Red versus blue is officially over. On Tuesday, Warner Bros. released Discovery Red vs. Blue: Recovery, the final installment in the long-running saga that once pioneered an entirely new form of entertainment: web videos created from gaming footage. Machinima signaled a new world in which this footage – of glorioleIn Red versus blues case – could drive viral clips. That was 2003. Now it seems that way Restoration could be Machinima’s swansong.
“Machinima directors use game engines that allow them to shoot a scene from every conceivable angle, just as a Hollywood director uses a cameraman,” WIRED wrote in a 2002 article touting the potential of this new filmmaking technique. When it came onto the market a year later, Red versus blue illustrated these possibilities. The series was created by connecting multiple Xboxes and recording footage from one gloriole Multiplayer match, then adding voice over. The dialogue’s absurd, existential tone was a hilarious counterpoint (and commentary) to the run-and-gun gameplay of the first-person shooter it was created with. The show’s creators formed a production company, Rooster Teeth, and produced episodes for more than a dozen seasons.
Red versus blue would build a massive following over the next two decades and become a touchstone for geeks – and here’s why RestorationThe release feels like an ignominious farewell. In March, Rooster Teeth general manager Jordan Levin announced that Warner Bros. Discovery, now Rooster Teeth’s parent company, would be closing the studio, and it soon became clear that the intellectual property was being split up and sold in parts. Today the last episode of Red versus blue is unceremoniously dumped onto streaming platforms with minimal fanfare or advertising.
It is sad moment for fans of Red versus blue and Rooster Teeth, but it’s a great moment to reflect on the impact of the web series. Machinima isn’t talked about much these days, but across the media landscape there are people using games to create everything from streams to clips to GIFs to art films, in ways that were unthinkable 21 years ago. “Machinima is no longer a word we use, and it’s not really something we think of as a medium or genre anymore,” says Adam Bumas, author of the Internet Culture Newsletter Garbage day. “But things are still going well. In fact, it’s everywhere.”
What did Machinima do? First, look at the phenomenon Fourteen days Concerts. In recent years, major artists such as Kid Laroi, Ariana Grande and Travis Scott have performed sets for millions of people logged into the gaming world. (Lil Nas X held a similar virtual event within Roblox.)
“The reason these concerts happened is because Epic realized that people were just hanging out Fourteen days and don’t even play,” Bumas notes. “It’s like a further development of a social space.” And there Fourteen daysSince Epic’s gameplay focuses on building and creating things as well as shooting each other, it was only natural that Epic also focused on developing tools to help players express themselves and each other in to entertain the game world.
The game publisher has also developed tools that allow filmmakers to take advantage of the underlying game engine Fourteen days continues in its production process. For example, Industrial Light & Magic has been using Unreal Engine in its StageCraft virtual on-set production process since Epic’s first season The Mandalorian. Last season, the company used Unreal to help actors and filmmakers imagine how a CG droid character would interact with real actors.
“When you’re faced with a sea of green and depictions of characters on ping pong balls or tennis balls, it becomes a pretty daunting experience for the actors and the director,” Epic Games Chief Technology Officer Kim Libreri tells WIRED. “I think what we’ve been able to do here is give control back to the filmmakers.”
In a galaxy far, far away, artist Tim Richardson recently collaborated with fashion designer Iris van Herpen on the CG short film Neon Rapture, which was also created with Unreal. The technology allowed van Herpen to push her stunning concepts and designs further than she ever could have in the real world, and Richardson says the game engine was his “soundstage” for production. Where the Red versus blue All the creators had to do was take footage of themselves playing glorioleRichardson had a toolkit specifically designed for someone who would rather render content than have a gaming experience. It allowed the filmmaking team and fashion designer to prototype every aspect of the shoot, from design to lighting, costumes to set design, and quickly mix motion capture data with a digital environment to determine their shots .
“It was the closest thing to live-action filmmaking I’ve ever experienced in VFX-based filmmaking,” says Richardson. “I was able to exchange ideas and collaborate with Iris in a time frame that would be impossible with linear VFX. I see game engines as an essential aspect of my future work.”