Wiither machinima?

Big props to Damian Lacedaemion for his help moving my first machinima piece from concept to reality. I am trying to make a short using the Tennis game on the Wii. Damian graciously offered me the use of a Wii, as I don't have one, and helped write the script, too. (He may even appear as voice-talent.)

Of course, I learned an object lesson in the endeavor, one that D was trying to tell me - you gotta be playing the games to really be able to make machinima with them. Here's what happened. I have only played Wii Tennis once, about 2 years ago. I got an idea for a script that would go with a one-on-one tennis match, and according to my perforated memory, the Wii would be a hilarious medium to use.

Now, any Wii fans out there are way ahead of me already: there is no singles game in Wii Tennis. Its all doubles only! We'd already recorded the voices by the time we got to capturing footage, so we were kind of up a creek. To make matters worse, there doesn't seem to be any way of controlling which avatars the computer picks when you play in single-player mode. And in double player mode the screen is split - not much good for machinima, methinks!

So its time to think on our feet to come up with a solution. Rest assured we'll find one, and the film will be a blockbuster, don't doubt that!

The experience has been instructive, and the film's not even done yet! It has called to mind again the central problem of Machinima with a capital M. Can it be a form for general-purpose film-making, or will it forever be limited to game-related stories?

As a middle-aged filmmaker whose only real experience with 3D videogames since the days of Missile Command, Asteriods, and Defender (the kind you need quarters to play) was Castle Wolfenstein and Doom, I harbor a desire that the real-time power of 3d games can be harnessed to serve any story idea, or at least any class of story idea. In particular dramatic narrative. I would certainly like to see that happen.

On the other hand there is a school of thought that holds that that is a foolish dream; that instead, filmmakers should find in games inspiration for stories that are suited to them. Don't try and force a square peg into round hole, in other words. Before my recent mano-a-mano with the Wii Tennis engine, I would have dissmissed this idea as self-limiting, as a rationalization of shortcomings.

Now I'm not so sure. The problem for me personally, though, is that I don't really play games as a hobby any more. This leads to a more serious problem, which is that I'm not really an active part of any community of gamers. Filmmaking is a collaborative effort, and if one hopes to make films with videogames one needs a group of gaming friends. Nevertheless, I have come around to seeing machinima a little differently thanks to my conversations with Damien. (sorry about the typo, Damian! -K, 7/4)

Instead of bringing the expectations of traditional media like film to machinima, look for ways in which machinima can create new forms. If we expect Machinima to be able to make dramatic feature films, we may well be disappointed. Similarly, if machinimists make something new but we're looking for something that's familiar, we're likely not going to appreciate it for what it is.

So there's something to mull over. Next time: toolsets, puppeteering, and animation.