Studio: Warner Bros.

The widely accepted definition of "machinima" is: the use of real time 3D rendering engines to generate computer animation. In layman's terms, that's using new generation platform games to film movies. What started as gamers video capturing their Doom runs, has now become a viable medium to make film. And I guess that should be obvious since a  franchise like Terminator and a studio like Warner Bros. wouldn't mess with it unless they saw the market potential. Probably the most notorious machinima series ever is the net phenom, Red vs. Blue, which was created by a group called Rooster Teeth. It has been so popular since its inception in 2003, that there has been DVD releases over the years and now there is even a box set collection! Rooster Teeth have also been contracted by a number of game companies to do comissioned machinima as promo for their latest games or for conventions. So the question is, has the genre evolved enough to be ready for public consumption? My answer is, yes and no. While I think the technique is sound, the animations in games is still not high quality enough to really hold an audience's attention at the theatre. The storyline here revolves around Moon Bloodgood's character Blair Willams (which she actually voices) and is a prequel to Terminator: Salvation. While I was excited at first, I found this hard to watch for an hour and fifteen minutes. I am glad Warner had the balls to back something like this, but I think it may still be a while before we see machinima on the big screen.