How are we making machinima?

Last lesson Ms. Parish said something like 'I like what you've done but I have no idea how you've done it'. Here I'll try to put that right by explaining what machinima is and how to use it as a film technique. If you look at the URL of the last post you'll see that was what I originally intended to slip it in there, I decided it's worth a full post. I'll also try my best not to be patronising.

Editing update

Firstly for the update of what we've been doing, we've been editing well and encountered few problems. My laptop was restored. I delegated most of the things we wanted to include to the editing stage, so now that we're here the film has changed drastically, so much even that I asked for scene 3.1 (or 2.2, Jonny has the storyboards) to be re-shot because we're going to add a new model from Gmod. I know this'll be the third time we'll have re-shot the same scene but that's how we're working at the moment. Having started with a storyboard, script, scouted out various locations in-game, and Jonny's research, we then made the first film which I suppose would be the draft, then I re-shot the scenes and that would be the 2nd draft, what we're working on now is far from the final piece, we still have some things to sort out:

Moar research

If you must know I'm doing this now instead of my film because my laptop died, it's currently sitting on the kitchen table while I back up the hard drive, and it will be on the kitchen table for the next 6 hours or so. In the meantime I re-recorded the shots we needed (and added some more) in compressed MotionJPEG format. We now have 24 shots and they're coming out slightly sharp and pixelated but apart from that they're much easier to work with than before.

Filming update

On Friday lunchtime (when everyone else was doing Sport Relief) we set up a bluescreen in the drama department and began filming the first bit of footage, there was some problem because our actor was busy (at Sport Relief, probably) but I stepped in and acted instead:

Script for sci-fi main film task.

Our film begins with a long establishing shot of space. Our narrator speaks.
"In the year 2058 Human Civilisation developed the ability to travel among the stars".
Then we have a grand orchestral score as a hornet floats across the top of the screen [reference to beginning of Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope].
"They didn't like what they found."
The hornet is hit by a lazer [reduce the damage enough to make it insignificant].

Research for main task.

I should explain this post to start off with, during today's lesson Jonny voted that we try a science-fiction black and white silent machinima, I agreed. After the lesson we both met on Xbox LIVE and messed around on the Forge for about 45 minutes. We played on the maps we would use and messed around with the inbuilt filters. You must understand that this is great because it includes actually playing through video games... for educational purposes! I settled on the map Orbital and forged it with an inbuilt colour filter (that means the filter you're seeing in these screenshots was added in real-time as part of the Bungie game engine). I should probably mention here that the Orbital map is only available as part of the Mythic Map Pack 2 as included in the Multiplayer disk with Halo 3: ODST (you have no idea how much I'm enjoying this). Without further ado, here's the research:

Preliminary task and it's evaluation

The preliminary task was edited and uploaded on Jonny's account, here it is:

Music for pre-lim task cleared.

This is an intermediary post to say that I've finished my evaluation, as a Vlog, if that's okay, it's uploading at the moment and will be on my channel in 5 hours or so. It's better than my previous vlogs because I went back to my previous practice of meticulously editing out all the 'um's, 'ah's and anything else I didn't want. This was because I also returned to my previous practice of converting my video from my camcorder in MP4 format to DivX format as soon as I got them onto the computer (I have the DivX converter, and more surprisingly I got it totally legally and paid for it with actual money). MP4 files don't work well with MoviePlus X3, I might download the 3ivX codec to fix that sometime.

You slipped on a banana! Lol!

You might have read a few months back that we did a filming task in school, well on Friday I was able to get it off the Macs and onto YouTube.
I've also got a vlog-review of Prince of Persia: the Two Thrones on the Wii uploading at the moment, I'll post it on Twitter when it's done and and I'm back from this afternoon's lesson, or you could subscribe to my channel and watch it while YouTube's processing it.
I'll add captions to it, after it's done.

Prelim task filming.

On Thursday 4th of March we went to a pub to film our historical drama. I had costumes and a camera and a bike to take us there. What I hadn't researched was whether a pub would be open on a weekday morning. I thought it would be easy to film because the pub would be virtually empty of customers, so it was closed. As a last ditch attempt we went to a church around the corner (churches are good for historical setting because they're old and sort of generic). The church too was closed.

Storyboard for prelim task.

This is the storyboard for the prelim task that me and Jonny made:
EDIT: It won't upload. Will re-try at home...

2nd EDIT: Wahey! Tried at home and it's done.
We decided to go with the Victorian historical drama, because we don't really watch or like Romantic films.
3rd EDIT: Jonny put up his storyboard too, it's the precursor to this one.

Historical genre for film task.

Historical
It is 1884 and young master Filpott is meeting his friend Neville Baker at the local Tavern after a long day ploughing the field. He enters, the room is thick with smoke from the roaring fire, men drink and wenches dance [we don't have to film this, just get the sounds]. Filpott crosses the tavern and sees Neville, whose face is smeared with factory grease. Neville raises his tankard of ale in greeting.
Neville: How be the Harvest this season?
Filpott: Poor.
Neville: Aye, it's hard times.
And they stare sullenly at their glasses, take one long swig and then the world fades black.


Notes: We would add a monochrome filter to this as an effect and make the video look older.