Deviation (2006 film)

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Deviation
Directed byJon Griggs
Written byJon Griggs
Produced byJon Griggs
Starring"Macintyre" -- Rick Albee (virtual player),Jeff Jackson (voice); "SGT" -- Anthony Esposito (virtual player), Vinny Nestler (voice); "Lizard" -- Grant Kehrig (virtual player), Curtis Brien (voice); "Crow" -- Ben Armbrust (virtual player), Glen Brackenridge (voice); Also starring -- Ritchie Duncan as the voice of"Pilot"; Aaron Simms as the voice of "Command"
Edited byJon Griggs
Music byNicholas J. Sumner
Distributed byAtom Films
Running time
6 minutes 12 seconds
CountryUSA
LanguageEnglish

Deviation is a 2006 short film that was the first short film in the machinima genre to be premiered in competition at a major film festival, the Tribeca Film Festival. [1] [2] [3] [4]

Contents

Background

The 6 minute 12 second-long short machinima film Deviation, was written and directed by Jon Griggs of Hard Light Films. Using the virtual world of the online game Counter Strike , Griggs directed the virtual actors and recorded the footage using a DVX100. Deviation was entered as a candidate for shortlist and screening at the Tribeca Film Festival as part of the New York counterpart of Australia's Tropfest, Tropfest @ Tribeca programme, [2] which celebrates the importance of short film in the filmmaking industry. Each entry had to include a signature theme; in 2006 this was the presence of a manhole cover. [5]

Deviation almost did not make it to the Tribeca Film Festival since, shortly before the film's premiere, the game manufacturer of Counter Strike, the Valve, refused to give permission for the film to be distributed for commercial use. Valve maintained that as intellectual property owners of Counter Strike, they had definitive rights over its distribution. [6] In response, Griggs informed Valve of his intention to release a "protest video" version of Deviation in which all of Valve's intellectual property was removed, leaving just the actor's voices, music and story, and replacing the visuals with simple words and pictures depicting Grigg's struggle with Valve, and a call to viewers to support him. Valve eventually backed down and the all-clear was given for the motion picture to be released [2] on 28 April 2006 at the Tribeca Film Festival [7] [8] in front of a live audience of over 4,000 people. [2] [9]

The motion picture is accompanied by an original score (composed and performed by Nicholas J. Sumner), original sound design by Neil Fazzari and actors’ voices to deliver the dialogue. The opening credits to the film announce that this is “a virtual film created online...with virtual actors performing across different U.S. States...who have never met each other in the “real” world”. [1] [10]

Plot synopsis

MacIntyre is a videogame character who begins to question his repetitive life within the context of his duties as a virtual soldier in a four-man counter-terrorist squad. [11] Tired of running through the same tunnels every day, ascending the same manhole and getting killed in battle each time, he tries to encourages his superior, “Sgt” and the rest of his team (“Lizard” and “Crow”) to rationalise their monotonous behaviour. [1] "Doesn’t it strike you as strange," MacIntyre asks, "that we keep doing the same thing over and over and over?" [1] [10] MacIntyre raises questions about what the purpose of life as a virtual soldier is, why they have to follow orders and who exactly is it that gives them the orders that they dutifully follow to the death anyway?

MacIntyre almost manages to successfully persuade his 'young' team mate Crow that there could be “another way”, but indecisive Crow is coerced by Sgt and Lizard, who are fully indoctrinated into the call of duty, into filing rank and following orders. [1]

Discussion

Whereas other machinima films tend to use the context of a video game to reflect real life scenarios, Deviation turns this idea on its head and instead uses ideas of human introspection to tell a computer generated story [12] and satirises “the absurd repetition of first-person-shooter games” [1] [13] through character MacIntyre’s existential crisis. [13] [14] [15] Whereas other machinima sequences have been distributed freely on the internet via sites such as YouTube and remain an inherent part of gamer culture, in Deviation, Jon Griggs attempted to separate the genre from the video game world and establish it as a film in its own right. To this end, Deviation was only released in full form at the Tribeca Film Festival; before this, only a movie-style trailer was released and even after its premier, though made freely available, Deviation earns royalties and is subject to a licensing contract with independent film network, Atom Films. [1]

