A new category of software tool that derives from new genres of the moving image is a rare thing but this is exactly what we have seen in recent years with Machinima and real-time 3D. Whereas NLEs and DAWs are, despite their sophistication, really just digital replications of analog processes and digital animation tools are built off the same frame-by-frame concepts of traditional animation, the real-time 3D environment of Machinima and Pre-Vis is something quite unique.
Born from the DIY ethic of gamers using the engines of computer games to 'film' in virtual real-time, Machinima is quickly evolving dedicated toolsets that cover a diverse range of applications - Machinima itself, animation and pre-visualization for traditional cinema.
The past few years have seen a host of such dedicated software systems for Machinima-based production and while many of these are in very early or beta stages of development, Antics has forged ahead and appearing to present a significantly broad and well developed toolset that includes Machinima but is more broadly about 3D pre-vis and animation in all its forms. Sensing the ever widening appeal of real-time 3D systems to a wide spectrum of creators well beyond the instigating Gamer community, Antics steers its perspective into broad territory, not afraid to defy traditional classifications of whom its toolset is for.
I have of late been examining a range of real-time 3D animation systems for Machinima and pre-visualization. Recently this has focused on Antics and a full review will be appearing shortly on DMN sites and here on the basin. But in looking at Antics I was prompted to reflect upon another such machinima software system that I was beta-testing last year; Moviestorm, a new system in beta from ShortFuze. Antics and Moviestorm have the same aims, the same impetus. In terms of features, aside form the fact that Antics is older and by virtue more developed, the feature set is remarkably similar. But in spite of this the two are very, very different in conceptual approach and the paradigm they present to users.
The distinction between the two goes to the heart of something much deeper than a laundry list of capabilities or the one-ups-manship of software competition. The distinction points towards ideas of software 'language', the desires of users and the power of perceptions.
The interface of Moviestorm has a very appealing look and feel about it. Spartan and lacking in detail in places but that's obliviously going to fill out in development. But it is an interface that distinctly plays against all the traditional and established 'windows' paradigm language. Of itself this isn't necessarily a problem depending on the nature of the user group intended for the application.
For any software developer the central question to ask is the obvious - Who the app is for? But also, what is often neglected, is to also ask Who do those users want to be? And how do they see themselves?
Lets say for example that a key target market is 15-25 years old gamers who have an interest in movies; and movie enthusiasts with a bent for computers and games. That in particular both these groups are not professional movie makers or digital media producers. In this simple context a non-standard interface such as Moviestorm that is very accessible, very simple, even best described as almost 'cartoony', could function very well. A look and feel that is not like typical software, and which doesn't feel like a complex production tool, might have a certain cache in bringing new and inexperienced users to Moviestorm. Theres a strong potential for the tool to be seen as fun and funky. Laid-back. A piece of cake to use.
BUT... (and I think its a very big but...) This doesn't account for, and indeed flies against, how these same people perceive themselves rather than who they might actually be. A 15-25 year old gamer/movie enthusiast who is into computers, I would argue, perceives of themselves as a technology sophisticate and a wannabe professional. Any person in this category with enough enthusiasm to try and make a machinima film is more often than not going to have designs on actually becoming a full-time filmmaker, game designer, TV producer, etc.... Whether they ever achieve this is not the point, the perception is built of desire and its the desire that drives the perceived 'needs'.
In this context I would argue that you have to design the software not for who the target user is and what their skill/knowledge levels are, but rather design it for the type of people the target users perceive and wish themselves to be.
In this regard I think there are two very significant issues with Moviestorm interface paradigm; one that doesn't follow traditional Windows drop-down menu language conventions. The first is pure functionality; functionality born Not of good design but rather of familiarity. Right off the bat Moviestorm is harder to learn because it doesn't follow normal computer paradigms that are widely understood. Its a simple as that. In working with the beta release I spent far longer than I should just working out how to click, where to click, how things would pop up, and when they wouldn't. Not to have a standard interface model means your user has to learn a new language from scratch. Their prior knowledge and expeirnece is rendered in large part not useful. The double kick with this issues is that by dis-empowering the user of their familiarity (and in the case of Gamers and Computer Geeks you have a personality that prides itself on that familiarity) you steal confidence with the tool. The user is on the back foot right form the start. Now the Moviestorm interface is very smooth and uncluttered but when I got stuck i was really stuck because I could not relay on the usual trouble shooting methodologies. Its like being lost in a country where you don't speak the language is a far deeper state of LOST than being lost in a country where you do.
