In engineering, there's often a time consuming process of design before any prototyping can take place, and this is often related to the amount of time and money it takes to do the prototyping. At about the time you're making a circuit board, you really don't want to repeatedly re-make the board. However, Software engineering is different. Because the cost of actually making stuff is the same as designing it, we've (I use that term loosely, I did nothing) developed "agile coding methodologies" to lighten the load of heavy design.
So it is with filmmaking. Because a lot of film has to be shot anyway, and reams of it will go to waste, as well as because the props and actors cost a lot of money, a huge amount of the effort goes to the front: story, scriptwriting, the little action drawings, etc. However, in the fields of digital filmmaking, internet filmmaking and machinima, you'd think people would develop different methodologies for making these films.
For example, machinima. Machinima has some distinct advantages over traditional filmmaking. One is that prototyping is ridiculously easy. In my ground-breaking warcraft 3 machinima classic: the Hungry Party, I did absolutely no thinking beforehand. I just put the characters in and winged it. I have the benefit of being able to go forwards and backwards in time, completely control the cameras, put the text and timings in when I feel like it. By contrast, writing a script and a story, and everything on top of that not only would have been a waste of time, but would also have resulted in a far inferior product, since I would be tied and bound to what I'd written.
Similar things go for shooting with digital cameras. Things have to be a lot more cut and dry, but if your props are pretty much set out, and the way the story goes is set out, then you can make a lot of it up on the spot. It might take a few more goes, but in the end I think the result would be better. In our award winning documentary: Fwoosh, the story of Lord Frederick Worthington III, this is exactly what happened. Our story was only somewhat written, and our props were small and set out. We knew roughly what we were doing, and ended up doing most of it on our first take. We just winged it, and took the opportunities that came to us.
It's odd then, that I see so many machinima productions that follow the values of the oldskool heavyweight film development when the children of the interweb have a lot more flexibility at their disposal. Don't we need to work on agile film development?
I do think this is a good question for debate and I'm glad you made your post. Thanks,
gToon
(aka Booklad)
For quality machinima on the average I don't think this would be as successful as traditional planning because the 'cost' of custom assets to create a machinima film (having different animations, voiced lines, maps/scenes) you really want to know what you'll need going into it as revisioning is time consuming and expensive.
But who knows. I just don't want 'agile' to be an excuse for laziness because one can think it's ok to walk into something and kind of explore a toolset/game and come off with scene done in one take. This really shows in the final film. Many who do not have the patience or discipline to do proper pre-production will likely not have it ether to do a proper agile method of development.
booklad: I wasn't implying that extra preparation is what gives the inferior product, rather that the amount of time and effort put into the preparation means you feel like you've wasted that time if you ignore it and "go with the flow". Specifically, I was talking about how traditional methods don't take advantage of the flexibility offered by machinima. For example, why storyboard when it's probably easier and more effective to just rough it up in the engine directly?
3dfilmmaker: I wasn't suggesting that my methods were "agile", rather that I was taking advantage of the flexibility that I had with the medium. What I was really looking for was some sort of agile development strategy that would allow me to make films while taking advantage of the tools I had, instead of looking at traditional filmmaking techniques. I was surprised that despite all the efforts being put into machinima, that people were still parading around ye olde filmmakinge techniques instead of writing fresh tutorials on how to make agile films.
I agree in that agile filmmaking would involve a bunch of people sitting around together discussing the scene (like pair programming) and someone would be roughing up the actors (some standard model in the game, for example), props (fake ones, instead of the ones that would be used), and the shots. You could review it, know the kinds of items you needed, and in the end it could actually reduce the numbers of props you needed, because you have the flexibility of doing something like:
1) do the rough storyboards.
2) add a prop
3) play back and see how it looks
4) Add actor
5) replay
6) add motion.
This is a totally new paradigm when compared to traditional filmmaking. If you've watched the special features in "the incredibles" you'll know some of what I'm talking about. The director skipped / altered a lot of stuff, and was raving about the flexibility that the medium offered him (since he's used to traditional filmmaking).
My above post was questioning 'agile' as a direct method of machinima filmmaking, but I definitely believe there are other paradigms to explore. I also have a strong project management background so my apologies if I come across touchy about not planning. ;) I'll be checking out the Incredibles extras too!
Ken
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