World of Chaucer

Making Machinima: Interdisciplinary Adaptations of The Canterbury Tales in World of Warcraft

Chris Moore (moorenet@gmail.com)

Page 1
 Table of Contents

Aims of this project 3

introducing machinima 4

lights, camera, frag 7

red versus blue 9

making machinima 12

preparation 12

scripting 12

locations and story board 13

filming on location 14

mixing and editing 17

uploading and tagging 17

references 18

Page 2
 Aims of this project

First, and above all, thank you for your patience and
interest in this project. This collaboration between DIGC’s
and Chaucerians is at the bleeding edge of innovation at
the University of Wollongong (UoW) and blood, sweat and
tears have been shed in order to bring you this pioneering
opportunity. The project is innovative on a number of key
levels, primarily it is a chance to experiment with the production of machinima related to your course
work and assessment tasks. This has been made possible through the UoW Educational Strategies
Development Fund Grants Scheme for 2010 and the Faculty of Creative Arts (in particular Associate
Professor Brogan Brunt) which has loaned us the use of laptop computers to run the World of Warcraft
and video capture software.

The project is also innovative for its interdisciplinary collaboration between DIGC and English
students. Not only will you be creatively re-imagining the Canterbury Tales through the practice of
using digital games to tell stories, you will be working together to make this possible. The following
pages will give you some background information about machinima and the processes for making
short machinima, but first you will need to get into small groups and use the web to communicate and
organise your virtual production crews. There are several ways you might go about organising your
machinima production over the next couple of weeks. One of the easiest ways to proceed will be to
create Google mail (Gmail) accounts (if you don’t have them) and use Google docs to collaboratively
write and plan your adaptations. You could also use Facebook groups, a collaborative blog, Google chat
(GChat or Google Talk - http://www.google.com/talk/) or Skype to conference call and coordinate your
plans.

Remember our ambitions are practical and not grand, the aim is to produce a very short machinima
adaptations of a scene from the Canterbury tales like this one (http://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=OfOyXTFxNE0). If you succeed in producing one machinima, and have the time, you can go on to
make others. Casual staff member Chris Brown has been employed on tuesdays between 3.30 and 5.30
to provide technical help and the the ITS Orion computer lab booked during that time to give you the
space to work on the filming. Chris Moore can also arrange to meet you in game if you need further
help, but you will need to email him at (moorenet@gmail.com) to arrange times.

This project is a ‘proof of concept’ which means its outcomes are extremely modest, all we have to
accomplish over the next few weeks is to demonstrate to the University and to the wider academic
community that such a project is possible.

Page 3
introducing machinima

Machinima is the practice of using digital

games to tell stories. The term ‘machinima’ is
a neologism and a portmanteau, a blending of
the 'machine' of computer games with the
screen language of 'cinema'. Leo Berkeley
(2006) describes machinima as the
convergence of games, films and the web as it
requires the use of 3D game engines, digital
editing software, and actors distributed across
networked environments to produce media that is linear and has a narrative oriented in traditions of
older broadcast models of storytelling. Ruggill et al (2006, p 308) position machinima among other
new communicative art forms, including dialogical simulation and computer visualization. Picard
(2006) suggests at its most basic machinima simply means making films from video games.

Machinima is the maverick film-making process that evolved from hackers messing with the insides of their
favorite compute games...It’s a philosophy, a fer vent belief, a technique, and last of all, a technology. (Hancock,
2007, p.1)

Machinima production techniques offer access to tools that allow

rapid, rich and quick media responses, say Middelton and Richard
(2008: 215). Machinima therefore offers students the ability to
represent concepts through the visual expressions of multiple
perspectives: including the visualisation of relationships,
processes and activities that have been previously unavailable to
students .

Machinima is a type of user-generated content, creative work that is produced and consumed by other
users. Much of what we call Web 2.0 is dependent on user contribution: sites like YouTube, Wikipedia,
Amazon, Flickr, Facebook, even Google monetise user input by converting the information, content
and media supplied by users into valuable data and other forms of intellectual property. These sites
depend on users whose motivations and incentives to contribute are not entirely based in tangible
rewards, despite often generating significant value for the host.