In such cases instinct was to go to the tool bar at the top and click HELP, except its not there so then i have to go looking. Things are not named with text but with icons, so i have to hover over. When i find it it has a special icon I have to remember that icon because its not like any icon I've ever seen. And so on and so on... The moment I step into a GUI which forges its own paradigms, its own language I move from being a confident user to a dis empowered one; even more so that I would ordinarily feel with a new software tool.
Obviosuly Moviestorm is a software tool that, being born of Gaming is using game-styling for its unique GUI. In the case of Moviestorm the major influence is the Sims. But I do question the wisdom for using Gaming itself as the basis of the GUI as it leads into conflict with what I see as the second issue, that of Perception.
Do the developers of Moviestorm wish to have their app viewed 'as' a game? Certainly that's what the interface suggests and likewise how its designed to work. If the user group is, as I believe they are, driven by a perception of themselves and what they'd like to be (filmmakers) rather than the reality of what they are (gamers, hobbyists, amateurs) , then this approach is fundamentally problematic.
People who perceive of themselves as 'filmmakers' and digital artists, who want to make films that people will want to watch, that hope to be paid one day to make movies; these people I would argue, do not want to use a 'game', or a 'toy' they want to 'feel' like they are using 'real' and 'proper' tools for 'serious' production. This certainly doesn't mean they want the tools to be complicated or hard to use (quite the opposite), but that they do want to feel like filmmakers and using serious tools, that look like serious tools, makes them feel like a serious filmmaker.
The example of this 'culture' I'd use to illustrate is the marketing of the Final Cut Pro editing system from Apple. 75% of all users of FCP are independent, semi-pro, hobbiest, enthusiast, student filmmakers. And yet, all the advertising for FCP, that Apple push so hard, is focused on FCP's use in large budget feature film production; how high-profile Hollywood directors Walter Murch, David Fincher, Francis Ford Coppola use FCP to cut their films. That high end is absolutely Not the main market for FCP but what Apple understand so very well is that perception is reality. That whilst the overwhelming majority of their users are at the low end, they all Want and Desire to be at the high end. So Apple marketing aims to sell the fantasy, they sell the idea that FCP is a high-end tool so if you want to be a high-end filmaker this is what you should get, even if right now you're doing low-end.... Its a pile of marketing bullshit that has no actual validity I real-terms but it is highly effective and taps into the aspirational element of the digital age of accessibility. Developers need to 'sell the dream'; tapping into what the users Want to be and perceive themselves as being.
This concept I believe is the same with Moviestrom and points towards it's fundamental difference with Antics. Antics offers all the same tools as Moviestorm, a software system for real-time 3D machinima and pre-visualization. A self-contained tool that allows for staging, animating, virtual directing, virtual cameras and export of video sequences and even finished movies. But where Antics differs is in how it presents itself. Antics presents as a professional digital media production tool and almost every element of its interface toolset borrows from other digital media tools. It's movement of 3D objects is commensurate with those in any major 3D tool such as 3DS Max, its timeline window very much in touch with the timelines from NLE's such as Première and animation tools like Flash, its browsing and asset management features not at all removed from those found in any digital production system.
By doing this anyone who has even a modicum of experience with any of these applications immediately comes to Antics with an internal familiarity that aids a confidence with the software. At the same time the 'experience' of using Antics, the perception it presents, is a professional, detailed, consummate production environment; an environment that very much matches the perception its uses have, or wish, for themselves. Moviestorm by comparison could easily be mistaken at a glance for being a game, a children's toy.
Many, many independent video producers I have known, working for corporate clients, have often commented with despair that it's not their show-reel that got them the job or impressed the client but the size of the camera they were using or the how flashy the hardware that filled their studio looked. Along these same lines Sony have recently released the HVR-1000u HDV camera, a remarkably inexpensive camera that on the inside is a low-spec, little more than consumer grade, sensor with mediocre lens and significant shortage of features and recording options. On the outside however it's a shoulder mount, bulky camera that looks the impressive professional part. The 1000u is seemingly a camera conceived by market research that pointed towards the power of perception.
