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This is a list of film festivals dedicated to machinima , the use of real-time 3-D engines in filmmaking. The Academy of Machinima Arts & Sciences (AMAS) regularly holds such festivals, and recognizes exemplary machinima works through awards nicknamed the Mackies.
The Machinima Expo (or "MachinExpo") is an annual international machinima festival started in 2008. In 2010 the organization expanded and is now run with help of a large team of volunteers. Submission is accepted during the summer months and the event takes place in November on the Internet and in the virtual world of Second Life". [1]
2008 Jury Award Nominees
On July 17, 2002, the first Machinima Film Festival, sponsored by NVIDIA, was held as part of QuakeCon 2002. However, according to David Stellmack of TG Daily , the larger QuakeCon event seemed to overshadow the festival, which was "not very well attended". [2]
| 2002 Machinima Film Festival awards [3] | ||
|---|---|---|
| Award | Winner | Other nominees |
| Best Picture | Anachronox: The Movie |
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| Best Acting | Hardly Workin' |
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| Best Direction | Thin Ice |
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| Best Sound | Militia II |
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| Best Editing | Smart Gun |
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| Best Writing | Anachronox: The Movie |
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| Best Visual Design | Fake Science |
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| Best Independent Film | Smart Gun |
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| Best Technical Achievement | Anachronox: The Movie |
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| Honorary Award | id Software | none |
| 2003 Machinima Film Festival awards [4] | ||
|---|---|---|
| Award | Winner | Other nominees |
| Best Independent Machinima Film | Red vs. Blue: The Blood Gulch Chronicles |
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| Best Commercial/Game Machinima | In the Waiting Line |
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| Best Technical Achievement | Anna |
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| Best Editing | The Outcome |
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| Best Writing | Red vs. Blue: The Blood Gulch Chronicles |
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| Best Sound | Hero |
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| Best Visual Design | In the Waiting Line |
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| Best Virtual Performance | Common Sense Cooking with Carl the Cook |
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| Best Direction | In the Waiting Line |
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| Best Picture | Red vs. Blue: The Blood Gulch Chronicles |
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| Honorary Award | Dr. Uwe Girlich | none |
The 2005 Machinima Film Festival was held on November 12, 2005 at the American Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria, New York.
| 2005 Machinima Film Festival awards [5] | ||
|---|---|---|
| Award | Winner | Other nominees |
| Best Picture | Game: On |
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| Best Direction | Whiplash: The Movie |
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| Best Virtual Performance | A Few Good G-Men |
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| Best Visual Design | Person 2184 |
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| Best Sound | Only The Strong Survive |
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| Best Writing | PANICS |
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| Best Editing | Strangerhood Studios |
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| Best Commercial/Game Machinima | Game: On |
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| Best Independent Machinima | Red vs. Blue: Season 3 |
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| Best Off-the-Shelf Machinima | Return |
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| Best Machinima Series | This Spartan Life |
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| Academy Honorary Award | David Wright | none |
| 2006 Machinima Film Festival awards [6] | ||
|---|---|---|
| Award | Winner | Other nominees |
| Best Picture | The Adventures of Bill and John: Ep. II |
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| Best Direction | Edge of Remorse |
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| Best Virtual Performance: Puppeteering | Tra5hTa1k with ILL Will |
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| Best Virtual Performance: Custom Animation | Company of Heroes |
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| Best Voice-Acting Performance | Deviation |
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| Best Visual Design | Edge of Remorse |
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| Best Cinematography | The Adventures of Bill and John: Ep. II |
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| Best Original Music | Stolen Life Trailer |
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| Best Sound Design | Deviation |
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| Best Writing | Male Restroom Etiquette |
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| Best Editing | The Adventures of Bill and John: Ep. II |
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| Best Technical Achievement | Company of Heroes |
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| Best Commercial Machinima | Silver Bells and Golden Spurs |
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| Best Independent Machinima | The Adventures of Bill and John: Ep. II |
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| Best Off-the-Shelf Machinima | Just a Game |
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| Best Series | The Fixer | |
The first Machinima Festival Europe was held in Leicester on 12–14 October 2007. [7] The festival was hosted by De Montfort University’s Institute of Creative Technologies (IOCT), and supported by the AMAS. [8]
As part of the festival, exemplary machinima productions were recognised with awards presented by Toby Moores, Visiting Professor at the IOCT and CEO of Sleepydog. [8]
| 2007 Machinima Festival Europe Awards [8] [9] | ||
|---|---|---|
| Award | Winner | Other nominees |
| Best Picture | Stolen Life | none |
| Best Visual Design | Stolen Life |
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| Best Direction | Stolen Life |
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| Best Sound | Innocent Minds |
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| Best Series | Grid Review (Episodes 3, 7 and 8) |
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| Best Experimental | Cirque du Machinima: Cuckoo Clock |
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| Best Student Film | Machinima! With Officer Dan (Episode 1) |
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| Best Story | Snow Witch |
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| Best Technical Achievement | Machinima Island (Episode 1) |
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| Best Commercial | When the Postman Spits Twice |
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| 2008 Machinima Festival Awards [10] | ||
|---|---|---|
| Award | Winner | Other nominees |
| Best Long Format | Clear Skies |
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| Best Series | This Spartan Life |
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| Best Short Format | World of Workcraft |
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| Best Independent | The Ship |
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| Best Student Work | Azerothian Super Villains |
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| Best Direction | The Ship |
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| Best Virtual Performance | The Monad |
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| Best Voice Acting | The Monad |
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| Best Technical Achievement | Leaving the Game |
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| Best Visual Design | Apocalypsis Ex Machina |
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| Best Cinematography | The Monad |
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| Best Original Music | Ignis Solus |
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| Best Sound Design | Chevauchée nocturne |
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| Best Writing | World of Workcraft |
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| Best Editing | Tales of the Past III |
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| Best of the Festival | The Ship |
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| Outstanding Achievement in Game Cinematics | Mass Effect |
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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.
