"10 Miles From Home."

This film is an experimental animated short that uses some real footage as well. Will be featured at the Buckinghamshire Chilterns College"10" exhibition in Milan in April.

The rise of Machinima in the last five years has led to the quality and availability of the tools of filmmaking to pass to a completely new and diverse cultural group. These Machinimators utilise computer games, and extract their footage to digital file formats, often broadcasting their work on the internet. More often than not each film is constructed in a discrete medium, whether it be UnrealED, the Quake 3 engine, The Sims or Lionhead's The Movies. This has led to the establishment of small communities of filmmakers all working with their preferred game engine.

 

 

“10 Miles from Home” is my first attempt to try to cross these newly defined boundaries. “10 Miles” utilises Lionhead's The Movies as its primary 3d engine, but the film is inter cut and blended with footage from real life as well as some additions from other computer software sources. The sound foley is also a hybrid of real sound effects and voices as well as game generated sound. In attempting to fuse the conventions of different filmmaking mediums, I am trying to create a look wholly different piece that can cross the established boundaries, appealing to both the niche communities of machinima and using signifiers that can appeal to a wider audience.

In developing the idea for “10 Miles” Chris Sykes and I had a discussion about trying to find a means by which we could create a visual translation of some of the scripts being produced in the Creative Writing module on script adaptation.

The future for “10 Miles from Home ” is an evolving one. A suggested plan is to use this film as part of the Creative Writing course and challenge students next year to write the next part in the story of our characters. One of these would then be selected to be made and it could then be used again with consecutive student groups.

I have also written some PDF guides on ways in which you can use The Movies to help with conventional filmmaking. The Storyboard Guide is available to download here.

You can also see work from on of my former students over at - The Binary Picture Show.

 

Should you want to know more about the film, or my plans for it you can email me directly at: Allen.Stroud@bcuc.ac.uk