Experiments in Machinina 1: Thinking with Portals

Put together over the course of a Sunday and most of that time was making the green/blue screen map in Hammer. Video was edited in After Effects. I know it's really not much, but it's mostly just a test on combining elements from machinima and conventional filmmaking.

I have a couple of small videos like this in mind, they're currently in production and I hope to have them up by the end of this week.

Unfortunately, Stage6.com is in the process of shutting down, so I won't be able to host anything higher quality until either I find an alternative or another high quality video website fills the void.

On a Side Note...

...I just realized that I haven't actually posted my real machinima on here, which I meant to do months ago.

The Concept of a Machinima Pre-production Website

Over the past couple of days I've brought up the discussion of a pre-production oriented website over at Machinima.com and Litfusefilms to see what those involved. Some of the feedback I recieved was mixed, but mostly pointed out that it wouldn't be that much of a benefit, for several reasons I'll go into at a later post.

Overall, I think one machinimator, SgtPadrino (who made the very excellent Born Into Freedom film), summed things up very bluntly-

"This is the straight truth: if all someone is willing to do is post a single question thread expecting somebody else to write a fucking essay about the ins and outs of Premiere or After Effects while you hold their hand, telling them what to do every step of the way, they will never create anything worth two shits. Period. That's the mentality of everyone that wants to emulate Lit Fuse, and everyone asking stupid goddamned questions about how to make quality work (God forbid they ask something anymore specific than "duuuude howd u get those sweet camera anglez???") then give up as soon as they realize that you've got to put effort in to get quality out. It doesn't matter if there was a fucking website, because they'd all still expect you to dig it up and link it for them - and hell, even then they'd just browse through and think "lulz taht program costs liek a hundred dollars fcuk that." If somebody really cares enough to make some shit, they'll take the whopping five minutes out of their day to get their own start. Once they're off on the right foot, hell I'd be all for helping them; they're at least willing to put something into it. For everyone else: why bother?"

Personal Thoughts on the Machinima Community

From my personal experience so far, I've come to find that there's not much of a pre-production support structure in the Machinima community as much as there is a post-production capacity, in that it's easier to get critique and comments on your machinima projects after they've been competed and released compared to getting technical advice or help when you're first creating your project. When trying to find a specific tutorial or guide to modifying an aspect of game (such as Half Life 2) with creating a machinima in mind, it can be rather difficult. This is mostly because there's more of a focus on modifying the game for single or multi-player gameplay.

While there are sites like Machinima.com, which do have articles on the basic theories on creating machinima or modifying some of the games commonly used for machinima, there doesn't seem to me to be a central 'hub' of sorts, with guides, articles and tutorials aimed specifically at creating machinima. I sometimes wonder if someone were to create a kind of "How to make Machinima" super website with more focus on the overall creation of machinima rather then just the critique of finished films, if it would be a helpful addition to the machinima community as a whole.