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Image game
(The Economic Times (India))Thanks to gaming technology, that isn't a pipe-dream anymore. What's more, you can put it out on the internet, where your movie will invite instant criticism or acclaim (that is, if it's worth talking about at all) and you will get your first taste of fame in virtual moviedom.
Recently, a 13-minute movie on last month's riots in France received much attention, much of it because of its topicality. Called The French Democracy, it has been made by a 27-year-old Parisian, Alex Chan, aka Koulamata, with the help of a new computer game called The Movies. Chan hasn't been bitten by the movie-making bug neither is he a passionate gamer. But the riots, which happened close to where he lived, moved him deeply enough for him to want to give his version of it.
The French Democracy talks about the harassment and discrimination of Muslim French citizens of Africa origin and tracks the riots from its starting point the electrocution of two youths who were hiding from the police in a transformer.
There are no human actors in the film only video characters, and one of them says: If they have the opportunity to shoot you, they will... They will do it because we are different. Though voiceovers and music is possible, Chan has used English subtitles throughout.
This is a movie about the recent French riots in suburb. It is fully subtitled in english(sorry for my english, i had some training to do). I hope you will enjoy this movies and have a better understand of what is happening in my country! is Chan's description about the movie.
He's reportedly still working on the subtitles to improve it. Chan is using a very powerful tool to make sure his views are conveyed across international borders. And bloggers may see in this medium a better way to increase the hitson their sites.
Though there are charges that the movie is one-sided, Chan's is said to be the first political film of it's kind. Most machinima is silly, or porny, or violent - but this is real political stuff, the kind of thing the First Amendment was invented for.
It's a real milestone in machinima history, says boingboing.net. For the uninitiated, machinima, according to Wikipedia, is a portmanteau word for machine cinema and/or machine animation and means both a collection of associated production techniques and a film genre created by such production techniques.
The films consist of computer-generated images created by low-end gaming engines, mostly of action games such as of the Quake or Unreal series. The Movies, designed by Lionhead Studios, makes filmmaking much easier. And the Lionhead website Films made with The Movie can be uploaded at http://movies.lionhead.com and get rated or find a place in the top movies list.
The studio founder Peter Molyneux is planning a contest in which gamers will use real actors.
And besides gamers, who're just having fun with The Movies, Molyneux has in mind aspiring film-makers for whom, he feels, the game could be a handy tool.
After all, even celebrated movie-maker George Lucas has used the gaming engine 'Unreal engine' for the pre-visualisation of his film called 'Star Wars'. So have many other Hollywood directors. So if you want to give it a try, you're in august company.
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