It has been suggested that in the script of Deviation, Griggs is asking a politically loaded question; “Who is leading whom?”, [16] which invokes thoughts of the political outcry surrounding George W. Bush’s War on Terror in Iraq. [8]

Cast and crew

Process

Deviation was created by using the virtual environment of Counter Strike to block, rehearse, and shoot the scenes. Characters were controlled by players across the country and directed by Griggs through online voice chat. The scenes were framed using a virtual camera then shot with a Panasonic DVX100 videoing the computer screen. The coverage was edited traditionally using Final Cut Pro then sound design, voice acting and score were added to complete the film.

Awards and Festival Screenings

By being the first machinima piece to be officially selected and premiered in competition at a major film festival (that being the Tribeca Film Festival in New York City in 2006), Deviation is credited with being the first machinima short film to be classed as a film in its own right by the film community. Film Quarterly notes Deviation “as the first machinima film to premiere at a major festival, Deviation's theatrical screening at Tribeca marked the break-out of this Internet-fueled, gamer-geek mode of virtual filmmaking into mainstream cinema.” [1] Shortly afterwards, in September 2006, Deviation was also selected for the Academy of Machinima Arts & Sciences Machinima Festival, where it picked up “Mackie” awards for Best Voice Acting Performance and Best Sound Design. [2] [17] At this festival, the film was simultaneously screened in a physical movie theatre and watched by real people, as well as being shown in a virtual online cinema, watched by gamers’ avatar in the virtual world of Second Life, [1] or in a live simulcast shown by Destroy TV. [1]

As well as its premiere at Tribeca, 2007 saw Deviation being selected for screening at several other notable film festivals. [10]

Related Research Articles

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Machinima, originally machinema, is the use of real-time computer graphics engines to create a cinematic production. The word "machinima" is a portmanteau of the words machine and cinema. According to Guinness World Records, machinima is the art of making animated narrative films from computer graphics, most commonly using the engines found in video games.

Video game art is a specialized form of computer art employing video games as the artistic medium. Video game art often involves the use of patched or modified video games or the repurposing of existing games or game structures, however it relies on a broader range of artistic techniques and outcomes than artistic modification and it may also include painting, sculpture, appropriation, in-game intervention and performance, sampling, etc. It may also include the creation of art games either from scratch or by modifying existing games.

<i>Counter-Strike: Source</i> 2004 video game

Counter-Strike: Source is a tactical first-person shooter video game developed by Valve and Turtle Rock Studios. Released in October 2004 for Windows, it is a remake of Counter-Strike (2000) using the Source game engine. As in the original, Counter-Strike: Source pits a team of counter-terrorists against a team of terrorists in a series of rounds. Each round is won either by completing an objective or by eliminating all members of the enemy team. The game was initially bundled with all retail and digital copies of Half-Life 2, before being released standalone.

Paul Marino is a film director, producer, animator, voice actor, and author currently focused on machinima, the art of using engines from video games to create films. He is a co-founder and the executive director of the Academy of Machinima Arts & Sciences (AMAS), a non-profit organization formed in 2002 to promote and organize the growth of machinima. Marino also co-founded the ILL Clan, a machinima production group, and, working under the pseudonym ILL Robinson, helped to create a number of the group's machinima pieces. In particular, he directed Hardly Workin', an August 2000 comedy video that won a Best in SHO award in Showtime's alt.SHO.com Alternative Media Festival, held on February 8, 2001, and an award for Best Acting at the AMAS's 2002 Machinima Film Festival.

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Sheffield DocFest, short for Sheffield International Documentary Festival (SIDF), is an international documentary festival and Industry Marketplace held annually in Sheffield, England.

