HomeStation: A Year of Machinima
by NorseGamer, HSM Editor-in-Chief
Exactly one year ago, HomeStation Magazine released its very first machinima.
Simply entitled Welcome Home, it’s a rather simple piece of filmmaking compared to what we do now. IrishSiren was tasked with filming and editing the video, and we struggled to figure out exactly what to film. We knew we wanted it to be a summation of the Home experience, and we also wanted it to be an ad for the HSM experience. But how to go about filming something like that?
Keep in mind, this was Irish’s first attempt at filmmaking, as well. So she studied what Home machinima was already out there, notating what she liked and disliked. If a particular film was good, she pulled it apart shot by shot to discern why it appealed to her. If it sucked — and, if we’re honest, there’s a lot of dull Home machinima out there — she took notes on why, specifically, it bugged her.
In many ways, she defined the visual vocabulary that HSM still uses to this day:
- Your film cannot be one long master shot. Period. That’s just lazy.
- People remember moments, not minutes. Try to string together as many memorable images as possible.
- Avoid, whenever possible, the default camera angle staring at an avatar’s backside. That’s boring.
- Juxtapose movements and angles. Follow up a stationary shot with a moving shot. Cross a low angle with a high angle.
- For god’s sake, enough with the watermarks. Make a good movie and people will check out your other work.
- Your film should be so good that other people want to not just watch it, but rewatch it. Otherwise, you’ve failed.
- People can forgive technical flaws if you hit them in their emotions. HIT SOMEONE IN THEIR GODDAMN EMOTIONS.
She eventually outlined a shotlist, and it wasn’t until after we greenlit the project that we realized there was one slightly daunting challenge: the crux of the film was a giant group party scene in a public space.
Those of you familiar with shooting film in Home know what a headache this is. First off, crowd control can be a major issue. Second, Home parties are almost always inevitably boring to film, and even more boring to watch.
Irish solved the latter problem by turning the finished work into a montage during the editing process. By intercutting party footage with various action scenes from Home, it created the desired effect: the sense that Home is one giant, awesome soiree.
That still left the issue of crowd control. And I have to say she handled it masterfully. If you’ve ever tried to coordinate and set blocking for a full public space, it’s a monster of a challenge. She divided the crowd into smaller groups and issued specific instructions to each segment. Then she made sure that no one — absolutely no one — used text bubbles. The idea was to instill a sense of discipline in the group, so that they got used to following instructions. Which meant that when she went for her final shots, where she encouraged everyone to use text bubbles, the screen absolutely exploded. She even undercranked the footage to make things look even more frenetic.
Sometimes you need to make a statement.
The end result was a smash hit. HomeStation was six months old at that point, and though we were no longer an unknown commodity, we still weren’t necessarily a top-of-mind answer if someone was asked to name prominent Home community media projects. We needed something — a statement piece, if you will — which let everyone know that we were here to stay, and that we were growing.
Machinima, to that end, is quite valuable. HomeStation is first and foremost a literary journal — always has been, always will be — but Home is a medium experienced visually, and while the barriers to entry for Home filmmaking have lowered somewhat in the last year (largely thanks to LOOT), it’s still a challenge to produce a Home machinima that elicits more than just polite response, but a genuinely enthusiastic reaction.
IrishSiren only produced two machinima projects for HSM before moving on (the other being a virtual tour of Lockwood’s Blaster’s Paradise estate, which was a much more polished effort), but her impact was considerable. Shooting that film was HomeStation’s first public event, and it generated a ton of buzz for the publication.
Since then, HomeStation has produced and published nearly thirty completed machinima projects, from multiple different team members and guest contributors. And HSM has gone on to become a cornerstone of the Home community media scene. Though you might not mentally associate HomeStation with machinima, the truth is that this team has put forth some damn good work.
So now, on the one-year anniversary of our very first HSM-branded machinima, let’s take you back to the beginning, and show you how it all began:
April 5th, 2012 by NorseGamer | 3 comments
NorseGamer is the product manager for LOOT Entertainment at Sony Pictures, as well as the founder and publisher of HomeStation Magazine. Born and raised in Silicon Valley, he holds a B.A. in English/Creative Writing from San Francisco State University and presently lives in Los Angeles. All opinions expressed in HSM are solely his and do not necessarily reflect the views of Sony DADC.
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This is a great way to reminisce just how far we’ve come. But i’m now more excited than ever at what the NEXT generation of Home Machinima filmmakers are now capable of, with regards to not only your own work, but of people such as DarthGranny and now GodzPrototype, who simply hit a serious nail in the head at what Machinima filmmaking should ‘be’..
And now the Cheekster is about to step into the fray and I’m excited to become a part of it all
I remember the day we made that film with Siren. It was fun doing it then and its fun doing them now. I was busy most of the time during the party scene sending private messages to people asking them not to text lol. It all worked out and the film came out great for a first attempt.
Home has so much going on in it, even a thriving movie industry. I can’t understand how anyone can be bored here. Nice article Norse.
And I am looking forward to working with Cheeks on his stuff too.
Great article Norse!
I do remember seeing this video last year and yes, it seems that HSM has certainly come a long way in terms of machinima starting with Norse who has put together several touching pieces that addressed #7: appealing to emotions. That 1st one he made with him and Terra was a real tear jerker to me for sure. And that one based on the Pink Moon commercial was also touching. I agree that if the video “moves” you, then it has accomplished one of its major goals. The technical craftsmanship of it all is nice, but not as important as the emotional impact of the video.
I have now seen the videos by Godzprototype and have been very impressed by how quickly he has become so skilled at producing them and the one for forgotten spaces was definitely awe inspiring. I’m not sure which videos I saw were by Darth Granny, but I’m interested.
And Yays Cheeky going to get into it too! Nice! How exciting for HSM to have so many talented machinima producers.
Keep it coming. TY again for the trip down memory lane Norse as well as your valuable insights. Great read!