A giant repository of machinima.

This is the first episode of the widely popular "Red Vs. Blue" machinima series. It was made using the Halo graphis engine, and is considered the most famous machinima series to date. Produced by Rooster Company, RvB is now in it's 4th season.The RvB short films give you a glimpse inside the day to day life of these space soldiers featured in game. Rather than following the games protagonist through whom the single player game is experience, RvB focuses on a rag tag group of soldiers who spend their time philosophizing, and playing pranks on each other, while they wait for their next battle. The battle of course never comes, and we are left with a new, very humorous perspective on the Halo universe.

"Hugh Hancock puts on his wig and gown to discuss the legal issues facing commercial Machinima creators."  Machinima expert gives a solid review of the legal implications involved when creating machinima. He discuss the use of game assets, the complications of complying with your EULA, and the options for artists in terms of open source machinima tools.

"Machinima is the making of animated movies in real time through the use of computer game technology. The projects that launched machinima embedded gameplay in practices of performance, spectatorship, subversion, modification, and community. This article is concerned primarily with the earliest machinima projects. In this phase, DOOM and especially Quake movie makers created practices of game performance and high-performance technology that yielded a new medium for linear storytelling and artistic expression. My aim is not to answer the question, “are games art?”, but to suggest that game-based performance practices will influence work in artistic and narrative media." -Lowood

 This article was a primary source for my paper. Althogh Lowood focuses almost entirely on the FPS culture which emerged out of Id Software's original 3D shooter trilogy: Wolfenstein, DOOM, and Quake, it also covers a good deal of general info about machinima...

John Arnone gives a legal analysis of Rooster's popular machinima Red vs. Blue, a series of films using Microsofts Halo, and Halo 2 for source material. Suprisingly Bungie (Microsoft's Game Development Company) gave Rooster full permision to use the game for the machinima series. A risky move considering the "low humor" of the machinima show, but in the end a wise decision. RvB has helped make Halo, and the XBOX as popular as it is today.

Addresses the ways in which digital filmmakers are using computer games as "digital sets" to create short films. aka Machinima! Gives a short review of varrious machinima projects. Mirapul compares machinima to a sort of live puppet theater, with the feel more of live theater than film.

David Nieborg explores the history of mod culture in computer games in this essay. Most of his analysis is based on Jenkins' theories of fandom and participatory fan culture. There is a short section on how manchinima fits into the larger culture of modifing first person shooter games.

Legal cybertheorist Ernest Miller outlines the effect a broader acceptance of the INDUCE act might have on the creation of derative works based on video games, most specifically on the creation of machinima. The induce act puts not only machinimakers in legal peril, but all the websites and hackers who innovate new machinima techniques and encourage the creation of machinima publicly.

This is a nice posting about the legal implications of machinima, from a blog totally dedicated to covering the latest news in the world of machinima. The author, Paul Marino, outlines three possible aproaches to the issue of copyright machinima makers might use to clearing their work for commercial use.

Just the basics about machinima, from the Academy of Machinima Arts and Sciences...

This is my my annotated bibliography for my media theory research paper on machinima.

This is a test of the emergency broadcast system