Terminator Salvation: The Machinima Series (2009) s01e08 Episode Script
The Making Of
The Terminator Salvation: The Machinima Series is a series that we're producing based on The Terminator show.
The Terminator mythology, if you will.
The franchise.
And we're doing it in machinima.
"Machinima" is the combination of two words: Machines and cinema.
So, what it means, basically is that we go into a video-game environment and we take our video-game characters and we make a little movie out of that.
So it's a great combination of gaming and movies.
All in one.
I've been a gamer all my life.
And I used to make little movies in a Based on games that I've played.
It's awesome for a guy like me who's also working in the video-game industry to be able to focus on some storytelling.
And to make a movie in this beautiful game.
Because this game is super beautiful.
It's so easy to go in there and frame beautiful shots of the broken city, and the streets, and everything.
So, yeah, it's a real pleasure.
I've always been a big fan of machinima.
And I work with McG at Wonderland Sound and Vision.
So we've been working for the last two years or so on Terminator Salvation.
And had really thought there would be some great ways to explore some of the other story lines that we weren't able to encapsulate in the film itself.
We didn't decide to tell the story in the style of machinima based on a business decision.
We saw the amazing work that had been done by incredibly creative people on previous machinima projects.
And felt this would be a fantastic way for us to expand the story and the mythology of Terminator.
The Terminator: Machinima Series is truly meant to honor the work that's come before us.
And at the same time, push the limits with the resources that naturally come from the involvement of a major studio.
One of the most exciting parts of The Machinima Series with Terminator from a writer's point of view, is that you have the opportunity to tell the story of the genesis of the Blair Williams character over the course of a long-form story arc.
BLAIR: Judgment Day.
Life as we knew it was over in one moment.
Most were killed instantly.
The rest of us weren't that lucky.
The machines rose, exterminated mankind.
At least they tried to.
My name is Blair Williams.
I fight for the Resistance.
With Terminator Salvation: Machinima Series, we're breaking ground.
We are literally melding the feature film or motion-picture development skills with the video-game development skills.
And we're creating something that is new and unique.
LAZ: It wasn't always like that.
Well, soon you'll be able to see for yourself.
Game engines and game environments, by their very nature create real-time environments.
So a video game has to play back in real time.
And because it plays back in real time, it allows you the opportunity to capture video footage, if you will, of that environment.
And therefore, machinima, where it got its origins where the gamers were capturing their exploits, if you will, initially.
And sending the videos to each other.
And then pretty quickly realized they could use that as an environment for filmmaking.
So they could set up shots, they could, you know then edit those shots and actually begin to tell stories.
Machinima is very different than traditional computer animation.
They almost do it much more like a live-action process.
Or almost like a live-puppeteering process.
It's a fantastic medium.
We're stretching the limits with what you can do with machinima today.
BLAIR: Command, this is Williams.
We are under heavy fire.
Delay evac.
Too hot.
HELMSTEIN: So, what I'm actually trying to do here is I'm trying to frame the shot through the office building.
So that we see the windows.
We see the HK through the windows.
LAZOURAS: You know, what we're producing is you know, professionally done and polished and all the rest of it.
But it's essentially coming from the fact that all of us are just fanboys.
I mean, we love this stuff.
I'm probably the biggest Terminator geek around.
And there are many of us that would make that claim.
And so it's always a pleasure for me to work within this mythology that was started by Jim Cameron.
[RAPID GUNFIRE.]
DEBEVOISE: And the thing that really makes machinima possible is that the level of imagery that these games can generate in real time is increasingly sophisticated.
So that you see in the game, the real-time fire effects and all these things that can be generated we can use as filmmakers to make really interesting stories and interesting visuals.
And that's only gonna get better and better over time.
Maybe you don't work with the machines, but you're doing their job for them.
LAZOURAS: I think it's really groundbreaking.
And I think this is the first time a studio with a film-production company or video-game group and, you know And machinima.
I've got to go in and say: "Look, you know, this is a really serious medium.
And there's a lot of things that we can do and explore.
" So when you take the idea that these games are producing more and more sophisticated imagery and you combine that with the self-expression movement we've seen in the blogosphere and on YouTube, and out on the Internet in general.
You really see this kind of new revolution that the next generation is really dealing with.
Which is, they're not just receiving content or experiencing other people's constructed worlds.
They wanna add their own, create their own mix it up together in an interesting way.
BLAIR: So that works.
How much time we have? LAZ: Thirty seconds, maybe.
COURY: So we have two vehicles.
One is a Hunter carrier and one is a jeep that the main characters are escaping from.
And, essentially, what I do is I set it up so the vehicles follow a rail into a certain path and then, as that path is progressed we have timings for explosions and effects to go off.
That's what we call our scripting is we script out explosions, we script out actions.
Machinima is really an interesting phenomenon because it's not only born out of the gamer culture it's reaching us at a time when we have this incredible self-expression phenomenon that we see out there in the market.
So if you look at the blogosphere, you look at the YouTube phenomenon you look at Twittering and Facebook there's this enormous element in our culture now of people expressing themselves people showing, talking about their points of view.
What they believe in, what their lives are, what they're doing moment by moment.
And on the other hand, you have this increasingly interesting and immersive world, these virtual worlds that these games and these online role-playing environments provide.
And machinima really brings these two phenomena together.
You can express yourself based on things and characters and situations and environments that you love.
You can actually document your experience in there more like a documentary filmmaker or create brand-new fictional type of experiences which might not have anything to do with the original game or a very marginal relationship to the original game.
So really, I think we're at a point in the culture where real-time environments are getting more and more sophisticated.