These two elements are at the heart of what might make or break a new software tool; Language and Perception - Designing a GUI and a production paradigm that taps into existing language tenets and the Presenting of a perception of what the user aspires to be rather than what they may actually be. So many of the greatly successful creative software tools on the market have found their success in exactly this combination and Apple's Final Cut Pro is the prime example. FCP brings virtually nothing unique to editing but rather it borrows enormously from its predecessor Adobe Première the language of editing tools and then packages itself into a clearly defined perception of the aspirational Professional. Subsequently you can read any given review of FCP over its history and see the same rhetoric surface 'The Professionals Choice' and 'Intuitive, easy to learn'. Both these are really, simply, the product of a crafted market perception of association, and the exploitation of established language frameworks.
It's both these that Moviestorm, as a creative platform, is overlooking. There is no argument here about right or wrong, good or bad, but simply that Moviestorm may have misjudged the aspirations of their desired users.
Game Probe Ep 5 - Portal: story, space and metaphor
story, space and metaphor Episode 5 in the Game Probe series looks
at the fascinating mechanics of Portal. With the manipulation of space
and physics as its central vehicle, Portal points to new constructions
of story and metaphor embedded in the walls themselves.
You can watch the others in the Game Probe series at gameprobe.blipTV
In the 21st century Every filmmaker needs to be a Machimator. Every filmmaker needs to understand the core concepts that underpin Machinima.
The reasoning is simply that in the digital age every form and process of cinema invokes Machinma methodology and practice. At one end is of course machinima itself - the 'shooting' of a movie within a realtime virtual environment. Neither animation nor live-action, machinima is a hybrid between.
But outside of pure machinima, right along the continuum of cinematic media forms and formats, machinima processes appears as key components :
Pre-Visualization for directors 3D sets for designers Virtual cameras for Cinematographers 3D Z-space for editors and compositors 3D environments for Animators
All these traditional non-machinima forms engage proactively with digital tools, concepts a process that are directly encapsulated in machinima. Being a filmmaker in the 21st century who doesn't know about Machinima, who doesn't grasp the idea of a virtual camera or virtual 3D spaces and objects is the equivalent of a filmmaker who doesn't know about montage or deep focus. The virtual space and the virtual camera are THE concepts for all cinema of the digital age regardless of whether they be computer generated or not.
Once the domain of game-engine hackers, there are array of software tools now available for machinima derived animation, simulation, game design, previs and 3D. Over the past couple of years i have taken most such tools through their paces, exploring what is possible, what they are capable of and, more importantly, what new conceptual opportunities and processes they represent? Tools that blur the line between traditional animation and storyboarding through to dedicated game design; FrameForge 3D, Moviestorm, FPSCreator, Toonboom and iClone
And now Antics with a very holistic perspective on pre-vis and virtual production. Antics attempts to satisfy all forms of users with a very open system viable for animation, pure machinima and very effective pre-visualization for live-action (or any hybrid combo of the above).
In the coming months ill be writing a detailed review Antics for DMN; in the meantime their base-pack is free and they have a huge array of free model resources to get you started.
You simply cannot be a filmmaker in the 21st century without an understanding of the cocnepts of Machinima. So do yourself a favour and go download... NOW..!
A solid, intensive and detailed pre-production process is sadly all too negelected in contemporary media production; particularly at an indie level. Too often we get focused on Camera, Location and Edit and forget that for every minute you spend in pre-production is 5 minutes you save in shooting and post - that kind of saving is time and money - both of which add up to more creative flexibility if accounted for properly. For Machinima makers the culture of neglecting pre-production is even more widespread and sadly it shows all too often in under-developed scripts and poorly planned production of many Machinima movies..
In an effort to address the issue the good folks over at ILL Machinima Production have put together a very fine article outlining the pre-production process of traditional filmmaking applied to the production context of Machinima. They even supply a set of well thought out documents to download and use in your next Machinima project....
But something about this article bothers me.... How could 21st centruy machinima cretaors working in computer-generated virtual environments have missed the bleeding obvious...? Whilst their PDF and Word DOC templates are well made surely it would be better to just load up the free, open-source screenwriting and pre-production software system Celtx ???! A software tool that handles every possible angle - from a database script breakdown system, to scheduling, storyboarding, production items and media asset management.!
If you're going to work in an all-digital 21st centruy medium such as Machinima then surely there's room to work with an all-digital pre-production software enviroment. I cant believe the guys at Ill Machinima dont know about Celtx.!
Game Probe explores the artistry of the video game; aesthetics, drama, technique, meaning, experience and story. The
Game Probe video episodes focus on individual games and examine how they
work and what makes them an engaging and dramatic experience.
