Third
by admin
A woman finds herself in a strange and oddly threatening world.
NAME: Anya Yalin
ROLES: Director, Writer, Producer, Music Composer, Sound editor
PLATFORM: The Sims 2, and real world footage
OTHER TOOLS:
The lullaby in the beginning was created in a simple sound program, of which I can’t recall the name. Editing I did in Sony Vegas 5.0. Real life footage was shot with a Sony mini DV camera.
WHAT ARE YOUR REASONS FOR USING THESE TOOLS?
The Sims 2 gave me the amount of control over characters and the aesthetic that I wanted for this particular project.
YEAR OF RELEASE: 2007
HAS YOUR FILM WON ANY AWARDS, OR SPECIAL ACCOLADES?
I made this movie for school, but haven’t submitted it to festivals or anything. It was selected for screening at my school’s annual exhibit, but no other achievements that I know of.
HOW LONG HAVE YOU BEEN CREATING MACHINIMA? 4 years, but very irregularly
HOW DID YOU GET INTO MOVIE MAKING?
I’d been playing The Sims for a while and when the follow-up, The Sims 2, came out, I started lurking in the community. One day I watched entries for a movie contest on the official BBS and was intrigued. I’d never heard of machinima before or knew you could make movies with games. I wanted to try for myself, so I did.
WHAT INSPIRED YOUR FILM?
I made this during my first year at film school and up until that point I hadn’t impressed with anything I’d produced to be honest. Though I still liked editing, the real world film process just didn’t appeal to me. I decided to throw caution out the window and make machinima for my experimental film class. Not knowing how my audience, unfamiliar with machinima, would react, I decided to make a combination of real footage and machinima. This made me think of a game character dropped in the real world, which is the storyline I ended up doing.
WHAT DO YOU CONSIDER TO BE THE STRONGEST AND/OR WEAKEST POINTS OF YOUR FILM?
I like that I kept it simple and clean. One character, very few environments. I think the simplicity is what helps invoke emotion in this case. On the other hand, though I like the general silence, I feel I could’ve done a lot more with the audio. I also regret not having a better camera back then to do the real life shots.
WHAT ADVICE WOULD YOU OFFER TO ANYONE WHO IS CONSIDERING TRYING MACHINIMA?
If you’re thinking about making machinima, just go for it. The good thing about machinima is that the information is out there, online. Anything you need to know: google, join communites, ask! Certainly within The Sims community I’ve found people very friendly and helpful. Don’t just ask ‘how do you make movies?’ though, but read up on the basics first and then ask any specific questions you may have.
HOW DO YOU SEE THE FUTURE OF MOVIE MAKING?
I think there’s a great future in store for machinima. Games are becoming more and more advanced, which influences the kind of movies that can be made. The surge in online virtual worlds, like World of Warcraft and Second Life, has contributed tremendously to machinima as well. I don’t really want machinima to break out and ‘be like film’, because in a sense I like how it’s a medium for literally anyone to make movies with.
IS THERE ANYTHING ELSE YOU WOULD LIKE THE VIEWER TO KNOW?
I’m in Second Life as well. My Second Life name is Anya Yalin and I create content under the name AnnaMayahouse, which is another great creative outlet.