Kubrick runs amok in The Walled City

Okay, so... I don't know if you have heard of Machima - basically, it is the practice of filmmaking through the use of a game engine. A crude example would be

• record your player in Halo running around, gesturing, and nodding his head
• add some bad dialogue
• convert to movie clip
• distribute to 12-year olds

The interesting development now though is combining virtual filmmaking with virtual worlds. I don't have the requisite skills to communicate what a mind f**k that is... other than to refer to boggling quote from a pretty good recent Machima short -

"The pictures weren’t really capturing the right feel and [I] decided to see how it looked as a recording," she continues. "From there I moved to the bar in the city, which I remembered had the most beautiful lighting, and continued to film shots." Only then did the kernel of a story emerge. Midnight City, she says, "reminds me of a noir movie, so tried to create a character that would live in that place."

That seems like something that your average second-year film student would say. The difference here though is that the "place" she is talking about scouting and shooting in IS NOT REAL... it's a chunk of code running on a server somewhere. This person scouted virtual locations, presumably created by someone else - set up shop, and "shot" a visually arresting movie. No, it's not Shakespeare... but it's not bad, either.

Here is a shot from this person's short work -

Mr. William Gibson, commence your crowing, sir. The Walled City is close at hand.

Smokem ifya gottem

Wow. When did smoke effects become this real? The is the first time I've ever seen heavy, wet smoke look real ala CGI.

This is a great trailer for the next StarCraft game. Obviously it's written with the 12 year old boy in mind, but it looks almost as cool as Blade Runner, and it's 100 percent CG.

Check out the movie (I'll hopefully post a pic later or something)