Update: NY Times article
Machinima.com: What Is Machinima?
Introducing the revolutionary real-time unreality that is Machinima: shooting film in virtual reality.
An artform come out of nowhere. Films that use computer game technology and look like "Toy Story". Zero-budget film-makers making films that would stretch the biggest of Hollywood studios.
That's Machinima.
In short, a film made using Machinima (Ma-sheen-EH-ma) is a film made with computer-generated graphics, similar to those you can see on the television or on film in titles like "Antz" and "Toy Story". However, unlike those features, Machinima uses graphical techniques originally developed for computer games to generate its visuals, meaning that a film-maker with a home PC can create feature-length epics that would require millions of dollars to make using traditional CGI (Computer Ganerated Imagery) techniques, thanks to the fact that the Machinima film-maker can make his or her film in real time, rather than painstakingly animating frame by frame.
And once the film is made, rather than languishing on a video or in a can, Machinima productions can be dsitributed over the internet, being split down into their component parts and "rendered" in real-time on a viewer's computer, allowing them to be reproduced exactly as the film-makers saw them.
Machinima as an artform is still in its infancy, with only a small number of devotees. However, we at Machinima.com believe it will revolutionise film. For the first time, anyone can become a film-maker: able to create any film and any scene they can imagine.
