My [OLD] Machinima

Here are some examples of my dabbling in video making using video games as a media source:

1. Coral Reef Crisis

Coral Reef Crisis is a preview video of an educational mini-game I designed using the Source engine. The game explores issues related to marine ecology and conservation. I designed the game as part of an assignment in a graduate level class on instructional gaming through North Carlina State University. 

“Chicken Dance” was my very first attempt at machinima. The video was filmed in Dark Age of Camelot with the help of my guildmates from Harbingers of Light. It was especially challenging to coordinate the dancing, but what a blast! Folks wandering up to the barn where we did the filming were very curious. Directing the video was tough too. I had to type blindly with the user interface turned off to coordinate everyone while filming. This was prior to us renting a Ventrilo server. 

“Home” was largely inspired by a student of mine at the time who had created a video using clips from Final Fantasy games. I used the same song, but decided to create a game-based interpretation of it, turning it into a guild-recruitment video. Again, this was filmed in Dark Age of Camelot. I probably spent more time on this video than any other, actually storyboarding the shots and coordinating the scenes with the lyrics. 

“Eye of the Tiger” was the result of boredom. I decided one day to record my Dwarven Hunter, Golyn as I ran about the world fighting various creatures in World of Warcraft. Once I decided on the theme music, I decided to take a “dwarf-in-training” theme as a salute to the Rocky films. 

At the request of my guildmates, I created a video of our recent player-vs.- player fighting in both the Arena and in the Battlegrounds in World of Warcraft. Sadly, there’s no good way to remove the user interface and still remain functional in competitive play… At least not for me.

Most of these videos were captured using the S-Video output of my graphics card and running it to the input of my Sony HandyCam. Then, I pipe them back into the PC for editing via a firewire connection. For most of these films, I simply used Windows Movie Maker to do the editing.