Machinima is one of phenomena that we may observe, participate in and experiment with in order to
better understand the complex intersection of identity, entertainment, work, and our social lives with

Page 4
our everyday online practices and interactions. Machinima is also part of a much broader cultural
shift that raises the social capital involved in being a gamer (someone who seeks out games to play).
The demand for social games on sites like Facebook (Scrabulous, Farmville, Bejewelled, Mafia Wars) and
the continued popularity of Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOGs) such as World of Warcraft
(with its 12 million subscribers in China, Europe, the United States and Australia) have contributed to
raising a more positive public profile for video and PC games. The sheer ubiquity of consoles, portable
units, PC and mobile games has made room in the public’s awareness of games cultures, alongside
more negative stereotypes, moral panics and the limitations of ‘effects’ based research on media
violence or addiction.

Machinima is of further interest as a media form that has arisen from the unintended applications of
of the game software, making it a uniquely user generated media form at the outset. Machinima is
produced through the appropriation of game software, and its methods and results speak to a variety
of different sub-cultural audiences and also moves between the subcultural and the mainstream in
unpredictable ways: the SouthPark episode, Make Love not Warcraft, is a great example of this
crossover.

Machinima is a mashup of games and animation, produced by the creative appropriation of video and
computer game software to create new products; machinima makers are often grouped alongside the
makers of games modifications or ‘mods’ that change the functionality of games in some way. Gamers
who enjoy The Sims series, by Will Wright, are some of the most prodigious contributors of user-
generated mods and machinima.

Games have been recognised by Jenkins (2006), Humphreys et al (2005), Coombe and Herman,
(2006) Wark (2004) as locations for the appropriation and remix of experience, identity, community,
production and new forms of exchange and value. Postigo (2008) labels machinima artists, remixers,
animated and music video makers, and anyone who appropriates and performs altered versions of
copyrighted works as ‘cultural modders’.

Machinima uses the 3D graphics engine of a game installed on a personal computer (Apple, Microsoft
or Linux operating systems) or video console (Xbox, Playstation or Wii) to generate the virtual
locations and control and animate the character actors. The recording of the screen, including the
actors and the digital environment of the game world is usually achieve through a third party
application (in this project those using the PC laptops will use the screen capture software FRAPS).
This allows the user to be creative in ways previously unavailable to amateur filmmakers. Just as
email, blogging software, social networks and wiki platforms, have all made it easier to create, discuss,
and distribute creative works, games have not only entrained us, they have given us access to similar
versions of the digital tools available to filmmakers. Games enable us to create video based works that

Page 5
involve complex narratives and speak in the language of the screen, taking from classic Hollywood
cinema or borrowing from typical television formats like the situational comedy (sitcom) or the late
night infomercial.

Machinima involves digitally recording the actions of the player in the game world as they animate
their avatar. The locations and objects of the digital game world function as sets and props for the
filmmaker. The recorded footage can them be edited, while sound, music and special effects can all be
added to the raw material with iMovie or Windows Movie Maker and the results uploaded to the web
to sites like YouTube and Vimeo.

Berkeley (2006) suggested one of the most distinctive features of machinima as a cinematic form of
expression was not apparent in the finished work but instead occurs during the production process,
where the filmmaker interacts with a programmed game environment that is sufficiently complex to
have substantial elements of uncertainty and randomness structured into the gameplay experience:

This creates a filmmaking approach that is located within a documentary or improvised drama model not normally associated
with animation production, an approach that offers some distinctive new possibilities for creative audio-visual narrative
production (Berkeley, 2006).

The practice of harnessing computer games to create animation first became popular in 1996 with
Diary of a Camper, a parody of common gamer practices, producer by a group called The Rangers
using the Quake game engine (Dulin, 2004). Although games released earlier had video recording
features, the animations produced were restricted to videos of accomplished game play, called speed
runs and victory loops, efforts that focussed on the individual gamer or the team playing with little
narrative elements; often called demos, these recordings of game play designed to critique strategy
and highlight achievements are creative and expressive acts of communication. They are designed to
facilitate strategic and tactical information and to share the experience of game worlds between
gamers and game fan communities. These videos concentrated on the spectacle of expertise of play

Page 6
and it wasn’t until Diary of a Camper was circulated via emails and games fan websites (before
YouTube and streaming online video) that the creative potential of the technology begun to be
explored in depth.

