Project Blog

2005 // 08 // 26
"Game Movies" - A Screening at the Games Convention 2005 Professional Party

Last Thursday night we presented a screening of "Game Movies" at this year's Games Convention professional party. The party itself was great. The location, called the Kohlrabizirkus (translates as "cabbage turnip circus"), is an old octangular market hall in Leipzig, which has an impressive cupola-shaped ceiling. There was a main stage in the center of the large building, which was surrounded by various club lounges and movie lounges. There were performances (acrobats), bands, DJs and VJs. Drinks were served in bath tubs and there was delicious finger food.

The impressive ceiling with the main stage below.		At the rehearsal: View from above with the "Game Movie" Lounge on the right side (playing "Diebe!").
One of the lounges before the screening started.		The main stage.
The films were projected on one of the inner walls of the movie lounges, but they could also be watched from the outside. The only problematic thing was the sound, as the Kohlrabizirkus is notorious for its difficult acoustics. But that was mainly a problem for the bands, and not for your films, as inside the lounges the soundtracks were played loud enough to be clearly hearable. Unfortunately the pictures do not really reflect the atmosphere as it was a lot more colourful.
The party crowd enjoying themselves (note to self: next time remember to turn off the flash if the light crew uses invisible mist!)		Impressions of a VJ lounge (or is it just a random WinAmp-Plugin?).
The party was sold out and attended by about 2,500 professionals (quite an international crowd). Our presentation was well received by the audience although a lot of other things were going on at the same time. Everybody reacted very positively and a lot of people picked up the leaflet that we had provided. One woman working for the public library in Bremen, another German city, expressed interest to have a similar screening in November. Compared to other media parties that we have attended and which are often quite mediocre as the organizers try to please everyone, this party was really quite stylish and we would like to thank everyone who has been part of this.
Inside the "Game Movie" lounge at the reheasal (playing "The Awakening").		"The Game Movie" lounge as seen from outside (playing "Monkey Island 2 Outtakes").
People watching "Monkey Island 2 Outtakes" inside the "Game Movie" lounge.		People watching from outside.

Game Movies – How Games Inspire Film-Makers

Computer games are not merely a significant factor in the entertainment industry, they also have considerable influence on the imagination and the everyday life of the players. This can be clearly seen in the field of amateur and fan-movies, because here many filmmakers are inspired by their hobbies and idols. Apart from blockbusters such as Star Wars and The Matrix computer games have emerged as an important starting point. Films, mostly short films that deal with games, are booming.

The vector-based animation software Macromedia Flash has developed into the standard software for Web animation with professionals and amateurs alike – due to its easy usage and small file sizes. There is an abundance of Flash movies which copy sprites from games and then spin their storylines further or satirize them. As a consequence of that, numerous games from the 1970s and 1980s continue to live or several games are blended with each other: For instance, Sonic, the Hedgehog fights against Super Mario. Especially with Flash-based game parodies it is difficult to separate the wheat from the straw, simply, because there are so many of them.

Machinimas are 3D-animated films in which the filmmakers exploit the real-time representation of graphics of the games. In most cased several computers are networked in multiplayer-mode. Each person steers one characters and one computer takes on the function of the camera which records the action and the film is finished. Comparable to digital puppet theatre, there is a movement scattered all over the world which produces video clips, parodies but also entire series with games such as the Quake-series, Unreal Tournament, HalfLife, Battlefield 1942 but also with The Sims. Some films are very closely tied to the games and their look; others, such as Anna by Fountainhead Entertainment, strive for independence from the games and their game origins are no longer discernible. Some machinima films have already achieved a cult status on the Web, for instance, Red vs. Blue, a series based on Halo. However, at this stage it is not yet clear in which direction machinima will develop. Increasingly, more and more game producers provide film production tools with their games, because they realize that machinima just like modding contributes significantly to the cult status of games. For example, the fact that movie making tools were released with The Sims2 led to the production of thousands of Sims2-films, although the game entered the market only in September 2004. Electronic Arts had learned from the predecessor The Sims that many players used the photo album feature for telling stories. Quite likely there will be another flood of fan-films, when Lionhead Studios releases The Movies in autumn 2005, a game whose main goal is film production.

Brickfilms are a special form of puppet animation, in which small Lego figs are animated in settings built from Lego-bricks with stop-motion-technique. Some of the lovingly produced films satirize also computer games, for instance, the genre of Jump'n'Runs. Even life-action films are affected by the game euphoria: the amateur film Game Theft re-enacts with a great sense of humour and wilfully clumsy the action adventure GTA III.

Regarding copyright, fan-filmmakers are acting on thin ice. However, in the majority of cases the game industry tolerates the film-making. More than other media the game publishers seem to have realized that fan art is a great compliment from the fans which contributes significantly to the cult status of games. We would like to emphasize particularly that none of the filmmakers receives any royalties or reimbursements for this screening.

We present you an international selection of films that deal with computer games and that have been produced in the aforementioned techniques. Some of them were created by professionals and artists, however, many of them were also created by amateurs. And even if not every selected film reached professional quality, there's one thing both, amateurs as well as professionals, have in common: they make their films out of love and dedication for the games they play.

Dr. Karin Wehn & Ingo Linde
Institute for Communication and Media Studies, Leipzig