The Green Dagger

Hello all. Long time no post.

I've been working on my latest project being one reason. And this project is a machinima. For those unfamiliar with the term, a machinima is an animated film made using footage from a video game, in this case the ever entertaining Halo Reach. The first episode is being edited right now and should reach a popular video hosting site very soon. After that we'll be working on five more episodes to be posted weekly once they're finished.

The first episode is testing the water slightly really. While I've made a machinima before (albeit a long time ago and on a very different kind of game) I did that on my own and pretty much made it up on the spot. There was no dialogue either, meaning that I didn't get the full production experience of script-to-screen.

A few people have asked me about the writing process of a machinima and I have approached it in quite an interesting way. Reach includes a 'forge world' in which you can effectively build your own map. This is how we created the 'sets' for the film. We created these before I started writing, so I had clear reference points to write to. I've mapped out the overall storyline yet so far only the first episode has been fully written. It's quite dialogue-lite as we're using this pilot episode to get the feel of it. You'll be seeing a large action sequence that won't really be explained until later.

For those interested in seeing my previous effort...