New machinima- The Monard. (very good, very mature)

[mchammer75040]

http://www.moddb.com/engines/3/source/news/27309/the-monad-hl2source-machinima

Alright I didn't know where else to put this and yes the ending sucked, but its probably the best machinima Ive seen in awhile.

 

[piratebd]

honestly speaking....that was bloody brilliant!!!

i was actually moved.whoever says nothing productive comes from games should probably watch that movie.

on another note...some of the stuff the crew did on that piece was amazing...i would say that was probably the greatest piece of machinima ive seen from a technical standpoint!:cheese:

 

[mchammer75040]

Yea, I agree. It really suprised me how well they did with alyx's voice acting, I expected it to sound like shite as soon as I saw her.

 

[Crispy]

Harshcore.

Definitely worth watching - the framing, editing, script, sets and voice acting are all very good. But the message, mainly the last act, is harsh beyond a shadow of a doubt (it's about online/gaming addiction if you were wondering). Get the full download and boot it up in full-screen.

Still can't help but think this was dreamt up while under the influence!

 

[Omnomnick]

Suprisingly, with the massive amount of effort this guy has clearly put into this machinima. I was bored by the end. The voice acting was bland and got really tiring after the first few minutes. Some mixtures of animations didnt like each other and arms going through legs etc occured alot and were quite noticable. I also felt the storyline was bland and we had no idea about what was going on until later in the machinima, when it was too late to begin enjoying it. From all the hub-ub on Facepunch about this, I expected something greater...

Sorry if the creator reads this, It just wasnt my sort of thing.

 

[Pesmerga]

Not really entertaining beyond the whole existential crap. To be honest I didn't even catch why his death meant more than his life. Or whatever. Good voice acting and technical editing, but the story was a bit... loose. And the main character's low quality texture was very distracting.

 

[Ennui]

That wasn't very good. Well made, high production value, but shit nonetheless.

 

[Crispy]

I wouldn't call it shit at all, it was a bit confusing in how the story was conveyed.

Spoiler

Like Pesh says, they didn't explain why his life was worth more than his death. The guy effectively admitted he had very few friends and contacts, so it's difficult to say why he thought his death would have a bigger effect than something more attention-grabbing. Yes - it's the biggest sacrifice to make for something (or maybe it was meant to be someone - the girl) you believe in, but it's difficult to see how in this situation it was the best course of action.

Also the way it jumped between scenes was quite confusing. At one point I wasn't even sure whether the girl and guy were communicating just over the web or whether they were in the same room, partly due to few establishing shots and partly due to the dialogue not covering this aspect.

I feel the monologue sections could have been paced out so it was less stream-of-consciousness and actually gave the audience time to digest the words. The way it was it just felt a bit like an episode of Dawson's Creek: unrealistically verbose to the point that the characters aren't as believable as they should be. This way the message (which the short was obviously attempting to make) would be more clear.

But it definitely wasn't a weak effort. It definitely wasn't 'shit' (and I'm surprised that -being a modder, Ennui, you would make such a dismissive comment about someone's work when it has obviously had a considerable amount of time and effort put into it).

 

[Ennui]

What I meant was despite the fact that a respectable amount of time and effort was put into it (which shows, and is impressive), I don't like it very much on a content basis. Despite the phenomenal voiceacting, cinematography, and general attention to production value and detail, the dialogue/monologue was relatively poor, the scenes were disjointed, confusing, and lacked good "flow", and I frankly could not observe much in the way of a traditional narrative structure, nor did could I discern any meaningful point to take from it, other than the vague "People can get too obsessed with virtual realities and lose focus on their own".

It's the same reason I rail on Black Mesa Source and the like. Despite the talent and high-quality work, I just don't like the idea and therefore don't want to commend them for anything beyond production/work quality.

 

[Dodo]

yeah looked good, a bit to long for me.

-dodo

 

[mchammer75040]

Ah great, people actually responded to this. I thought no one would, considering how few threads we have in this topic anyways.

What I meant was despite the fact that a respectable amount of time and effort was put into it (which shows, and is impressive), I don't like it very much on a content basis. Despite the phenomenal voiceacting, cinematography, and general attention to production value and detail, the dialogue/monologue was relatively poor, the scenes were disjointed, confusing, and lacked good "flow", and I frankly could not observe much in the way of a traditional narrative structure, nor did could I discern any meaningful point to take from it, other than the vague "People can get too obsessed with virtual realities and lose focus on their own".

I especially hated the ending (or how his death was never explained), it just seemed really trite and pretentious. But yea the production values and attention to detail that you mentioned makes it probably one of the only machinimas I can stomach for longer than a minute or two, maybe not great but it stands far above most of what Ive seen. Then again maybe I just haven't been introduced to the cream of the crop, care to post some?