Red vs. Blue, often abbreviated as RvB, is an American web series created by Burnie Burns with his production company Rooster Teeth. The show is based on the setting of the military science fiction first-person shooter series and media franchise Halo. It is distributed through Rooster Teeth's website, as well as on DVD, Blu-ray, and formerly on the El Rey Network and Netflix. The series initially centers on two opposite teams fighting in an ostensible civil war—shown to actually be a live fire exercise for elite soldiers—in the middle of Blood Gulch, a desolate box canyon, in a parody of first-person shooter video games, military life, and science fiction films. Initially intended to be a short series of six to eight episodes, the project quickly and unexpectedly achieved significant popularity following its premiere on April 1, 2003. The series consists of eighteen seasons and five mini-series. Red vs. Blue is the third longest-running animated webseries of all time, behind Homestar Runner and Neurotically Yours. The nineteenth and final season is scheduled to premiere in 2024.
Katherine Anna Kang is an American video game designer.
Rooster Teeth Productions, LLC is an American production company headquartered in Austin, Texas. Founded in 2003 by Burnie Burns, Matt Hullum, Geoff Ramsey, Jason Saldaña, Gus Sorola, and Joel Heyman, Rooster Teeth is a subsidiary of Warner Bros. Discovery Global Streaming & Interactive Entertainment which is a subsidiary of Warner Bros. Discovery.
Michael Justin "Burnie" Burns is an American writer, actor, producer, comedian, host, and director previously based in Austin, Texas. He is a co-founder, former chief executive officer, and former chief creative officer of Rooster Teeth. He is noted for his contributions in machinima, a form of film-making that uses video game technology in its production, and also works with animation and live action. Burns is also known for his work in the hosting and podcasting field.
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.
The French Democracy is a 2005 English-language French short political film made by Alex Chan using computer animation from Lionhead Studios' 2005 business simulation game The Movies. The plot centers on three Moroccan men who turn to rioting after facing different forms of discrimination. Chan, a French native of Chinese descent, created the film to convey his view that racism caused the riots of the 2005 civil unrest in France. Although Chan was restricted by shortcomings and technical limitations in The Movies, he finished the film after four days of production.
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.
Strange Company was a group of machinima creators and distributors based in Edinburgh, Scotland. They are known in the medium as the longest-standing machinima production company, having produced machinima films since 1997, and for creating the Machinima.com website, which distributes such films on the internet since 2000.
Diary of a Camper is an American short film released in October 1996 that was made using id Software's first-person shooter video game Quake. The film was created by the Rangers, a clan or group of video game players, and first released over the Internet as a non-interactive game demo file. The minute and a half-long video is commonly considered the first example of machinima—the art of using real-time, virtual 3D environments, often game engines, to create animated films. The story centers on five members of the Rangers clan fighting against a lone camper in a multiplayer deathmatch.
The following is a list of notable machinima-related events in the year 2006. These include several new machinima productions, season finales, and the 2006 Machinima Festival.
Operation Bayshield is a short 1997 film made by Clan Undead, a group of video game players. The work was created by using the machinima technique of recording a demonstration file of player actions in id Software's 1996 first-person shooter video game Quake, which could replay such files on demand. The group had seen the first known machinima productions, made by United Ranger Films, and decided to make a comedy film. The result, Operation Bayshield, follows a task force's attempts to thwart terrorists who have chemical explosives. Released on January 23, 1997, the work received praise from contemporary Quake movie review sites and helped to attract others, including Hugh Hancock of Strange Company and members of the ILL Clan, to machinima. It pioneered technical advances in machinima, such as the use of custom digital assets and of lip synchronization.
The following is a list of notable machinima-related events in the year 2005. These include several new machinima productions, season finales, and the 2005 Machinima Film Festival.
Machinima, Inc. was an American multiplatform online entertainment network owned by WarnerMedia. The company was founded in January 2000 by Hugh Hancock and was headquartered in Los Angeles, California.
The following is a list of notable machinima-related events in the year 2004.
Dance, Voldo, Dance is a machinima-based music video produced in 2002 by Chris Brandt. The video, created using the fighting game Soulcalibur, features two players both controlling the character Voldo, using existing in-game animation to have the characters perform a synchronized dance to the song "Hot in Herre" by musician Nelly. The result of over a week's full-time preparation and training, the video was conceived after Brandt noticed the character's animations and attacks could be triggered in sync with the beat of a song, and the reactions of onlookers to such a display. While several groups demonstrated interest in showcasing the video, complications arose from the copyright holders whose works were involved in creation.
The following is a list of notable machinima-related events in 2007.
Male Restroom Etiquette is a 2006 American short subject created by Phil R. Rice and produced by his company Zarathustra Studios. The film is a mockumentary about unwritten rules of behavior in male restrooms and is intended to be a parody of educational and social guidance films. Narrated by Rice, Male Restroom Etiquette states restroom customs to be followed and depicts a scenario of social chaos if they are violated. The film was made using the machinima technique of recording video footage from computer games, namely The Sims 2 and SimCity 4. Male Restroom Etiquette won multiple awards and was listed by Guinness World Records Gamer's Edition in 2009 as the most popular Sims video uploaded to YouTube.
Game: On is a 2004 short film produced by Ethan Vogt, a student at New York University, as an advertisement for Volvo Cars. The work is the first to combine live action and machinima, the use of real-time computer animation from a three-dimensional graphics rendering engine. In 2005, the film won awards for Best Picture and Best Commercial/Game Machinima at the 2005 Machinima Film Festival.