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 Features
Meet The Machinimakers: The 2006 Machinima
Festival Report
 Panel: Machinima With Issues
Much of machinima is for and by gamers, about games or game parodies.
But a small contingent is using the medium for provocation and
even social change. The panel, “Machinima with Issues" highlighted
a few of these works, ranging from reenactment of historical events
to culture jamming. The three panelists brought on a lively discussion
of art, hacker culture, and politics in machinima. Moderated by
curator of the Museum of the Moving Image, Carl Goodman, the panelists
included Eddo Stern, an artist known for game installations such
as Tekken Torture Tournaments and machinima Vietnam Romance, Chris
Burke, creator of the Halo machinima talk show, “This
Spartan Life,” and Alex Chan, first time filmmaker and creator
of “The
French Democracy.” Screenings of the works were followed
by the discussion.
Eddo Stern screened “Sheik Attack”, his 1996 work. “Sheik
Attack” featured scenes from a strategy wargame, troops into
battle, and at the end, the killing of hostages. With its juxtaposition
of Israeli guitar folk music and game violence, “Sheik Attack” is
jarring but effective. Stern created “Sheik Attack” out
of his discontent with modern wargames perpetuating the fantasy
of war, commandos, and real-attack situations. He believes wargames
desensitize viewers to killing on-screen, in-game, or even in real-life.
His goal was to create a scenario (the end killing scene in “Sheik
Attack”) that would re-sensitize audiences. Eddo Stern is
currently working on a piece on slum lords in Los Angeles called “Landlord
Vigilante.”
Chris Burke, the second speaker is the creator of “This
Spartan Life,” the popular talk show that takes place inside
an Xbox Live Halo 2 game. Burke screened a PSA on net
neutrality using Halo machinima. When the piece was made,
net neutrality was the most Googled item of the week; TSL was able
to attract a huge
audience. Burke also noted that the TSL episode on gun control
spawned hotly debated message threads on their forum, and was
glad to know that 15 year TSL old fans were debating gun control,
and more specifically, was happy to find that TSL exposes world
and non-gamer issues to a traditional gamer
audience.
The third panelist, Alex Chan, presented his timely work, “The
French Democracy.” Certainly the speaker with the most agency,
Chan, a son of Chinese immigrants created the work from being personally
impacted by the violence and ethnic tensions in France. “The
French Democracy” is a recreation of volatile events leading
up to last summer’s Paris riots. Chan was incensed by the
media’s gross misrepresentation of the rioters, who were
depicted as monsters. He decided wanted to challenge that notion
and tell a story of marginalized, working class North African
immigrants of Moroccan and Algerian decent, and depict them as “more
human.”
In the film, the rioters are three male Moroccan
youth who are assaulted with blatant, unbearable racism. One man
is turned away from a job because an employer does not want to
hire blacks; another man is beat up strolling with his white girlfriend.
The third man is turned down for an apartment because he is black.
The men are infuriated by a society that constantly puts them down,
and retaliate with Molotov cocktails in the streets. The moderator
mentioned that the work paralleled Do The Right Thing, and panelist
Burke noted that the work reminded him of the French classic, The
Battle of Algiers. “The French Democracy” also cuts
back to scene with a white French family gawking at the riot violence
on their TV. The film attempted to represent multiple positions
in the riots, demonstrating that every side has a rational story.
Chan was a prime example of someone who turned to machinima out
of necessity and accessibility. With no filmmaking experience,
Chan created the narrative from Lionhead’s Sims style
game, The Movies. Without voice actors, the dialogue conveys with
subtitles. Chan disseminated “The French Democracy” on
the Internet, and since then it’s received global media coverage.
To end the discussion, the moderator asked when machinima becomes
a necessity or a choice. While Chan created from necessity and
agency,
Eddo Stern found that creating machinima content is an improvisational
process. He observed that machinima is at the crossroad and will
bifurcate – become either a developed fan and hacker culture,
and expand as the medium for gamer fan works, or become a co-opted
by corporate interests as a commercial aesthetic and style used
to sell things.
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