Machinima Discussion - Donnie Green

After watching a bunch of Machinima films I had a much better understanding of the techniques, hard work, and creativity that are necessary to produce a successful Machinima of my own. While I already had a pretty good understanding of how important camera angles, sound, setting, etc. were from taking three years of film making in high school, I realized from watching the Machinimas that it is somewhat very different. As the director you must control everything. You have to make all of your actors do every single thing down to the movements of their hands and mouths. The camera angles and movements in Machinimas are very important because actions of characters are limited. To make a successful Machinima, the most important things seem to be camera angles, voices, lighting, music/sound effects, and interesting dialogue. The rest of it can be totally uninteresting and still make for a great Machinima, as in some of the Red vs. Blue films where the characters barely even move, they are just engaged in conversation. Some of the things that I really want to focus on in my Machinima are mouth movements and body movements. I found these two things very distracting when done poorly and I feel as though if I can make them look natural then it will add a much more real quality to the film and make it easier on the eyes. The Machinimas I enjoyed the most had a comedic plot line and made me laugh, the others were more nerdy and appealed to a specific audience. I would also like to try and make my Machinima funny while still capturing the themes of Little Brother. I have thought about placing Marcus in different situations with the DHS that make both parties seem even more absurd in their actions with funny settings and silly outfits. I find comedic irony especially entertaining and I understand it is difficult to do well but I'd like to give it a shot in my screenplay.