The Passion of the McCain

To celebrate my short film "The Passion of the McCain" breaking 60,000 combined views across YouTube and Machinima.com, this post will mirror some of the design decisions and content for the film. The recent increase in views is largely due to the inclusion of the film in the 2008 Cambridge Film Festival, where "Passion" was invited to be screened as part of a special program on machinima styles and techniques. Reviews so far have been mostly positive.

It is interesting to read the comments on YouTube, et al where available. Those who approach the film from a typical machinima's viewer's perspective (i.e. a typical gamer) tend to not like it, because it hides the underlying video game characters and style. they tend to prefer films made wholly within a particular game's reality, which is nonsense, as most games tend to have a fairly boring and conformist world-view. Shoot this, dodge that, escape[ist] here. I, on the other hand, believe that because it hides the underlying game, it is inherently better than stock characters in stock situations. Halo's Master Chief doesn't event have a visible face, so how can he act?

Regardless, the film was fun to put together. Take a look for yourself here, here, here, or below: