I got hooked via Red vs Blue. No, not red states and blue states, the machinima production by Rooster Teeth Productions. That was a while ago, and I’m still hooked. More recently I came across a nicely executed vid by a talented fellow who calls himself TheGhost, I post it here today as the video du jour.

The New York Times this past weekend published a piece on machinima that’s worth a read, nothing technical though. For that I just picked up Paul Marino’s book The Art of Machinima, I’ll use it for summer reading and update this post with a review. From the NYT piece:

As I watched, I was reminded of what initially cracked me up so much about ”Red vs. Blue”: the idea that faceless, anonymous soldiers in a video game have interior lives. It’s a ”Rosencrantz and Guildenstern” conceit; ”Red vs. Blue” is what the game characters talk about when we’re not around to play with them. As it turns out, they’re a bunch of neurotics straight out of ”Seinfeld.” One recruit reveals that he chain-smokes inside his airtight armor; a sergeant tells a soldier his battle instructions are to ”scream like a woman.” And, in a sardonic gloss on the game’s endless carnage, none of the soldiers have the vaguest clue why they’re fighting.

Regarding the intellectual property question I’m sure you’re asking yourself how can machinima artists get away with reproducing the property of a company like Halo (which is owned by a company known to protect its IP, Microsoft). Quoting from the NYT article:

After talking with Rooster Teeth, Microsoft agreed, remarkably, to let them use the game without paying any licensing fees at all. In fact, the company later hired Rooster Teeth to produce ”Red vs. Blue” videos to play as advertisements in game stores.