Sunday, December 18, 2005

Social commentary or art? Maybe both

Alex Chan, a 27-year-old Parisian of Chinese descent, lives in the North Paris suburbs rocked by the riots. He thought the coverage on the riots didn't quite capture the true essence of what was going on in his neighborhood. He decided to do something about it.

He bought the Lionhead Studio's new video game Movies and spent a week directing a 13-minute short film called The French Democracy using the video game. For $50 USD and a week of his time he was able to get his thoughts heard around the world. The return on investment can't get any better than that.

Using video games to make films is called Machinima. Chan's machinima creation may be the most well known, but the genre has been popular for quite some time.

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