Brotherhood: The Production Explained

"Brotherhood"

A machinimation project that I've had on the "backburner" for years, dangling by a thread above the monumental pull of the "producer's black hole". Finally, I've pulled it back from the bounds of oblivion and began the project's start.

While it is very much so still in a phase of pre-production, the theme, style, and technical side of this project is what is going to make the actual production for a one-man team worlds easier than a normal machinima production.

To call "Brotherhood" a Halo Machinima would be somewhat of a misrepresentation. It isn't exactly your every-day visual machinima project you can just slap up on YouTube after capturing from the nifty Theater Mode feature (though, clearly, a lot more work goes into it than that).

This project is going to be a cross-multimedia production. What I mean by that is this:

The audio teasers that I've created for the project (Teaser 01, Teaser 02) do not only represent the visual production, but an audio-based Prologue to the project itself. In the beginning, I had aimed for the entirety of the project to be a series of monologue-driven audio drama shorts for each character, as I am much more of an audio production hobbyist than a cinematographer. However, since then I have decided upon an equal medium of both, as well as the third aspect, which makes the entire thing all the more interesting.

Still images.

"Still images?" you ask? What do I mean? I mean exactly what I said. Still images, photographs, screencaps. They are the third ingredient to the multimedia project in which the story will grow. More specifically, in the layout of a comic book. An interactive, semi-machinimated graphic novel.

The project will be presented in comic book form, overlayed with appropriate audio production such as proper voice acting and narration, sound effects, ambiance, and perhaps if the mood calls for it, music. However, staring at a single image with narration for a prolonged period of time could get somewhat dull, no?

That's where they all mesh together: video, image, and audio. It will never just be a single image. The comic book itself will take you from image pane to image pane as the scene progresses... and in some instances, the image pane itself will be slightly, or even completely animated in full-video machinimation.

"Why?" you ask? Well, the answer is simple. Machinimation as a one-man production team is incredibly difficult; few have pulled off decent machinima projects in such a setting, and even fewer have created something great (the number is a single digit). Using still images allows me to use my knowledge of image editing in photoshopping programs to give the visuals an even greater edge that I otherwise would not be able to achieve with my current knowledge of video editing. It also means easier editing of scenes. If my screencaps do not look how I wish, I can edit them in Photoshop rather than having to re-shoot in the game engine itself.

"Aren't you taking an easy way out?" you ask? Well, you might see it that way. I see it as a new and innovative way to present a story. Again, being very much more akin to the world of audio, that is where I am putting a lot of the weight of the performance and intensity of the project to pull an audience in. There are so few projects that have a good source of audio production, and unfortunately, it ultimately ruins even some of the best cinematography out there. If you don't have the quality of audio to match the quality of video, things will fall apart. While the other way is a bit more lax, it still applies, which is why I am taking a step further than just a normal still-image project.

It is truly an embodiment of multimedia. An interactive comic, with the utmost pristine detail in the audio department. I am confident it will not do anything less than amaze and awe.


Stay tuned.