I have now given the Game Probe series their own BlipTV channel and hope to add two new episodes to the series over the coming months. The channel is called gameprobe.blip.tv
and along with the Game Probe videos themselves the chanel also includes a Journal collecting together a range of writings Ive assembled over the past couple of years dealign with ideas,
observations, commentary and concepts related to gaming aesthetics,
culture and technology.
The Game Probe series explores the
artistry of the video game; how they construct meaning, experience and
story. Each episode focuses on a different game and examines how it
works and what makes it an engaging and dramatic experience.
This episode looks at Company of Heroes, along with the Real Time Strategy genre, as a cinematic experience driven by the Player As Cinematographer.
Machinima is an rapidly emerging artform that has the potential to cast profound influence well beyond its own parameters. On one level the art of producing, staging and 'shooting' movies using the environments of computer games - a kind of real-time animated digital puppetry - represents a logistic liberation for movie makers. Physicality is defied as productions can be staged anywhere with any desired feature that can be created in CGI.
Machinima likewise has an infinitely evolving base of development - Gaming already represents the bleeding edge of media technology with massive leaps forward each year, so Machinima in turn is poised to always take advantage of the latest technology with negligible cost outlay.
But the aesthetic and conceptual impact of Machinima is potentially far wider than just Machinma works themselves, stretching influence across all other cinematic forms.
Machinima redefines by hybridization the traditionally distinct elements of Live-Action and Animation - being simultaneously both and neither. And whilst Machinima may currently wear the aesthetic hallmarks of Animation from being not Photo-Real - as film or video are - this must be seen as merely an in-between phase. The realization of Photo-Real computer game graphics are simply a matter of time.
And the impact of that evolution will be two-old; the first is that once computer games are Photo-Real and indistinguishable from photographic sources the core expectations of viewers are forever altered. Photographic Live-Action becomes just an option among many options and without a distinctly tangible aesthetic difference linked with the 'real' and the 'actual', may loose its primary status altogether to become a second best, least flexible, most expensive option.
The second is the inevitable step beyond Photo-Realism that comes once the Photo-Real has being attained. Just as the invention of the Camera liberated painting from pursuing 'realism' and cast it free to explore all manner of visual styles, so to will Machinima pass through the same evolutions. The pursuit of the Photo-Real is ever present but once attained the possibilities from what a Machinima Aesthetic might become are endless and almost unimaginable.
Further from this we might also speculate on conceptual aesthetics ingrained into viewers themselves. If we have photo-real computer games then we have photo-real Machinima (in other words, machinima that doesn't present as Animation but as simply Cinema - indistinguishable on viewing from film or video). And if we have photo-real Machinima then we have a near zero cost environment where quite literally Anything is possible - no effect, no scale, no environment, no mechanics, no logistics, no spectacle that can't be made on a laptop by anyone with enthusiasm. What this does for viewer sensibilities might be speculated as a Stealing of Spectacle.
The thrill of large scale effects driven cinema can be likened to the Circus mentality - the thrill of 'seeing' that which cannot be seen elsewhere. The seeing of the extraordinary with knowledge of its actuality. But if we have a culture and common practice of zero-cost cinematic production on any scale and of any thing within the limitless expanse of a computer game VR, then we rob 'spectacle' of its value. It becomes the equivalent of the mint printing more money - no one gets richer as the money looses value exponentially to how much is printed.
What could, would this do to cinema as a whole?
Well presumably it would force viewers to look to cinema for different set of experiences. The spectacle on its own devalued by commonality, we perhaps invoke a broader pursuit of those elements of cinema that are beyond and outside of technological shifts - character, narrative, emotion, philosophy, investigation, exploration, ideas, language, atmosphere and thrill.
Machinima might be just the medium that rescues us from Michael Bay...
Whether you're interested in Machinima or not there is much that Machinima as a process stands to exert upon all the extant cinematic media we know. This article from the BBC points towards some of these ideas and machinima's ever onward move to the mainsteam.
A particularly good website, blog and podcast that explores the ongoing evolution of machinima, as well as presenting some fabulous examples of Machinima films, can be found at z-studios.com Zarathustra studios and the Overcast podcast run by Phil Rice. Time spent on this rich site is time very well spent and may just change what you think cinema is....
Episode three in the Game Probe series looks at the seminal Shalebridge Cradle level from Thief: Deadly Shadows. The video examines the effect of an actualized presence in the game space and the construction of fear and haunting tension through sound, absence and anticipation.
