Machinima - Part 2

Setting Up

Machinima is fantastic as an animation form and it is relatively simple to create. There are a number of software packages available which can capture the on-screen action of the game but after a lot of testing I found my preference to be Game Cam V2 (http://www.gamecamportal.com). The software can be coupled with games using DirectX or OpenGL graphic technology. Software options allow for capturing in-game sound and different video formats (.avi, .wmv). The capture rate is full screen at 25 frames per second. After installation, this software is used to launch the required game, runs over the top of the game in a seamless manner and requires the pressing of the ‘home’ key to start and stop recording / capturing the on-screen game play. Each instance of recording creates a media file which can then be dropped into any video editing package.

The next challenge was to find suitable games. For anyone who has spent anytime buying or playing computer games, it becomes acutely obvious that a high proportion of games are gore-fests where the object is to kill, maim and destroy everything in sight with as much blood-splattering, bone-crunching violence as possible. By luck I found my friend’s teenage son playing Oblivion, and as he showed it to me I realized it was exactly what I was looking for in a game. It had a vast world to explore with lots of interesting environments. It also had another feature which was important; the game didn’t re spawn nasty beasties which constantly required killing. By clocking the game (finishing all the challenges), I effectively ended up with a huge environment with villages, forests, castles, mountains, docks and beaches to use as Machinima sets and I knew that the playability of the game had been effectively reduced to zero. This solved the other issue for the classroom. One of the biggest challenges I knew I would face was convincing teachers that handing a group of students a computer game and expecting them to create something, as distinct from just playing the game, would be in itself difficult.

I went to EB Games and purchased every copy of Oblivion they had, which confused the heck out of the sales assistant. The game was installed in the computer lab. By navigating to My Documents / My Games / Oblivion / Save, it is possible to find a saved version of the game which can be moved to any computer. I simply took the file containing the completed game; this allowed students to open the game and easily navigate to the completed saved game, using that file to begin exploring a world and capturing sections to create their films.

Within the game it is possible to use the various views, which the in-game camera uses, to see the world and to create different shots. The in-game camera could be used to create sweeping shots over the villages, crane shots in a cathedral, or a dolly shot through the plants and trees in a forest. It was possible to capture shots of the central character of the game from the front, the back, the side, above and below. Other characters in the game could also be captured and this brought up another possibility. In the game, a character would approach the central character and talk about some element of the game. I realized we could capture this conversation, strip out the sound and allow the students to record their own voices in rough synch, to add another level to their story telling.