The success of machinima titles which replicate established film and television genres, such as
Bloodspell (feature film - http://www.bloodspell.com/), Red vs Blue (situational comedy - http://
redvsblue.com/archive/) and This Spartan Life (talk show - http://thisspartanlife.com/episodes.php)
have been interpreted as “evidence for the continuing cultural influence and pervasiveness of
cinematic and television forms of storytelling” (Berkely, 2006).

lights, camera, frag

The opening sequence of the fantasy epic, Return (2005) (http://www.rufuscubed.com/return/) is a
typical example of World of Wacraft machinima. Written, directed and edited by Rufus Cubed, the
movie is a melodramatic example of the DIY approach to machinima making. The narrator recounts
his tale, while the action cuts between pitched battle scenes and the reuniting of the hero with his
family. The movie has an effective plot, the cinematography is well thought out and features a
proficient musical score. The director/screen writer is a computer gamer and so are the actors. The
cameras, which are also avatars, remotely record the action. The point is, after few hours of recording,
mixing and editing with a couple of friends in game providing the action, even the most amateur
filmmaker can achieve a modest but complete cinematic production.

Machinima is both a genre of animation and

a meta-gaming practice, one that can also be
considered as type of 'hack', a creative or
innovative use of a technology designed for a
different purpose (Wark, 2004). Content
creation like this has a long history thanks
to fans of popular culture who have refined
the art of appropriating and remixing the
intellectual property of others to create fan
fiction, fan vids, and other texts that both
extend and celebrated the fictional worlds
that capture their interest.

The machinima director of Ozymandias (http://www.machinima.com/article/view&id=300) and the

H.P. Lovecraft inspired short film, Eschaton: Nightfall (http://www.livevideo.com/video/
A18778A09C0F4A3DBB8F5B01D756FA67/eschaton-nightfall.aspx), and author of Machinima for
Dummies (2007), Hugh Hancock, suggests his early machinima works were designed for Lovecraft

Page 7
fans and not just fans of the games he was using to make the films. This type of fandom fits within the
self-publishing, poaching and appropriating practices examined by Brooker (2002), Jenkins (1991,
1992, 2003, 2006a) and Hills (2002), in which the fan becomes an unofficial author of new works.

Given the growing intimacy between between Hollywood movies and PC computer games, and other
media formats - a phenomena described by Henry Jenkins and Dueze as ‘convergence’ - it is
reasonable to expect that machinima will, in the future, more closely replicate the visual quality of
more professional cinematic works. The Red versus Blue series, for example, has transitioned from
Halo on the Xbox, to Halo 2 and Halo 3 on the Xbox360, each series gains more detail, picture quality
and sophistication of sound and special effects. There are also parallels between machinima works
and the ‘pre-visualisation’ design techniques of cinema productions. These parallels increase as the
logic of late capitalism is incorporated within convergence culture (Jenkins, 2006) and the language
of games and gamers is of increased value to those looking to enter the media production industries.

Games that are used for machinima also provide other unexpected benefits, such as game tourists to
looking to explore the real life inspiration for locations in game. However, as Ruggile et al (2006)
reminds us, as globalization is refined we see under privileged gamers laboring inside games to
produce virtual currency and items for richer, usually Western gamers, while 3D textures sweatshops
in Taiwan employ junior animators to cheaply produce the repetitive images and objects that populate
these computer games and digital effect movies.

As Brooker (2002: 265) argues, fan-based productions do not change the ultimate base of power
relations between the consumer-fan and the intellectual property owner. This raises the question as to
who is entitled to the copyright of the machinima; is it the director/writer as the author of the
animation or the game’s publisher as the developer of the software and digital objects that enable the
production? By allowing the game software to record digital animation, such as the iMovie support for
the iMac version of World of Warcraft, these computer game companies have approved the production
of machinima. Machinima therefore disrupts the traditional principles of intellectual property law by
allowing the user to appropriate privately owned materials for the production of new media:

Even when Machinima artists just want to use the game engine technology for narrative or aesthetic means,
they nevertheless create a friction, a strategy of resistance bet ween the game creators and game consumers
(Picard, 2006).

