With a new Machinima workshop, Mediamatic traverses the intersection of filmmaking, animation and game development. This 4-day workshop, starting on the 14th of March, takes place at Mediamatic on the 5th floor of the Post CS building in Amsterdam.

Machinima is the art of making film inside the real-time 3D virtual environment of a video-game engine. By treating the in-game viewpoint as a camera, the gamespace becomes the set, the characters turn into actors, and the gamer gets to be a director. Because an in-game performance is first recorded in 3D, everything is very flexible. In a 3D recording (before it is turned to film), camera's can still be added or can change their path, lights can be changed, the characters can change their appearance or disappear entirely. This brings high-end movie making possibilities to the low-budget movie maker.

In this 4-day workshop small teams of participants will make their own machinima movies, guided by experienced machinimamakers and animators. The trainers will cover all the practical topics, like designing 3D sets, creating character interactions, re-camming, virtual lighting and camera scripting. Also, machinima will be looked upon from a wider cultural perspective, investigating the impact of gaming on visual culture.

The speakers and trainers are:

* Mark Meadows (US): Artist, 3D animator and game developer who produced 3D animation and interactive design works for companies like Lucasfilm, Sony Pictures, and Microsoft.

* Friedrich Kirschner (Germany): Prizewinning machinimamaker (at the 2005 Machinima Film Festival), editor for Machinimag, and teammember of the Ars Electronica Center.

* Daniël van Gils (NL): Creative programmer who has built several interactive installations, and teaches Game Design and Machinima at the Design Academy in Breda.

* Jonas Hielscher (Germany): Interactive / educative media designer and co-founder z25.org.

This workshop is intended for filmmakers, animators and gamers, who are interested in each others arts. Some experience with playing video games is helpful, but not essential. More information can be found on http://www.mediamatic.net/machinima. For questions mail to workshops@mediamatic.nl or call Klaas Kuitenbrouwer: +31 20 6389901.