Machinima

Some of you may have heard of machinima before.  For those of you who haven't, here's a basic description:

Machinima is the film or animation byproduct from the use of pre-made graphics and animations through a pre-existing manipulation program.  i.e. video games.

Back long ago, in the days of the original Xbox, a few individuals decided that they could use the popular game, Halo, to make short animations.  They called their series Red vs. Blue.  While other series had come before this, RvB made use of the internet and formed a community of devoted followers, collecting donations from them to help pay for the time being invested in their project.  The company Rooster Teeth was formed and since then RvB has become a hit among halo and video game fans all over.

Since its conception, machinima has really taken off and has seen both good and bad productions.  But is machinima an art?  It's using someone else's work and simply adding a story or plot.  And sometimes not even that.  It's something to think about and consider.  Below is a short machinima trailer called "The Brothers Mario."  It uses a modified version Grand Theft Auto IV on the PC to take a look at the classic Nintendo character, Mario, from his Italian roots.  This trailer cleverly incorporates the classic characters into a mobster story, even making sure that each character's role matches their original purpose in the mario games.  Goombas = cannon fodder, Bowser = leader, etc.

If you don't know classic mario, then you may not get whats going on, but regardless, I believe that everyone can come to appreciate the work put into making this machinima.  Creativity and craftsmanship are definitely present.






EDIT: I added this youtube playlist. It has 9 shorts in it. Valve made these shorts to not only advertise their game, Team Fortress 2, but to also experiment with the idea of making short films or movies using video game characters. While not true machinima, it uses a similar idea.