Before going to the Machinima screening, I had almost no clue what machinima exactly was. I had heard of some video game film series like Parkour Civilization and Jackson Field’s Minecraft from the Mob’s Perspective series, but hadn’t really explored much else of the genre, thinking that the genre was limited to mainly creative projects and niche endeavors.
But after the Friday screening, much of these thoughts changed. I hadn’t expected that machinima would dive deep into both many different games and different ideas, ranging from storytelling and exploring real life themes to exploration and finding the boundaries of the game. The ones that struck me the most were the The Edge of the World and Rehearsals for Retirement.
The Edge of the World surprised me a fair amount, not just because the featured game is Cyberpunk 2077, one of my favorite modern games, but also for its difference from the other machinima screenings. In the film, we focused on a character jumping past the Night City border wall, basically the edge of the playable game world, and exploring the edges of the graphical game engine and faraway land renders. Anomalies and glitches such as invisible water walls, jagged peaks, and covered holes were prevalent. There wasn’t really much of a story involved, apart from an occasional narrator talking about “the subject” and their exploration progress. However much of the outside world and anomalies were left to interpretation for the viewer and the meaning behind what it means to explore beyond the boundaries of “reality.”
I was also quite surprised by some of the themes explored in the films and being able to infer and predict what the films were portraying, with the main example being Rehearsals for Retirement.
In the short film, we saw many different shots throughout the game GTA San Andreas, ranging from inside a train tunnel to a rainy field to empty cities. We also saw many shots of a bouquet of flowers and a black hearse car along with scenes of fire and desolation, hinting at themes of death and grief. Having played through GTA SA numerous times, I inferred that the themes of death and shots of CJ, the main protagonist of the game and most likely the focus character of the film, pointed towards CJ grieving for the death of his mother and loved ones that died throughout the game’s story. While CJ never talks or even moves, the almost cryptic shots and camera focuses gives off an eerie vibe and makes the viewer think of any sort of meaning to what they were seeing.
Overall, the Machinima Screening was quite an interesting and even fun experience, being able to watch a large variety of different films on different games interpreting how far the boundaries of games and their creative potential can expand. It was also quite fun to identify numerous familiar characters and games in films like as Reckoning 3, such as Desmond from Assassin’s Creed or Akiyama from Yakuza 4.