<i>This Spartan Life</i>

This Spartan Life is a talk show created by Bong + Dern Productions and produced and directed by Chris Burke, who hosts the show under the pseudonym Damian Lacedaemion. Premiering in 2005 and distributed over the Internet, the show is created using the machinima technique of recording the video and audio from a multiplayer Xbox Live session of Bungie' first-person shooter video game Halo 2. The half-hour episodes are released in six smaller parts, called modules. Guests, such as Bungie's audio director Martin O'Donnell are interviewed via Xbox Live within the online multiplayer worlds of Halo 2, and most recently Halo 3.

<i>Diary of a Camper</i> 1996 machinima animated short film

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<i>Counter-Strike Online</i> 2008 video game

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References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Chien, I (2007) Deviation / Red vs. Blue: The Blood Gulch Chronicles, Film Quarterly, pp 24-29
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 Badal, S, Swimming Upstream: A lifesaving guide to short film distribution, pp204-212, Focal Press, January 1, 2008, ISBN   978-0-240-80955-7
  3. ↑ Archived 2008-10-07 at the Wayback Machine Deviation, Screenhead, May 15, 2006
  4. ↑ Deviating Machinima, 3Dfilmmaker.com. May 17, 2006
  5. ↑ Archived 2012-09-18 at the Wayback Machine TropFest shorts line-up announced for Tribeca, FilmThreat.com. April 21, 2006
  6. ↑ Meet the Machinimakers: The 2006 Machinima Festival Report, Panel: "Intellectual Properties Roundtable", Gamasutra.com, 2006
  7. ↑ Archived 2011-09-25 at the Wayback Machine Film Vault > Deviation, TribecaFilm.com, 2006
  8. 1 2 Deviation, IMDB.com, June 13, 2006,
  9. ↑ Archived 2011-07-26 at the Wayback Machine CS 1.6 movie shown at the Tribeca Film Festival, GamingOrb, May 13, 2006
  10. 1 2 3 4 Deviation, Atom.com, 2006
  11. 1 2 Archived 2011-07-18 at the Wayback Machine VisionFest, Audience: Withoutabox, September 20, 2007
  12. ↑ Deviation, the best machinima yet, Filmstalker.co.uk, JUne 3, 2006
  13. 1 2 Web Video to Kill the Movie Star? NYMag.com, October 25, 2006
  14. ↑ Archived 2008-06-05 at the Wayback Machine Machinima about a game-character's existential crisis, BoingBoing.net, May 12, 2006
  15. ↑ Machinima, NPR.org, May 15, 2006
  16. ↑ Archived 2011-07-16 at the Wayback Machine Propping up some successes, Machinima.org, June 21, 2006
  17. 1 2 "The 2006 Machinima Festival - the 2006 Mackies". Archived from the original on 2009-03-31. Retrieved 2009-03-21. The Mackies: the 2006 winners and nominees, Festival.machinima.org, 2006
  18. ↑ Deviation, Clermont-Ferrand archives, 2007
  19. ↑ Archived 2010-08-24 at the Wayback Machine Past Films, Rochester International Film Festival archive, 2007
  20. ↑ Archived 2012-09-15 at the Wayback Machine Films and Events > Deviation, SIFF Archive, 2007
  21. ↑ Archived 2011-07-21 at the Wayback Machine 11th Film, Deviation ????, PIFAN Archives 2007
  22. ↑ Deviation/Deviatje, Anonimul 2007 programme
  23. ↑ Archived 2011-10-06 at the Wayback Machine Deviation, SeNeF Archives, 2007
  24. ↑ Archived 2011-07-08 at the Wayback Machine Deviation, VisionFest archives, 2007
  25. ↑ Tribeca's "other" film festival, Indypendent.org, October 7, 2007
  26. ↑ Tout un menu pour le Festival du Nouveau Cinéma! Voir.ca, September 25, 2007
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