This disruption, however, is already anticipated by some games companies who have re-appropriated
these creative practices for themselves via the terms of the game’s End User License Agreement
(EULA). Walsh (2005) notes, The Movies, a Hollywood simulation game designed to encourage gamers
to produce their own machinima based on the Hollywood genre and studio system, is published by
Activision with its EULA that claims copyright over all machinima produced with the game. This

Page 8
didn't stop the use of the game to produce machinima commentaries on the 2005 urban riots in Paris,
France.

red versus blue

Copyright restrictions also didn't stop the commercial
success of the Halo machinima series, Red vs. Blue.
Initially filmed with a local area network (LAN) of
original Microsoft XBox game consoles and characters
from the X-box game Halo, the RvB series was
published online as a free download, and later sold as a
high-resolution version on DVD. Back in 2003 the
series, now an entire franchise in its own right, started
out as a parody of online computer games culture and
games practices. The XBOX flagship title Halo was
selected for the filming of the series, not strictly out of
fan interest in the particular title, but because it was
the first game available for the Xbox that could be used
to record video in the first person perspective (Konow,
2005). A narrative emerged during the improvised
filming of the pilot episode and more scripts were
developed following its success.

The pilot episode of RvB playfully ridicules many of the conventions of online FPS computer game
play, while this was a successful choice for the Rooster Teeth team, Berkeley (2006 p.66) admonishes
the current generation of machinima makers, as being overly conservative and failing to take risks.
He remarks that on first investigating machinima he found only conservatism and unadventurous
storytelling and that the potential in the interactive, multimedia, and the dynamic environment of
hypertext and 3D simulations and virtual wordless has only been tentatively explored:

...machinima most commonly makes use of the increasingly sophisticated interactive features of recent 3D computer games to produce
texts that are predominantly traditional linear narratives. It is a strangely hybrid form, looking both forwards and backwards, cutting
edge and conservative at the same time ( Berkeley, 2006 p.66).

Rather than criticising machinima for failing to achieve the sophistication of more established forms
of creative communication, however, it is more useful to understand why even the most successful
examples of the form are oriented either within a fan commentary of a particular game genre or title,
or emulate filmic and televisual conventions. One reason is the schism between the understanding of
the screen in the visual language of the gamer as apposed to that of film and television. As games

Page 9
increase their presence in the mainstream, audiences expand their familiarity with the language and
tempo of video games that serves as common tropes for screen narratives. A great example of the
infiltration of Hollywood by games inspired mis-en-scene is the film Scott Pilgrim vs The World.

The second Red vs. Blue episode received more than 25,000 downloads per day for over a month, after
which the production team, RoosterTeeth, was contacted by the developers of the Halo game, a
company called Bungie, which at the time was a subsidiary of Microsoft. Gustavo Sorola, one of the co-
creators of Red vs. Blue, identifies the central copyright issue with the machinima, that even if the
material is entirely creative and new, under copyright law it is technically considered to be a
derivative work: “When we started we figured if they ever contacted us they [Bungie and Microsoft]
were just going to shut us down and that would be the end of the project," Sorola said. "But after we did
our second episode we got an e-mail from them, and they've been really supportive. They have every
legal right in the world to shut us down, but they've been great to us” (Konow, 2005).

Fiona Ng (2004) suggests that games companies have, so far, taken a general “hands-off approach”,
but notes that many machinima producers have been calling for a general licensing scheme which
would enable them to engage in a standardised royalty scheme for commercial machinima releases.
Games companies gain commercial benefits from machinima productions through fan interest in the
game and in machinima, and from a more general audience accessing the material through Web 2.0
online video services, like YouTube.

From the gamer’s perspective machinima productions are a remediation of the in-game experience.
This means the images, sounds and other digital elements appropriated by machinima producers are
recognisable to the audience of gamers and games fans. The level of intertextuality between the forms
of digital entertainments such as machinima, games and movies is therefore exponentially increased.
Just as Rovner (2010, pp.104) argues that knowing the conventions of play in one video game
increases the player proficiencies with other, Machinima praxis increases with the accretion of
gaming and machinima viewing experiences.

