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iitil very recently machinima was an art form that couldn’t exist. It is technology-based and is perhaps the next great weapon in the guerrilla lilmmakers‘ arsenal. At its most basic level machinima is the term used to describe films made using videoganies. lltigli llancock is one of the medium‘s leading exponents and runs lidinburgh-based Strange Company. the world‘s only ftill time machinima production house and the home of machinima.com. Despite running on very little sleep and what sounds like multiple coffees (deadlines last night as they were putting the finishing touches to a trailer for Blunt/spell. their ftill length machinima feature) his passion for this embryonic ait form is infectious. 'Nlachinima is a way of using computer games technology to make independent movies for a fraction of the cost that they would otherwise be.‘ he explains. '11 allows independent filmmakers to make adventure or science fiction or fantasy - all the genres that are usually inaccessible to anyone without a £1 million plus budget. in your own home as a hobby.’ Rn! \‘.\‘ Blue is by far the most popular example of this. Take Ila/u. add a new

voiceover and soundtrack GO

and simply record all the

action direct from the

game (with a touch of DO

editing). ()r current

favourite I)(HI(‘(’ lit/(lo ])(III('('. taken directly

from Soul ('rt/i/n‘t'.

performed and recorded

live. However. things are getting far more complex

atid the level of artistry is leaping forward , exponentially. l’erliaps one of the most highly

praised and respected machinima productions is Anna. a short struggle of life story based on plant life cycles. ‘What a 3D computer game does in essence is construct a viitual world with its own physical laws just like the real world and that

o P a I I I I computer game will also have tools that will let you create anything you can imagine. What machinima does is let you

say we have this non-real world that we can ptit anything we

Henry Northmore finds OUt about the emerging art Of like in and let anything we like happen in. Let‘s make a lilmf machinima from Hugh Hancock, one of the people at the At first glance it looks like traditional computer animation

, . btit theie aie huge dilleiences in the two process. the vanguard of creating movres out of computer games. i'iintiiimcnuii one being lllttl it‘s recorded in real time. ‘lt‘s

very unlike computer animation. In many ways it‘s much more like puppetry or super-marionation. like (ierry Anderson used to use. You're creating the film in real time. When you say "go" the characters actttally move rather than games’ engines. Unlike traditional computer animation it is recorded in real time and in computer animation where you are painstakingly constructing what they are doing on a frame by frame basis. One is done by a very. very slow. precise process; the other is substantial budgets. Name derives from: Machine, Anime and Cinema. much more improvisational and much faster and I personally think a lot more ftiii. btit then I'm biased.‘ It adds a level of

Machinima (Ma-sheen-EH-ma) noun Film production technique using computer

at a fraction of the cost, allowing filmmakers to tackle concepts that usually require

(3 .‘t‘. ()c’. .‘t‘t‘fi THE LIST 91