A new cinematic genre, produced on home PCs

MESQUITE, Texas -- He was trapped in the dimly lit, tile-floor control room, explosions erupting around him. His life, it seemed, was about to end.

But a few deft keystrokes later, he managed to hack into the computer system and open an escape hatch. Leaping headfirst to safety, the world slowed to a halt, his torso frozen in time.

The end.

This minute-long clip could have played out in the movie "The Matrix."

In a sense it was.

But "Matrix: 4x1" and its brethren are different. Part cinema, part video game, these so-called machinimas don't need real actors, props, cameras or sets -- just a home computer.

This emerging form of filmmaking uses the graphics power of today's computer games to create movies with remarkable visceral power.

As gamers raged across the street at QuakeCon 2002, an annual party for hardcore gamers, some of the top machinimas were on display last weekend at the first Machinima Film Festival at a steakhouse in Mesquite, near Dallas.

Machinimas are made using special software tools originally developed for the graphics engines of many first-person shooter video games, notably "Quake" and "Unreal Tournament."

Instead of running around virtual worlds with guns blazing, the game engines have been reworked with all the tools of a director: lighting, sets, actors.

"Simply defined, it's a film in a virtual 3-D environment," said Paul Marino, executive director of the Machinima Academy of Arts and Sciences, a New York-based group trying to promote the movie technique.

It may sound like something you've seen on the silver screen, but unlike big-budget productions such as "Toy Story" or "Shrek," the software used in machinima is much cheaper and often a free download.

Made in real time

What's revolutionary for directors, says Marino, is that machinimas can be made in real time.

"You're not waiting days on end for a scene to be created," said Drew Campbell of Fountainhead Entertainment in Mesquite, one of several game-related companies to spring up around the headquarters of game-maker id Software Inc.

Since March, Fountainhead has been developing "Machinimation," software it hopes will make it easier for Steven Spielberg wannabes to get a start in filmmaking.

Campbell demonstrated the software, and the results were startling. Using the mouse, he added actors, props and lights into a virtual set, then directed the action with a few clicks and some keystrokes.

About five minutes of work produced a 30-second movie that he could then save onto a compact disc or DVD for later viewing.

"It's not just about killing people, which is a good thing," Campbell said.

Along with the laser beams and spaceships often associated with video games, filmmakers have created cartoons, comedies and dramas.

The flicks tend to have a game-centric nature, however.

Anybody a storyteller

Jake Strider Hughes, 30, studied film but decided years ago that machinima was a better alternative to forging his creations than the painstaking process of model-building and film processing.

His latest machinima, "Anachronix: The Movie," is a two-hour sci-fi epic complete with characters who speak and have facial expressions, complex camera work and atmospheric sound effects.

"I sort of always thought it would be neat to make a space opera, but I don't have $100 million. Suddenly I was able to create this story. You can make any story you want, and it doesn't cost you thousands or millions of dollars and anybody can be a storyteller," said Hughes, of Hollywood, Calif.

Marino, Hughes and others acknowledge the current software programs have their limitations. Other programs used by machinima creators often are complex, buggy or both.

Also, machinimas usually cannot be too long because of memory constraints, and the visual quality is decidedly video game-esque.

Much of that may have to do with machinima's novelty. The first known example, "Diary of a Camper," was created in 1996, Marino said.

Some movers and shakers in the computer industry believe high-quality graphics will debut on home computers soon.

John Carmack, who co-founded id Software and is widely regarded as a major influence in computer game graphics, said during QuakeCon 2002 that the graphics quality of movies like "Toy Story" should appear in home computers by the end of 2003.

Hughes said he's certain machinima is here to stay.

"It's not going away. It's so easy to do it," he said.