Starting this week, The Flickcast will be taking our love of Machinima and turning it in to a weekly feature. For those who don’t know, Machinima is real time 3D rendering of graphics to generate computer animation. What that means is people take different video games and their associated mods and create different short films or series based off of them.
This week, we will be taking a look at Phil from Black Light Productions. Named after its main character and created using Halo 3, Phil revolves around a Halo newbie as he learns his way around the XBox Live world with the accompaniment of the standoffish Zack and overly nice and naive Wally. Unlike some Machinima which has the players reacting as if the events of the game are “real life”, Phil, Zack and Wally acknowledge that they are playing Halo 3 and communicating over Live.
Following them through the series’ thirteen episodes, we get to see some of the biggest faults in online gaming portrayed in a very humorous way. Everything gets covered through the series from trash talkers, glitchers, griefers, competition and clans… and even a little bit of romance.
The cast increases as the episodes progress but everything still revolves around the core three. Phil doesn’t let his newbie status hinder him while Wally, much like the Cowardly Lion, searches for his backbone. Zack ends up being a love him or hate him type of character as his personality makes him the kind of person you’d never want to befriend in real life, but he is fun to watch rant and get killed over and over through the course of the series.
Below, take a peek at the first episode “Day One – New Comer” and check back to Black Light Productions website for the rest of the series. WARNING: Phil comes with some fairly harsh language and isn’t kid or work safe.
