Loaded with classic and contemporary videogames, Game Engine comes to Charlottesville fresh off its premiere at this summer's New York Video Festival, where it received solid reviews.
This energetic compilation of short films characterizes the burgeoning world of videogame graphics and how evolving technology is used in the hands of capable and creative gamers.
In exploring the spectrum of game manipulation, from mastery of a commercial product to professional development of a film using modified in-game graphics, Game Engine defines how modern software has impacted story-telling by chronicling the cycle of videogame playing, alteration and acceptance in popular culture.
Grossing more than $11 billion dollars in game and console sales last year, the videogame industry is clearly integrated into American culture. The big money world of videogames, contrasted with Game Engine's low- or no-budget productions, make this compilation compatible with the Festival's "$" theme.
Game engines control the graphics, but not artificial intelligence, in a videogame. For example, a game engine gives uniforms to the linemen in Madden football games, but does not affect the behavior of the linemen. The game engine in Madden also gives each different stadium its custom look.
The program examines five aspects of videogame footage and how it may be manipulated. Commentary and production explanation by organizers Graham Leggat and Ze Frank will accompany the selected game clips.
Game Engine's five-part progression illustrates the constructive loop of videogames and how they interact with society.
The collection moves from videogame development and how gamers master commercial products to savvy gamers creating original works by exploiting the framework of existing game engines. This innovation exemplifies the feedback loop in the videogame industry -- how producers develop a product that is mastered and subsequently altered to provide additional entertainment and communicative value.
The first group of videos contain cutscenes and gameplay from definitive games such as Warcraft III and Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. These short videos show the varied ways in which videogame developers utilize graphics to create specific visual styles within their games.
This segment contains world record footage for the games Resident Evil and SSX Tricky.
Recam is the game industry word for the alteration of gameplay recordings to create an original work. Producers edit captured game footage and sync it up with music or voice-overs to create music videos or short films.
The short features in this section include footage from Halo, Quake and other games.
The middle and longest segment covers Machinima (pronounced "Ma-sheen-EH-ma"), a rapidly-evolving area of film-making that involves the manipulation of game engines to create completely new products, ranging from sitcoms to soap operas.
Directors alter the inner workings of an existing game engine, modifying level maps or avatar costumes to create new environments and characters without writing a whole new engine.
By utilizing an existing graphics engine instead of cameras and film, filmmakers save time, energy and money. The flexibility and immediacy as well as precision and low cost of machinima production continue to draw young filmmakers to this fresh, fast-paced and wide-open new format.
Producers can apply new "skins" to an engine to change the look of pre-existing maps and characters.
The possibilities in Machinima are limited only by the programming abilities and imagination of the production team.
With all the good that fancy graphics do for a game, however, music, the fourth section, is always key to emotional communication.
Even the simplest digitized Italian plumber music can evoke intensely euphoric recollections. The sustained inherency of identifiable music in videogames, especially franchises, has been ingrained into the pop culture dialogue of a generation.
The Charlottesville presentation of Game Engine will run selected performances recorded live at the New York City showing. These one-of-a-kind sessions team top notch underground DJs and videogames together for an experiment in freestyle soundtrack fusion.
The DJs groove with original sets culled from more than a dozen recent videogames, including sampled and remixed sounds from Deus Ex, Metroid Prime and Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker.
For the big finish, Game Engine shows off a pair of commissioned works that epitomize the culmination of all the elements of videogame manipulation.
The Halo and Quake III Arena game engines are utilized for improvised sketch comedy in the penultimate piece and a trio of traditional filmmakers experiment with machinima set to Wagner in the grand finale.
At the conclusion of the video portion of the program, Leggat and Frank will discuss the content and composition of the selected works with the audience.
Game Engine provides the unique opportunity to initiate public discourse on the roles of videogames in modern culture.
While multiplayer games and online gaming may provide limited player interaction, Game Engine's register of videogames as a communicative format brings gamers and non-gamers together to appreciate the same medium from different perspectives.
This collection of videogame footage is a living essay on the melding of animation, art, comedy, design, film, music and other attributes to develop this relatively new format of artistic, entertaining and interactive story-telling.
Kinetic and enthralling on physical, emotional and intellectual levels, Game Engine is a broad and detailed portrait of the videogaming world today.
Here's to hoping that it is just the tip of the iceberg.
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