Decorgal Archives - Completely Machinima

Completely Machinima History with Ben Grussi (January)

Tracy Harwood Podcast Episodes January 27, 2022 2 Comments

Ben reviews some of the major happenings during the month of January in the early days of machinima. Starting with 1997 there’s Operation Bay-Shield. 1998 has the First Quake 2 movie – The Mad Bomber. Rematic, a machinima tool by Anthony Bailey is released in 1999. Also in this year Phil Rice released his notable film, Father Frags Best – a machinima classic. 2000 sees Machinima.com founded and Quad God film was released along with several other notable films. 2002 saw the Reel-Time Challenge contest along with Psyk’s Popcorn Jungle retiring (a big machinima review site). 2003 Anachronox the Movie Part 1 was released. 2004 Red vs Blue second season launched. In 2005 the first noveletta about machinima was written by Mike Hoefflinger called Moving Pictures. In 2006, Hugh Hancock, founder of Machinima.com stepped away from the site to focus on his filmmaking.

youtube version of podcast

show notes and links

Operation Bay-shield (1997) by WendCA

Eschaton: Darkness Twilight (1998) by Strange Company

First Quake 2 Movie: The Mad Bomber (1998)

Rematic (1999) tool created by Anthony Bailey (Quake Done Quick Team). The tool enabled reshoots of existing Quake (1) demos from new perspectives

Father Frags Best (1999) by Phil Rice aka ZS Overman

Quad God (2000) by Tritin Films

A Warrior’s Life (2000) by Donnovan

Ozymandias (2000) by Strange Company

Anachronox: The Movie Part 1 (2003) by Jake Hughes

Rebel Vs Thug (2003) by Ken “3DFilmmaker” Thain – a commercial project with Public Enemy’s Chuck D side project

The Gamer’s Benchmark (2003) by Futuremark released a teaser movies for 3DMark03 – the link is to the full movie after release

Bang the Machine: Computer Gaming Art and Artifacts (17 Jan to 4 April 2004) and The Game Scenes exhibition was created by Stanford Humanities Laboratory and the Cantor Center for Visual Arts at Stanford University presented on ‘the pervasive influence of computer game culture’, curated by Galen Davis and Henry Lowood.

Lenny and Larry Lumberjack (2004) by The ILL Clan – a video of excerpts from their premiere performance of On The Campaign Trail at Void in New York City

“Moving Pictures” (2005), a novelette by Mike Hoefflinger, published by Packet Switched Press – the novel is about a group of people who start their own machinima production with the desire to make it to the big time!

I Surrender (2005) by Tristan Pope is mentioned on Blizzard’s World of Warcraft main website page

The Los Angeles Machinima Collective (LAMC) announces their first machinima production William Shakespear’s Mechbeth – the film was never produced! Ricky was here?!

Epic Games’ winners of the Grand Finals of the Make Something Unreal Contest (MSUC) for the Non-Interactive Movie Category 2005 –

– The Journey, 1st Place ($25,000)

– Bot, 2nd Place ($15,000)

– Sparked Memory, 3rd Place ($5,000)

– Scrap, 4th Place ($3,000)

– Damnation, 5th Place ($1,500)

Adventures in Dating, first episode (PG13 series) entitled Frustration (2005) by Decorgal

Completely Machinima History with Ben Grussi (December)

Tracy Harwood Podcast Episodes December 23, 2021 Leave a reply

In this episode of the podcast, Ben recalls some more of the great all time classics that got this whole movement rolling, events all taking place in December (1993 to 2005 inclusive).

Show notes and links –

Ranger Gone Bad 2: Assault on Gloom Keep (1996) https://archive.org/details/ranger-gone-bad-ii-assault-on-gloom-keep

Torn Apart 2: Ranger Down! one of the first Quake (1996) movies with voiced dialog https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NX75VLzin2I

Walking Wounded/Strange Company releases trailer for Eschaton: Darkness Twilight in Quake (1997)

Blahbalicious by Avatar and Wendigo (1997) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_yC7o5pt-lA

screencap: Blahbalicious

Fountainhead Entertainment’s Katherine Anna Kang announces Sidrial. Slated to be the first Machinima film to be put on the big-screen as a commercial venture https://archive.org/details/sidrial_promo even made a total conversion mod for Quake 3 Arena (2000)

Bender ‘n Stein by Ken ‘3dfilmmaker’ Thain https://archive.org/details/bender_stein and Bender Strikes Back Part 1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQCcVfwpChM (2001)

Anthony Bailey releases a patch for integration into Quake 1 engine code bases to enable capture of AVIs (audio/video, any resolution, frame rate and codec) on Win32 GL platforms http://quakecapture.sourceforge.net/ (2002)

Teaser for Stardate: Night Time by Dr Nemesis (Leo Lucien-Bay) https://archive.org/details/stardate-night-time-teaser (2002)

The Final Chapter (6) to the Killer Robot Saga by Nanoflix (Peter Rasmussen) https://archive.org/details/killer-robot-machinima (2003)

Shadows of Auraxis Chapter 1 by Malvision in Planetscape https://archive.org/details/soa-e-1 (2003)

Remedy and Rockstar Games official Max Payne 2 Mod contest ‘Non-Interactive Movie’ winner Payne to the Max https://archive.org/details/payne-2-the-max (2003)

Canadian live-action/animated kids TV series ‘Zixx Level One’ is the first show for broadcast to contain animation created by a game engine, made using the Lithtech engine https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NtwhiFHOPQs (2003)

10th Anniversary of id Software’s Doom, Doomworld complied an extensive article about the early forms of demo recording featuring Uwe Girich https://www.doomworld.com/10years/demos/demos01.php (2003)

Epic Games revealed the winners of Phase 4 Real-Time Non-Interactive Movie contest (2004)

1st Place: Bot (Eggman)
2nd Place: Journey (Fitz)
3rd Place: Infiltrators
4th Place: Sparked Memory (CSWAT)
5th Place: The Editor Has You (Angel_Mapper)

ATI and Crytek, creators of Far Cry, made a real-time interactive CGI movie called The Project, that harnessed the capabilities of the ATI RADEON® X800 XT and PLATINUM EDITION for Hollywood style machinima, demonstrating photorealistic cinematic computing https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x9Uxc5rqbBI (2004)

Screencap: The Project

Just a Game by Mu Productions, a live action/machinima hybrid https://archive.org/details/Mu-just-a-game (2005)

SSPH Pre-Episode Part 2 The Healers by Amanda ‘AmandaJ3162’ Stanley https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eHZfJG0CgMU, I Got My Gmail https://archive.org/details/IGotMyGmail-MV and SSPH Pre-Episode 1 The Draftee https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzAbyxe2mj4 were all selected for front page showcase status on Machinima.com – a first in its 5+ year history that three films created by one person are featured (2005)