Genres for Machinima Movies

John Truby would have us believe that the eleven most popular genres of movie are:

>> Action (most popular)
>> Comedy
>> Crime
>> Detective
>> Fantasy
>> Horror
>> Love
>> Masterpiece
>> Myth
>> Science Fiction (biggest grossing)
>> Thriller

Aside from disagreeing with his list (where are the Westerns? Surely we are about to see a surge of War Movies? did he forget French Surrealism?) It got me thinking: will we - in the machinima world - just follow this, or would genuinely democratic tools enable us to explore other genres? More relevant, perhaps, is a line of thought that says "machinima is more suited to the 5 minute movie" (an artform that is widely said to be on the rebound), and perhaps that will open up other genre areas that movies ignore or cannot explore?

Is it enough to say "look at the box office http://www.worldwideboxoffice.com/ or on http://www.imdb.com/Top/ and that'll tell you what people really like. I think not. I think it says a lot about advertising budgets, timing, luck and the lowest common denominator effect, but hardly anything about what people like to make. It also obscures the cross overs (like Sean of the Dead really being a Romance ... Zom-Rom-Com ... and not a horror movie)

Are we being too Western in our thinking? Is machinima the natural way to make mini-Bollywood a new global phenomena? Should we look hard at Chinese Film Theatre or Russian Realism?

I'm of a mind to say "machinima should look to TV first, movies second" as it is an immediate personal experience on a small screen that can have an element of interaction (even if only "select your favourite ending" thanks to DVD authoring tools).

So, its obvious I have no idea what movie I am going to make first. I'd sure like to know what other people think though.

Another theme people might like to explore is the world of music . This is open to ones own interpretation of pieces of music. Be it pop rock classical or folk etc opens up a whole new train of thought of what a song means to different people.

Madmac

Indeed - the music video is a 5 minute art form, and there are some interesting areas of cross over between music and video / animation that we'd like to do.

Not sure we need another iteration of Michael Jackson's Thriller in The Sims though - probably enough of those already

Just keep in mind with music videos is that they will probably be restricted by copyright so that legally you can't put it up on the internet for others to see without running afoul of the copyright trolls. It's not all that likely you'll be the one they single out to make an example of but just to be on the safe side, I'd go looking for a good local indie band that would give you the go ahead to use their song.

Another upside to that is it could help them get the exposure that they need more than the latest platinum selling popstar.

What I think would be best for machinima is the short episodic material as well as short skits... and the platform to target commercially would be cell phones. I'm thinking that it will take a bit of skill to get a story across with only 30 to 180 seconds to work with but there is a living to be made in that arena if one were to develop that skill.

However, there's a lot of music you can legally use if you look around. Try searching for "creative commons music" and you'll find loads of stuff that you can just grab. Even if there are some restrictions, a quick email to the band will usually get you clearance for free - they'll probably be stoked as hell that someone wants to make a video of their music. I also listen to a lot of podcasts which have all sorts of amateur bands on, and that's another good source of music: you can usually get hold the band and ask permission if you like a track and want to make a vid.

OK, a lot of amateur music is pretty poor, but there is some really good music out there that the record labels haven't snapped up. Some of it is easily as good as anything I've heard on a big label CD, and it has the advantage that it won't have been done to death by everyone else. (As David said, do we really need another version of Thriller???)

So yeah, there are potential problems with using well-known tracks, but turn that around, and look at it as an opportunity to promote some tiny little band. You never know, you might pick up the next Sandi Thom or Lily Allen.

Of all of those genres you mention, I would feel that Machinima is most well suited to Comedy (which sadly is not to say that I consider myself any good at writing comedy).

Think about Dangermouse, or South Park, or Tom and Jerry, or prety much any cartoon - Machinima can equal or better the image quality in such productions, but that isnt what is important for comedy - comedy is all about the writing, and about timing.

Which means that provided one can tell what is happening, it can be enough to be realy funny. Machinima is a relativly fast and cheap way of allowing one to show comedy - even compared to cartoons.

Ben_S wrote:

Of all of those genres you mention, I would feel that Machinima is most well suited to Comedy (which sadly is not to say that I consider myself any good at writing comedy).