Given the increasingly transmedic nature of popular culture (Jenkins, 2006), gamers can continue
the experience of a Hollywood blockbuster movie through the game version, and then go beyond the
prescribed experience to create their own machinima. This relationship is produced without increased
expense for the official copyright owner. The trade-off in this situation is that while the copyright
owner is less likely to have complete editorial control they will retain veto over the commercialisation
and broadcast rights of the final work. Machinima titles, like Red vs. Blue, provide a type of free
advertising for the original game and other official Halo products. The games’ EULA maintains strict
copyright enforcement over the original work, leaving only derivate rights to the the machinima
authors.

Page 10
This division of rights, however, has not been a disincentive to modders or machinima creators. Like
other remix subcultures, due to the lack of prosecution, the practice thrives. Microsoft, usually one of
the more zealous enforcers of intellectual property rights, sanctioned machinima filmmaking via its
licensed games publisher, Bungie, with yet another licensing contract. Unlike the earlier copyright
battles between fans and media owners, in which the Cease-and-Desist orders are usually the first and
final word for this kind of productive activity, machinima practices, like modding culture, have been
tolerated to a higher degree. This does not imply that games companies will completely refrain from
employing strategies to discourage commercial applications of this productive sub-culture, but it does
suggest that these companies have recognised the commercial benefits associated with the popularity
of machinima and mods. This is indicative of a new, but generally unequal order of productive
relations in the digital environment in which the capacity for voluntary – in the sense of being unpaid
– productivity is recognised as an economic benefit rather than as a threat to the exclusive control of
the material. It also suggests that rather than simply having official and unofficial modes of
production, fans, modders and machinima creators occupy points on a spectrum of unfinished
production where the official product merges into the unofficial

Page 11
 making machinima
a practical guide to producing adaptations of Chaucer with the World of Warcraft

preparation
Students in DIGC101 and ENGL248 will be working in small groups to produce machinima adaptations
of short scenes from the works of Geoffrey Chaucer, specifically The Canterbury Tales. To begin, the
group should agree on a digital means for collaborating. A Facebook group, Google Doc or group blog,
can be used to upload your script, screenshots for your storyboards, and function as the place to
discuss your plans for the project. By recording your progress each week as a group, this will provide
a record of your work, and form the basis for your final reflection submission at the conclusion of the
project.

scripting
The source text is well suited to making
machinima in the World of Warcraft, which offers a
variety of medieval and classically inspired
fantasy settings to film in: including mountain
ranges and mines, town and cities, beaches and
desserts, tropical and temperate forests etc.

It is important to begin to familiarise yourselves

with machinima examples; both Machinima.com
and YouTube have a user rating system to help
identity different genres and styles of machinima
production and give an indication of what is
popular with the audiences of the media form.

There is only one hard and fast rule of

introductory machinima making for this project
and that is to try and keep it SIMPLE. There are
many elements that must come together in order
to make the machinima work successfully as a
short film - but even a rough attempt, like this one -
can be made from start to finish in about eight
hours.

Page 12
The script of your Chaucer adaptation should be carefully considered in order to make filming and the
editing of the piece achievable - we are not expecting award wining movies, but interesting, and
relevant short interpretations of the text, negotiated in your groups with an accompanying reflection
piece. The example movie provided makes use of public domain (freely available) sound files of
readings of The Canterbury Tales from the Internet Archive, which are governed by the free to use
Creative Commons Licenses. Further free-to-use audio and video material can be sourced by searching
the Creative Commons (don’t forget to tick the box allowing you to search for material to “modify,
adapt, or build upon”).

How you interpret the story is up to you, as is the style of movie - you can take screenshots in game
and animate them to music and text on screen, or you can record live action and dub your own voices
over the top. What ever cinematic style, genre, or type of movie you want to achieve, you should aim
for ninety seconds of total screen time for the piece (including titles and credits). This may initially
sound limited, but it will help you to achieve a completed work by the end of the project.

The number of discreet scenes and cuts should also be kept reasonably small, between 5 and 10, as
this will make the editing process also easier for those without editing experience. Remember to keep
your goal in mind and remember what are you trying to convey to the audience about the original
text. Keeping to the central theme of simplicity will help make your movie move approachable for
audiences not familiar with machinima, Chaucer or the World of Warcraft.

locations and story board

Once you have a basic script or even a simple treatment outline - you can start to scout locations in-
game. You will begin by creating a World of Warcraft avatar.

