Wii and Guitar Hero: stand up you lazy bum! + a little machinima followup
 So I tried posting my video to the machinima.com forums with very little response. So far I have no responses and it seems that the people there are super critical of every element. The community really takes it seriously but I’ll keep trying.
For my second traveler’s log I want to investigate the new trend in video games that seems to be pushing forward through both the wii and guitar hero. These video games try to move people away from the couch and up into the center of the living room. As a gamer myself, I think that both the Wii as a system and Guitar Hero are very interesting (and fun) however part of what makes games so appealing is the ability to laze out on the couch and be a total potato. At this point, I see the Wii as more of a gimmick system; no serious games have been released that really take advantage of the Wiimote (maybe zelda?). Guitar hero as a franchise is a stroke of genius financially. It forces players to buy all these peripherals while the process of making songs is fairly simple and cheap (you just need to license the music). Anyway, I might try to think of something more “new media”ish.
Destination: Machinima
Heres my silly attempt at Machinima using Second Life
I made it using windows movie maker, fraps, second life and wavepad. I read about fraps and WMM on the machinima forums over at machinima.com which was pretty helpful. Heres a basic summary of what each program did to help me make my “piece”.
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Windows Movie Maker: This program was really great and I didn’t even know I had it on my computer until now! It is very easy to use (I didn’t go through any tutorials) and you can upload video, still images and audio. I used it to combine all of the different audio and visual clips. It was great to use because you drag and drop the files you want into a timeline and you can layer, clip, edit and blend them very intuitively. You can also line up all the video clips you want and narrate them as they play which is what I used whenever you hear my voice.
Fraps : An application that can be used with any game to record your FPS (frames per second) and also take screenshots and videos at any moment. It can be downloaded here. It was also very intuitive to use, requiring only one keystroke to record. I used it to take screenshots and videos in SL over the built in tools of SL because Fraps only needed one key to either take a picture or video while the SL tools needed many clicks which would show up on the video.
Wavepad : This was the only program that I had experience with. It is also free (the trial version) here. I used it to edit and chop up the two songs I used (Earth Wind and Fire-Lets groove tonight and The Ventures-Wipeout).
Second Life : The pseudo-game. Available for free here. All of the gestures and animations I used came included with the game as downloaded. The only elements that were not, were the clothes my avatar was wearing. Someone else did Second Life so I dont need to go into too much detail. Second life was used as a graphical engine, providing the base for the visual elements for my machinima. However, some elements of it was also used in the content since my video is about second life.
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I had a really fun time making my silly little clip. It is very corny, mimicking most of the machinima that I’ve seen. I think that having the ability to make a short film like this using completely free programs is one of the greatest things about machinima. However, it was definitely more work than I thought it would be. The time it takes to take video, voice and music and get them all together is pretty huge. Just this 2 minute clip took about 4 hours in total to make. Although I’m sure that time will get shorter as you use the programs more. I only intended to make a 30 second clip but I kept thinking of more corny things to include in the video. One thing that I did not do, that many Machiamists do, is hack the game. This is done to get rid of the menus, control the camera with more precision and create your own sets. Another thing I didn’t do is include other actors. Everything was done with one second life account. I can definitely understand how hard it would be coordinating multiple accounts all at once. Second life has many machinima studio locations within it but whenever I visited, no one seemed to be around.
Well thats it! Now to find out who added that sex clip…
Machinima is super time consuming!
Since last class I have been playing with the idea of making my own machinima. From the forums over at machinima.com, I have learned that people usually write scripts first, followed by the video animation and voice acting. For my machinima, I chose to use Second Life because it is the only game (second life isnt a game!) that I have available on my computer which I would also use to edit and compile all the different elements. If I used Grand Theft Auto or Halo, I would have a lot of problems with getting the video from a console system onto my computer.
Anyway, I chose to make a kind of spoof commercial about Second life because they can be short (I have zero experience editing video) and are easier to think up (good because of my writers block when it comes to just about anything). I currently have about thirty seconds fully edited with music, voice, etc but am quickly finding that making machinima is super time consuming. It has taken about two hours to get just 30 seconds of usable stuff but I’m getting the hang of it. I’ll be posting the video with the different elements it used once I am done editing it.
the range of machinima
As I searched the internet for the way machinima is produced and made, I found this video that explains what it is and how it is made. It is far more involved than I initially thought. I used to think that machinima simplified the process of making a movie because the environments and backgrounds are already provided for you however, creating machinima can be just as, if not more time consuming to create when compared to normal films. Rather than being given more freedom because you are using games and simulations to tell a story, there are limitations with machinima. Many of the short films are limited by the animations that avatars are programed to do.
While exploring various machinima sites, I realized that the content of machinima is not always reiterations of existing stories or short, humorous clips good for a quick laugh. On one side, there are series like Red vs Blue that comment humorously on current events but on the other, there are very serious machinima such as this video that attempts to depict the events of the virginia tech shooting. This video combines the idea of killing in a game for fun with killing in real life. I think something like makes machinima seem more meaningful.
There is an interesting conversation going on about it here. In the 9th comment, someone says:
“I honestly can’t watch the video. Well, I can, but I don’t want to - not because it’s too hard for me to watch or anything like that..but that I know that I most likely wouldn’t be able to take its seriously”
This seems to be one of the biggest issues facing machinima. I agree that it is hard to look at machinima, which uses games as a base of production, in a way that takes the content away from the medium. However, in the case of this video, I think that choosing a game like Halo where the objective is killing, is effective. If the person had attempted to use Second Life, a simulation where killing is not so central, it would not be as effective.
Machinima
Machinima is a word that comes from mushing together machine and cinema. The machine element of it is that it is created using machines (computers) to generate the visual element. It is related to cinema because it features characters and usually a loose story. The basic idea of Machinima is to use the animations from an existing program (usually a game) as a structure for your own story. Popular Machinima have been made from Halo, Second Life and World of Warcraft. It is interesting because on one side you have the characters and visuals from these games but in a completely different context. It is similar to re dubbing a popular film with your own voice and story. Many of the games used to make Machinima have a built in video recorder which makes the production of them accessible to anyone who plays the game.
I find Machinima interesting because I have been watching it, oblivious to what it really is, for a while. I usually though of them as parodies rather than a legitimate genre of videos. Robert Jones, a professor in the Comm debt of NYU has a website that focuses on Machinima. An example (along with a few others) can be found here. I’ll post a few more once our week without google (and therefore youtube) ends
