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Homebrew
New technology makes digital filmmaking accessible for a new generation
From Super-8 to home video, aspiring movie makers have always found ways to bring their ventures to life. However, the costs of film and development, or the difficulties of editing on video tape, were serious obstacles. Today, the landscape is very different, thanks not only to digital video editing facilities that come as standard to many a home computer, but also to increasingly widespread, wide-bandwidth internet access which enables online video viewing. Much of this viewing is on YouTube, a phenomenon born in 2005, and which by 2006 accounted for 60 per cent of all videos watched online.
Broadband internet has also seen the rise of the culture of graphically sophisticated virtual worlds, such as that of the hugely popular game 'World Of Warcraft' (10 million subscribers and counting) and 'Second Life', a social network within a 3D environment populated by avatars. The graphics engines of these virtual worlds are also being utilised to create films, dubbed 'machine cinema' or 'machinima'. It's something that has its origins in the 1990s, with gamers hacking programmes and creating bespoke mods ('modifications'), where the rules or environment elements were different.
Such technology is creating a whole new culture of filmmaking, where people can craft films, innovate and even create digital special effects on comparatively tiny budgets. Computer equipment and software available to home users has even resulted in a feature film that received worldwide distribution: 2004's Sky Captain And The World Of Tomorrow. Using a kind of domestic digital backlot - blue screen set up in his home and his home computer - first-time director Kerry Conran created a trailer that he hawked around to get independent funding for a full feature.
Homebrew | Digital performers
Sky Captain, which ended up costing $40 million, is of course the high end of this new, low-budget digital filmmaking. Machinima utilising game engines is a considerably cheaper option. Famously, Rooster Teeth Productions created 'Red Vs. Blue: The Blood Gulch Chronicles', a comedy series involving characters from Bungie Software's hit game 'Halo'. 'Red Vs. Blue' gained the support of not only Bungie but of a million viewers in 2004. Although 'Red Vs Blue', which ran from 2003 until 2007, wasn't the first narrative machinima series, it was a landmark for breaking out to wider audiences.
Since these successes, machinima and low-budget digital filmmaking has exploded into every conceivable genre, created through numerous means, either purpose-built software or game engines. The year 2007 saw the first feature-length documentary made entirely within a virtual world - in this case, 'Second Life', a hotbed for such creativity. This was Douglas Gayeton's 'Molotov's Dispatches In Search Of The Creator: A Second Life Odyssey', which was commissioned by a Dutch TV company in 2006. After airings on YouTube (naturally) and at film festivals, North American broadcast rights were bought by HBO. This journey from homebrew to YouTube to a major US network was a first.
One analogy that has been made for the rise of homebrew digital movie-making is that of the rise of fanzines as a cheap alternative to traditional printing in the 1970s and 1980s. Such 'zines - made possible by the widespread availability of photocopiers - brought about an explosion in cottage publishing, with publications nudging their way into every conceivable specialist interest. DV, game engines and editing suites on home computers offer the potential for similar diversity, cheaply distributed online. Though Sky Captain and Molotov's Dispatches prove homebrew also has the potential to transfer into the mainstream.
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