Monday, December 8, 2008

Reinventing the wheel

Why are they always trying to reinvent the wheel every time a game company adds movie making capabalities to their game (and mostly fail getting it right)?
Having had a first look at the GTA4 video editor, I'm asking myself why they didn't have a look what has been done with GTA San Andreas by modders before. Great tools like San An Studios and other mods made this game a great tool for Machinima filmmakers. Excellent movies have been made with this:
The great machinima intro 'What is Machinima?' , the amazing 'The Days After' and the comedy/drama series 'PEDS' just to name a few.
Machinima has been around since 1994. Most of what is needed for filmmaking and how to get it right is easy to access and could have been used to create a much more usable tool than what I see implemented in GTA4 now.
Ok, it's not that bad as it might sound, but I see a lot of missed opportunities for filmmakers. I'm optimistic the modding community will to help again. Guess one still has to be happy that a game company includes any Machinima tool with the game at all.

3 comments:

Overman said...

That was basically my first impression of it too, but the more I play with it, the more I think we're underestimating the importance of this tool. This tool, effectively, brings back "recamming" power in a way that is reminiscent of Keygrip 2 (Quake 2). I think it will nicely complement the modding tools which take care of customization, finer character control, etc.

Purely as a camera / editing tool, I'm not sure I've seen it done this well before. It's really growing on me.

CD@Machinima Studios said...

Same here, I would never have started this blog if I couldn't imagine the impact this tool will indeed have. It reminds me on my first impression that I had with Lionhead's TheMovies.
On the first impression I was highly confused in seeing it not having a way to set your own free camera shots. For me setting up the camera was essential to be able to make movies. Of course some filmmakers soon showed that even with the prefixed scenes great movies can be made. It's all
about creativity and restrictions sometimes can help as well.

And they added a free camera later in the add-on which gave quality of movies a real boost.
There are indeed even more similarities between GTA4 tool and TheMovies editor. Guess that is worth another post.

I hope the point I'm trying to make will get more clear when I post on the different features of the tool.

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