Encoding liveness: Performance and real-time rendering in machinima
David Cameron, John Alexander Carroll · 2009
Machinima is the appropriation of software-generated 3D virtual environments, typically video games, for filmmaking and dramatic productions.The creation and distribution technology of machinima tends to hide the nature of the performer, provoking consideration of a definition of 'liveness' that can accommodate the real-time rendering of screen content by game software in response to human input, or -at the extremeas if there is human input in accordance with performance parameters coded by humans.This paper considers the continuum of creative modes that machinima makers work on, and the differing aesthetic/technical decisions affecting the level of liveness in the finished production.Machinima films derive from captured gameplay, puppet-like live improvisational work, cinematic or televisual on-camera performances, and totally scripted performances produced using coded commands.Often, the real-time rendering capability of the game software is only critical at the point of image capture, but once the footage has been saved as a video file it is editing and post-production that becomes the focus of much machinima production.Even live improvisational pieceswhether performed in a real or virtual venue -are generally better known via their capture and distribution as video clips to a wider post-performance audience.This paper also explores machinima making as a community of practice, that is a specific group with a local culture, operating through shared practices, linked to each other through a shared repertoire of resources.Digital performance communities of practice emerging from video games and machinima production can be seen as having levels of engagement with a range of other communities, most obviously the gameplaying, game modifying, CGI animation and filmmaking communities.Consideration is given to how, from a dramatic viewpoint, the performers within a machinima production are also operating in much the same way as in-role improvisation occurs within the community of practice associated with process drama -a strongly framed environment defined by a 'digital pre-text' -the common digital environment that provides the agreed fictional context for the dramatic action to unfold in.