Reel Expression

Note: This is cross-posted from my personal blog, diary of a tagalong.

I am a huge fan of machinima and obviously enamored of Second Life. But I am not at all a fan of SL machinima. The truth is, just about all of it that I have seen is weak. Worse, it is all weak in the same ways and seems to recapitulate the worst of SL: low quality graphics, minimal movement/action, and mind-numbingly slow pacing. And how often do we need to see someone scuba diving, someone sky diving, and a bunch of furries dancing in a night club? Rarely does it capture–or, better yet, build on–the strengths of Second Life, which is its “infinite variety” (borrowing Enobarbus’s description of Cleopatra). Here’s a rare exception, but though its good, it is not exceptional by (non-Second Life) machinima standards.

Some of it is surely the fault of the machinima makers. The pace of Second Life machinima is often slow and edited in self-indulgent ways. Shot lengths often last for several seconds at a time, and yet what they show is deeply static (SL animations are, as a rule, primitive). Most SL machinima look like half-animated PowerPoint slides–no thank you! The overreliance on the medium-long shot doesn’t help; you can do wide shots (even though SL’s draw distance is poor), and you can do closeups (even though facial expressions are limited, to say the least). Mixing up shot lengths enables you to establish different relationships between viewers and the content, and viewers therefore interpret and experience it in different ways.

Some of it is also the fault of Second Life. Its graphics and gestures are, comparatively speaking, poor. Expressions, poses, and gestures are what actors do, so SL’s weaknesses in this area is no small handicap. Still, machinima from other games deal with these issues. Halo’s protagonist doesn’t even have a face, let alone facial expressions. That hasn’t stopped Halo from supporting some of the best machinima films in existence. Halo and World of Warcraft both have limited gestures, but their machinimators have at least found ways to make use of what’s there for interesting gestural expression (the famous Internet is for Porn uses the same small set of gestures over and over with great effect). And good storytelling can do a lot to compensate for weak visuals.

I thought I was just unlucky, having only seen crappy SL machinima at machinima.com and when friends email me URLs. But today I went to YouTube, searched on “SecondLife” and sorted by rating. Guess what? Most SL machinima have mediocre to low ratings. Those that were rated highly either weren’t really machinima (such as U2’s and Suzanne Vega’s SL performances or various tutorials) or would be considered mediocre by the standards of other games.

I’m no film director, but I’d love to see evidence that SL machinima directors are aware of the following points.

• Camera: The camera doesn’t just capture reality; it frames it, focuses the viewer’s eyes on some part of it; and establishes the viewer’s relationships to it. Think about what you want the viewer to focalize on, second by second, and use the camera to facilitate that focus.
• Production versus post-production: Many impressive machinima films use a lot of post-production. Post-production gives you the ability to shape your story, shape your viewer’s experience. Even free/cheap software, like Windows Movie Maker and iMovie, gives you a decent set of capabilities to shape your story. (This is a call for smart cuts, not for cheesy transition effects.)
• Shot length: Keep the viewer’s eyes active; don’t let images go stale (hint to directors: no one likes looking at your avatar as much as you do, no matter how cool your skin is). That means either put something to look at in images (emotions, gestures, actions) or make quick cuts (MTV style, which creates its own action).
• Shot arrangement: The shot is the basic unit of the film and the way that two shots are connected is meaningful. One shot may give the lie to a previous shot, or further illustrate it, give the viewer an alternate perspective on it, or extend it in time and/or space. Don’t just stick one after the other, especially if the machinima is a narrative.
• Narrative: You don’t have to tell the story in order. Mix it up. Use frame tales. Narrate from the point of view of a minor character. In other words, not only is the story significant; so is its telling. Writing scripts in advance and storyboarding them may help people develop more compelling stories.
• Self-referentiality: Machinima is shot in games. Many of the best machinima films refer to the reality of the games, comment on it, and make players appreciate a new aspect of it. No SL machinima that I have seen (and I have seen many) cinematically captures the possibilities, the true soul, of Second Life, the way Red Vs. Blue or Warthog Jump: A Halo Physics Experiment capture the soul of Halo. This one at least captures the brains of Second Life.

Who the hell am I to say all this? I am no one. No one but a machinima fan who wishes Second Life machinima didn’t suck, didn’t make really amateur mistakes.

Final thought: Just about every non-Second Life machinima I linked to here is considered a classic for its system. What World of Warcraft player doesn’t know about Leeroy Jenkins? Which Half-Life fan hasn’t seen Still Seeing Breen? Are we going to let bland footage of a U2 performance stand as the best SL machinima has to offer? According to YouTube user ratings today, it is the best SL has to offer.