Think about Dangermouse, or South Park, or Tom and Jerry, or prety much any cartoon - Machinima can equal or better the image quality in such productions, but that isnt what is important for comedy - comedy is all about the writing, and about timing.

Which means that provided one can tell what is happening, it can be enough to be realy funny. Machinima is a relativly fast and cheap way of allowing one to show comedy - even compared to cartoons.

You're quite right of course. Pretty much everyone that does this tends to look at Red Vs Blue and then tries to copy it.

I want to make a drama, myself. I hope this software is up to it. As long as it's as clear as The Sims 2 I expect to have no problems at all.

I think the probkem you have with genre across machinima becomes problematic once you tackle a genre which has an inherent performance style from the actors.

So if you want to do hard Hong-Kong action, its a different kind of action performance (lots of jumping, shooting, jumping while shooting, jumping while shooting while one hand and maintaining a sword fight with the other) than, say a traditional 1050's British War movie, in which the 'action' moves need to be very humanised (i.e. an everyday person trying to hold the gun the right way around)

The same goes down to the subtlety of performance. The reason machinima lends itself to comedy is the gesture tend to be quite big. The amount of times I have tried and tried to get my digital actor to simply perform a 'sideways glance' at another actor but failed, even though this is one of the most powerful communicative shots a director should have at their disposal.

By which I mean to say - in a round about way - that its not just about set dressing and costume, but the options the digital actor has about how 'big' they perform actions.

holdmykidney wrote:

The amount of times I have tried and tried to get my digital actor to simply perform a 'sideways glance' at another actor but failed, even though this is one of the most powerful communicative shots a director should have at their disposal.

I couldn't agree more. For precisely this reason, we're spending some time in the next few weeks improving our "look at". Bloodspell, by Strange Company, makes great use of the sideways glance, and it's one of the things that really helps that series stand out from other machinima.

Like I said in the poll What do you want to make?, I would like to try out different genres.

Since Machinima originates from the video games medium, it's much easier to create believable comedies and action movies (making good ones is another matter entirely though).

I realize that some genres are much harder to pull off with Machinima as suspension of disbelief is harder to achieve. Horror and heavy drama in particular can be tricky to achieve but then again, if you don't try it out, you'll never make it happen.

With that said, I intend to make some horror, comedies, action/sci-fi and horror too.

I still think Noir is one of the greatest genres. While you can put it as more of a style in other genres I think its really its own genre. Noir is a classic style, to great to be ignored.

Well put TigerEyes. Now, go to the lounge and give us your list of top ten noir films...please.

Toriel wrote:

I realize that some genres are much harder to pull off with Machinima as suspension of disbelief is harder to achieve. Horror and heavy drama in particular can be tricky to achieve but then again, if you don't try it out, you'll never make it happen.

I like to think we bot pulled that off quite well in your own "Innsmouth Horror" [tarrring 'uglyman' the hero.

] and my own ShadowChildren.

Of course as many problems as that software had, it at least allowed for creative endeavors.

I think one of the reason for that is that most of the actions in machinima are generally over the top. People don't glance, they stare. Nothing is done by half-measures.

The trouble with that is it takes away some of the seriousness. Subtlety is key when it comes to some of the more difficult genres.

One of the key aims of Moviestorm is to have characters who can deliver a real emotional performance, not a bland or over the top performance.

In machinima, of course, we're mostly restricted to what the engine provides. Most game engines simply don't provide these sorts of animations, as they're simply not a key part of the game experience. Games generally don't worry about emotions - as long as the characters can shoot things, dodge, and die, that covers their entire acting repertoire. And most games don't worry about close-ups either - characters are viewed head to foot most of the time (and you can't even see the "hero" if it's an FPS).

One of the main ways Moviestorm will differ from a typical game engine is that we are thinking a lot about acting as well as action. We expect our characters to be in close-up a lot of the time, and so we need subtle facial gestures - glances, lip curls, raised eyebrows. We also want to be able to portray emotions through subtle body language - raising a hand to your lips, pulling your head back, and widening your eyes can be a more effective way of portraying fear than waving your arms around histrionically and screaming.

We're hoping that by providing more subtlety in the performance, you will be able to create more powerful and dramatic performances, and take machinima beyond its current limitations.