Tomorrow Elephant

I have also completely forgotten to tell everyone to go see the first three episodes of Bloodspell by Hugh Hancock, the Eisenstein of machinima. Open Business also has some coverage of the Creative Commons-based business model Hugh and Strange Company are trying to develop.

Bloodspell is perhaps best described as a “punk fantasy adventure”, with lots of angst, gore and unlikely heroism —- a combination of “Lord of the Rings, Indiana Jones, and the Sex Pistols”, according to Hugh. (Caveat: I participated in some of the early brainstorming sessions for Bloodspell and am listed in the credits as a creative consultant; thus, my opinions are somewhat less than objective.) It packs a lot of plot in the short, five-minute episodes, much like a traditional Flash Gordon serial.

Bloodspell features some excellent camera work and voice acting. Still, it’s far from perfect, and there are scenes where the limitations of the game engine used to produce the film do show (notably the fight scenes and whenever a character is running). But equally there are moments when it’s easy to forget that you are watching something that has been produced at close-to-zero cost using a computer game.

I think machinima has a big future and (along with podcasts and vodcasts) has the potential to be an incredible democratic content-creation tool. It’s also a brilliant example of how modern technology is often used for a purpose that it is not designed for. Machinima has already attained fame as a medium for political expression and I can easily see it becoming an educational aid: the possibilities are endless.

Some of the narrative ticks of Bloodspell show that as a medium for drama, machinima is still trying to find its natural visual language (the main challenge being the enormous difficulty of implementing character expressions, making it closer to something like animated radio theatre). But I can only imagine what happens when Hugh and the next-generation machinimateurs get their grubby hands on the kinds of things that people like Mirjam Eladhari are trying to develop —- games like Ouroboros, which incorporate emotion into the very game engine itself. But to get a good idea of what can already be done, go download Bloodspell now!