Log in to the game with one of the provided accounts and create a character. Select one of the
Australasian servers, and choice the RPG option - RPG means roleplaying and thus you shouldn’t be
interrupted too frequently by other players wanting you to join in their game or defeat you up in what
is call player-versus-player combat (PVP). Try to name your character something utilitarian within
what the game system will allow for example: CameraENGL, LocScout1, etc.

As you create an avatar in the game you will begin in the starting area of your character ‘race’;
Humans begin just outside the major in-game city of Stormwind which offers a variety of cityscapes,
slums, parks, wharves, alleys, and interiors, shops, halls, taverns, guilds etc. Other races including the
Dwarves, Elves and Gnomes offer similar but more expansive fantasy based locations and
supernatural and magical surroundings, objects and creatures, while the Tauren and the Undead are
even more exotic, and might stimulate further ideas for your project.

Page 13
Outside of the roads, towns and cities, the forests - your avatar will actually start running into what
are called ‘mobs’ or the monsters that give the regular players experience to progress their
characters. You may find the need to ‘clear’ the area before filming; talk to regular players in game or
use your character.

Choosing the ‘class’ of the avatar gives the player different starting options - for example Mages and
Priests are characters who were traditional robes, while Paladins and Fighters can done armor and
use swords and other weapons. Each group will be provided a small in-game budget which they can
purchase clothing from the various in-game shops and auction house.

To find a location you will need to walk there! This can be time consuming, but various modes of
transport can be found in Stormwind that will take you to other lands (including the underground
railway between Stormwind and the Dwarven city of Ironforge) and in-game portals can be found at
some locations to move you around. When you ‘log out’ of the game by quitting the software, your
character will remain in place.

Once you have found a location to film - you will can set up your cameras - this is achieved by ‘zooming’
inwards with the camera control (usually the scroll wheel). The in game menu will also allow you to
adjust how the camera behaves.

By zooming in to the maximum you are able to fill the screen with exactly what the avatar sees - you
are looking through their eyes to the game world: by pressing ALT + Z you can remove the game
interface. Pressing print-screen (you can bind a key to this function in the game menu) will record an
image of the full screen (a screen shot).

After using the screenshot key to record the image - this can then be located on the PC hard drive and
uploaded to your group blog - explain what the location will be used for and describe potential camera
angles, moving or tracking shots etc - to create a virtual storyboard and pre-visualisation. One you
have your script and your location/storyboard shots assembled on your blog you can finalise the
running script and begin filming.

filming on location
The machinima can be filmed in two ways. The first method is to use only one computer. The operator
positions the in-game view at a distance from the avatar being controlled and then records the action
(it can be tricky to animate the avatar and record at the same). The second method uses two or more
computers, one for each of the actors/avatars in the scene, and one for each of the cameras/avatars
recording the action. You can all be co-present or in separate locations.

Page 14
 For those using PC/Laptops and the
Windows operating system, you will need
to use the screen capture software
FRAPs to record the video. Five copies of
the software have been donated to the
project by Beepa Software (http://
www.fraps.com/).

In Windows, before loading the World of

Warcraft software, ensure that FRAPS is
running in the background. Load FRAPS,
and you will see the icon in the lower right hand corner of the status bar. Under the FPS tab make sure
the Hide Overlay box is not ticked. Under the MOVIES tab select the FPS (Frames Per Second) capture
rate and bind a key to the record video button (such as *).

You will need to experiment with the World of Warcraft detail settings and the FRAPS FPS recording
options to find the optimum settings to record the video: for example try recording the scene using
FRAP set to maximum. Then in Windows review the avi file that is recorded, if the video is skipping or
‘jittery’ try turning down the Warcraft video settings (through the in game menu) and experiment
with lowering the FPS capture rate in FRAPS.

For those using Apple/Mac systems, you can bind a record video button, remove the user interface
and capture the screen vision in a format suitable for iMovie through the games itself and FRAPS is
not needed.

The second recording method, using multiple PCs, means that while one player records the actions,
the other avatar actor can use ‘emotes’ (in game commands) to ‘animate’ the character in the game.

