The Professionalim of Machinima

Hollywood, the highest filmmaking status we can think of. It boasts the highest level of professionalism and the most viewed: your audience can reach in the millions and even in the hundred millions.

And machinima is starting to be just like it.

Machinimas nowadays are becoming more impersonal and professional. The days where a group of friends create machinima are being replaced by working with strangers.

Voice acting is a large part of the machinima process and it's one of the most impersonal. Voice actor recruiting requests are polluting machinima forums and websites throughout the internet. With the average upcoming machinimator most likely a teenager, machinimas are getting negative feedback when they use teenage voices. Recruiting some actors for special characters and/or parts is one thing, but when the cast list is entirely from strangers from the internet, a question has to be asked: Are machinimas nowadays expected to use professional voice actors?

It seems that we are taking machinima too seriously; this level of professionalism is adding more pressure to the uprising machinimators. Machinimas, even the most popular machinimas, started as small groups making simple movies for fun. As time grew on, they knew what they wanted to do and added more professionalism into their work. This is perfectly fine and normal. Who doesn't want to improve on their work? But when we criticize new legitimate machinimas, with some level of decency, as awful only because they did not have spectacular effects or voice actors over the age of 24, does it not mean that we are being hypocritical? Or to those who are not as advanced in machinima as the "top dogs", is that not hypocritical to yourselves and your favorite machinima group?

The next topic is music. Some folks see custom music as a leading indicator to a good machinima, but I cannot see it as such. A good machinima would show a good flow of music, going through the scenes elegantly. So that rules out Numb from Linkin Park on a sad scene, but I disgress. Custom music should not be an automatic indication that a machinima is good. But rather, the flow of music, custom or not.

We are placing these things on such high pedestal that some can make the claim its reaching almost Hollywood and that we are forgetting where all successful machinimas came from: the small groups of visionaries.

But how can we let these visionaries show their works if we are criticizing their lack of effects, their lack of professionalism, their lack of things that can only come though experience and time.

The point of any machinima, and films in general, are it's stories. But when we are so focused on noticing the effects or the voice actors, we are forgetting the true work of the creator and ultimately the underlining theme of machinima:

We are making films out of video games. A game should not be taken seriously. And I believe, machinima shouldn't be taken as seriously as Hollywood considering what we are basing machinima out of: a game.

-Nicolas Giordano