Episode 2 in the Game probe series looks at the much celebrated Half Life 2. Whilst much of the praise heaped on HL2 was directed at its superb physics engine, HDR light mapping and deeply engaging narrative, what went largely unnoticed is that it set a new paradigm for first-person shooter genre games - no cut scenes. A singular and unbroken perspective with no folding of time through cuts or editing shifts.
It was George Orwell who wrote so profoundly about the idea of how the changing of words changes the meaning of things and this changes the minds of people who rely on those words for understanding. Distilled down from its profound social remaifications we can certainly see that in learning and understanding its the language and the terminology that is the key. The Help system or manual for a complex creative software tool such as an NLE is a prime example; the Help is only helpful if you know the name of the 'thing' you're looking for. Without knowledge of 'names' and the linguistic terms of reference the Help is about as useful as tits on a bull.
It is this context that this gloassary site from game research theorist Jesper Juul, taken from his book, provides a exceptional platform for cutting through the barrier to understanding the game world and its profound impact on all cinematic forms.
Within five years the overwhelming majority of movie-goers will also be gamers. This impact this will have on the expectations of the viewer and their relationship with the moving image will fundementally alter how we make movies over the net 50 years. Get with the program now and learn the language or find yourself cinematically illiterate within a decade.
Game Probe is a new series of videos that explore the art and aesthetics of computer and video gaming. Each short video, built from in-game footage, explores a different contemporary game and looks at how it engages with dramatic action, narrative and immersive experience to communicate ideas, concepts and experience. This first in what I plan to be an on-going series looks at Bioshock and the building of narrative through space and architecture.
Giving with one hand and taking with the other. Microsoft's latest
posturing in regard to the Gaming industry and community poses some
interesting thinking and questions.
Microsoft have released a treatise of 'guidelines'
to govern and indeed obviously intended to rein-in the pesky game
modding community. The guidelines detail what Microsoft says you, as a
game modder, can and cannot do to a Microsoft derived game.
I have written several times recently about the glorious cinematic game experience that is Bioshock. I am to soon deliver a lecture exploring the sound design of Bioshock entitled :
Aural Architecture - BioShock, Game Sound and Narrative Space For more than a century we have composed cinema in frames; made meaning by the portrait arrangement of the visual and aural in the defined composition of the Mise en Scene. But the over-arching super-structure of cinema in the 21st century is not the Frame but the Space - the composition, navigation, arrangement, exploration and design of Space itself.
Immersive 3D gaming presents moving-image media with a profoundly different aesthetic paradigm for understanding how we compose meaning, emotion and story. In gaming it is the Spatial environment that is composed, not the Frame; both aesthetically and technically.
What makes this conceptual shift profound is that since the tools for game production are the same as those used for non-interactive cinema - 3D environments, CGI composits and surround sound - and the movie-going audience is increasingly populated with 'Gamers' carrying ingrained game aesthetic expectations, the process of 'Composition' for all cinematic forms is shifted, never to be the same.
At the heart of this composition of space is sound; no other element can convey the complexities of space with more innate emotive connectivity than sound. In this new Macro-Mise en Scene the aural becomes the architecture of experience.
This presentation will examine gaming sound and space and its impact across the diversity of cinema. With specific reference to Bioshock and the specifics of technical production it will re-consider how we compose meaning, narrative and emotion in a game-soaked world.
In researching this presentation I have compiled a useful set of assets from the game which I'm posting here with confidence you'll find them as fascinating as I did.
Hooray for the Blog-o-sphere! Amidst the waveing malestrom of data the internet spins about carelessly rests pockets of great value, intrigue and interest. Its one of these that i have found and my faith in the internet is restored once again. The Game Theory show is a regular podcast that explores gaming from a multitude of angles - intelectual, creative, industry and experience. The show manages to strike that balance between being accessible and easy-going whilst at the same time avoiding lowest common denominator and providing a mature insight and discussion. Gamers have grown up and the media around game culture seemingly has too.
Of particular interest is the episode of the 14th August which overviews the history of gaming and game development. In order to know where we're goign we need to know where we've come from....
Likewise the episode of 3rd July strikes a chord with me in the context of my Cinema Education Manifestio -Holistic Thinking - Integrated Making, This episode looks at the role the teaching of game design and game creation concepts can function in a general eductaion and empower young people with life long analytical and constructivist skills for a digital age they will live in.
Game Theory is well worth a listen; a quality production, very professional podcast filled with consistently good content.