These emotes can be accessed from the chat box in the lower left hand corner of the screen and must
be preceded by a backslash - for example: /wave or /cheer.

Page 15
The full list of character emotes in World of Warcraft - each of these will animate the avatar:

Angry Flex Plead

Applaud Flirt Point
Applause Followme Ponder
Attacktarget Gasp Pray
Bashful Giggle Puzzled
Beg Gloat Question
Blow Golfclap Rasp
Blush Goodbye Roar
Boggle Greet Rofl
Bow Greetings Rude
Bravo Grovel Salute
Bye Guffaw Shindig
Cackle Hail Shrug
Charge Healme Shy
Cheer Hello Sit
Chew Helpme Sleep
Chicken Hi Sob
Chuckle Incoming Strong
Clap Insult Strut
Commend Kiss Surrender
Confused Kneel Talk
Congrats Lay Talkex
Congratulate Laydown Talkq
Cry Lie Taunt
Curios Liedown Train
Curtsey Lol Victory
Dance Lost Violin
Drink Mad Wave
Eat Mourn Weep
Farewell OOM Welcome
Feast Openfire Yes
Flap Party
Flee Peon

Page 16
mixing and editing
Depending on the style and genre of your adaptation, you will need to add music, sound effects,
dialogue and other elements to the footage generated in game. FRAPS will save the recordings in AVI
format in the FRAPS folder (this can be changed in the FRAPS options). You can then import that AVI
files into the Window Movie Maker. Start the editing process by adding a title sequence, and credits,
and begin to layout and edit your video. Add your sound effects, and checking the running time -
remember the aim is to make a film around ninety seconds in length (definitely be under 2 minutes).

Remember to keep the editing

simple and be consistent with
your visual style - too many
jump cuts, or fast editing will
again disrupt the visual flow for
the audience.

Experiment with the various

modes and styles the software
can produce.

Spend some time practicing your editing with the video on a throwaway file first, to get used to the
controls and means of digitally manipulating the raw footage before starting your final movie project.

uploading and tagging

Both Vimeo and YouTube are great sites to host your completed videos. Once you have created an
account and uploaded your video - don’t forget to fill out the description, details and comments
sections of the user profile. Remember to fill out the ‘tags’ section to add your video to the site’s
folksonomy - use tags like Chaucer, WoW, adaptation etc. By providing details of your group and the
intention behind the project with your movie it will increasingly the likelihood it will be discovered by
others searching for those specific terms. Congratulations you have made your first Machinima!

Page 17
references

Berkeley, L. 2006, 'Situating Machinima in the New Mediascape', Australian Journal of Emerging
Technologies and Society, vol. 4, no.2, pp. 65-80.

Humphreys, S., Fitzgerald, B., Banks, J. & Suzor, N. 2005, ‘Fan-Based Production for Computer
Games: User-Led Innovation, the ‘Drift of Value’ and Intellectual Property Rights, Media International
Australia Incorporating Culture and Policy, no. 114, February 2005, pp. 16-29.

Jenkins, Henry 2006, Convergence Culture, New York University Press, New York.

Konow, David 2005, ‘The cult of Red vs. Blue’,Twit chGuru. Retrieved from <http://
www.twitchguru.com/2005/09/24/the_cult_of_red_vs/page2.html> Accessed on October 14, 2006.

Picard, Martin 2006, ʻMachinima: Video Game As An Art Form?ʼ, Proceedings of Authors and Canadian
Games Study Association CGSA 2006 Symposium.

Postigo, Hector 2008, 'Video Game Appropriation through Modifications Attitudes Concerning
Intellectual Property among Modders and Fans', Convergence: The International Journal of Research
into New Media Technologies, Sage Publications, vol 14. no. 1, pp.59-74.

Rovner, Adam 2010, ‘A Fable: or, how to recognize a narrative when you play one’, Journal of Gaming
and Virtual Worlds, vol. 1, no. 2.

Walsh, Tony 2005, ‘All your movies are belong to Activision', Clickable Culture, November 28, 2005.
Retrieved from <http://www.secretlair.com/index.php?/clickableculture/entry/
all_your_movies_are_belong_to_activision/> Accessed on October 14, 2006.

Wark, Macenzie 2004 The Hacker Manifesto,

Page 18