500 word discussion on machinima

What truly impressed me the most about the examples of machinima that I watched was the variety and amount of camera angles that they contained. The first one that I saw was “Secret Lives”, and I was surprised at how good it was and how much I enjoyed it. The plot was extremely realistic, therefore it quickly caught my attention, and the filming and detail that it included was amazing. The characters had a wide variety of movements, especially with their hands, and their body language was really realistic. I ended up watching several episodes of Secret Lives because it really caught my attention and I was interested in what was going to happen next. I also watched “Addicted” which I also thought was really well made. My favorite parts were the camera angles that were from above looking down on the guy who is addicted, and how the shots would start out zoomed in on him and then slowly fade out. I then watched “The Adv. of Bill & John: Danger Attacks at Dawn” and really liked the beginning how the view was from a video camera and was recording the view from a plane. I thought it was really cool how they used the effects of a real video camera. “Deviation” was just a trailer, but what really impressed me was that the voices seemed to fit with the characters the best that they had in any of the other ones I have watched. It might be because their faces were covered so the awkwardness of the avatars mouths moving was not visible, but regardless the scene seemed to flow very smoothly. When watching “Desolate” I felt like it had the best transitions between scenes, because they were obviously well thought out and flowed really well with the film. In all of the other videos that I watched, I was really impressed by the amount of detail that they contained and all the little things that really made them seem realistic. The smallest movements of the characters and the different angles in which they are portrayed really make the difference between the best machinima and the average ones. The screenplays were really interesting to read and I was inspired by how realistic and specific they got.

For my own “Little Brother” inspired machinima, I would like to do something that is in the perspective of another character. I feel as though Marcus’ point of view of the story is so different and biased compared to what another character’s would be. I am thinking about doing either Darryl, his father, or maybe even one of Marcus’ parents, and writing one scene of what the situation looks like in their eyes. The scenes that I might do are either when Marcus first returns home, when his dad gets stopped multiple times by the police, or when Marcus reveals that Darryl is still alive.