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:

Attempt at Something Hip (part x of np)

Where np is the set of all problems (complex or otherwise), here defined as the solution to a two dimensional vector, for which the solution can be verified in polynomial time (i.e. it is possible to determine the solution in the time given to us).

For Ann, Who Pointed Out The Scene

A Canadian Goose in Washington's Court, or Mr. Canada Goose [sic] to Washington
We've got the guns but they've got the numbers.

p.s. In late December, 1775, George Washington sent Major General Benedict Arnold (who would famously switch sides to the British - Traitor!) and Brigadier Richard Montgomery (who has just switched sides to the colonists - Hero!) to invade Quebec. This proved largely unsuccessful, although not for being a bad idea. The United States maintained at least through the 1960's detailed plans "just in case" we had to invade Canada. Upon declaration of peace after a successful U.S. rout of the mounties, the U.S. would annex Canada and territories and maintain the land and resources a la Puerto Rico. This was the plan for almost 200 years, and even then it was generally decided against.