-visualise' a scene in three dimensions and even plan the movement of cameras and actors. Steven Spielberg uses game software to plan camera angles, while George Lucas used the Unreal Engine game system to map out scenes from in the later Star Wars films.

Cambridge Film Festival is holding a series of Machinima screening programmes and workshops from 21st-23rd Sept 2008.

Bill Thompson | Published 22nd September 08