And people's desire to express themselves is becoming greater and greater.
And the Internet, of course, brings you the opportunity to distribute that widely.
Something unique to this process in animation is that we are getting individual shots of each thing.
Typically, animation might be a string of shots but here, we're essentially working with single-camera television.
The director is going in with the animators and he is pulling out each one of these shots.
There are multiple takes on each one.
So we have a choice of close-ups and wide shots and establishing shots.
And we can go in there and choose all this.
And then we can be infinitely creative, given the time, to go back and choose any shot to be seen from a different angle.
The world is built.
We can see it from any angle we want.
We can do any camera move we want.
HELMSTEIN: We have two very seasoned and experienced editors on this project.
And it's been great to work together with them.
And get their input on the assembly and the setup of all the scenes.
So that's been a great help for me as a director.
So the world is built in this game.
And what we're doing is going in with cameras and we're flying around and capturing the action.
The action is triggerable so they can set up a scenario to happen again and again.
And we can keep returning with cameras to get the right camera move the right angle.
And it comes out to something like a single-camera television show.
You're scripting this out.
You're getting your close-up shots you're getting your wide shots, your establishing shots and you've got multiple takes of each.
The difference here is that when we look at it here in editing we're able to say, "Oh, we'd like to maybe come from this direction.
" Or, "We'd like to have a crane shot that comes down.
" And in a moment's time, we're able to grab that image and bring that in and try it out.
DEBEVOISE: One of the exciting things about machinima is it is being embraced by a lot of users.
You know, a lot of people talk about user-generated content and, of course, gamers that love their games are making videos.
They're making these machinima videos.
And I think that's an exciting phenomenon.
We're seeing a new type of filmmaker, a gamer-slash-filmmaker, emerge that are making really sensational projects.
And what we think is really important is for the creative community For us to reach out to the creative community.
For that creative community to look at this medium as a real opportunity to tell real, compelling stories that they wouldn't be able to in any other way.
LAZ: Why'd you do that? BLAIR: You're an asset.
ECKLUND: Yeah, I take the same assets used in the game.
Only I do Maya shots to make actions that we can't do in the game engine.
I'm using the same assets I use to create the game assets that we use for regular machinima, but I'm doing a few custom things.
The T-600 in the video game never have a turn-around move.
They only, you know, come after you and fire at you.
So just to make him do something simple to turn around we had to create a custom animation using the same models and character rigs but give him a special animation just for the event of turning around.
What excites me the most about this particular machinima series is that I see it representing a change in the industry in the motion-picture business.
Where we, as a company, are working hand in hand with Warner Bros.
and its executives with the same intensity that we would on a television show or a motion picture.
Except that The Machinima Series is for a completely new, wide-open territory: digital distribution.
HELMSTEIN: And the sound engineers Or the sound designers on this project have really put a huge effort into making this sound more like the movie.
[RAPID GUNFIRE.]
BLAIR [OVER SPEAKERS.]
: Command, this is Williams.
Ghost acquired.
We are heading south under heavy fire.
MAN 1: Say again.
You have Ghost? MAN 2: All right, stop it.
Start working on it.
BLAIR: Negative.
Yeah, that was a bunch of good stuff.
LAZ: We're dead.
You wanna kill me? You should've done it back there.
BLAIR: I'm not letting you off that easy.
I'm taking you to Command.
Let them deal with you.
This is a really important moment.
It's one of those milestones, I think, in the history of machinima where a major studio is backing a project that is being produced.
A major Hollywood director, McG, is involved in this project.
People will, all of a sudden, see a show or see a video and go: "Oh, my God.
Look at this medium.
This is a real medium.
" And I think the future of machinima is not only bright because of the variety that exist there but also the technology curve itself is gonna allow us to make increasingly complex imagery over time.
And every year, we see it.
Every year, there's a new game out that pushes the envelope.
And people look at it and go, "Wow, I can't believe the way that looks.
" And that's because the game engines are better the chips are faster and that will continue to go.
And, therefore, create enormous opportunities for creative people who wanna make compelling content in this medium.
The Terminator mythology, if you will.
The franchise.
And we're doing it in machinima.
"Machinima" is the combination of two words: Machines and cinema.
So, what it means, basically is that we go into a video-game environment and we take our video-game characters and we make a little movie out of that.
So it's a great combination of gaming and movies.
All in one.
I've been a gamer all my life.
And I used to make little movies in a Based on games that I've played.
It's awesome for a guy like me who's also working in the video-game industry to be able to focus on some storytelling.
And to make a movie in this beautiful game.
Because this game is super beautiful.
It's so easy to go in there and frame beautiful shots of the broken city, and the streets, and everything.
So, yeah, it's a real pleasure.
I've always been a big fan of machinima.
And I work with McG at Wonderland Sound and Vision.
So we've been working for the last two years or so on Terminator Salvation.
And had really thought there would be some great ways to explore some of the other story lines that we weren't able to encapsulate in the film itself.
We didn't decide to tell the story in the style of machinima based on a business decision.
We saw the amazing work that had been done by incredibly creative people on previous machinima projects.
And felt this would be a fantastic way for us to expand the story and the mythology of Terminator.
The Terminator: Machinima Series is truly meant to honor the work that's come before us.
And at the same time, push the limits with the resources that naturally come from the involvement of a major studio.
One of the most exciting parts of The Machinima Series with Terminator from a writer's point of view, is that you have the opportunity to tell the story of the genesis of the Blair Williams character over the course of a long-form story arc.
BLAIR: Judgment Day.
Life as we knew it was over in one moment.
Most were killed instantly.
The rest of us weren't that lucky.
The machines rose, exterminated mankind.
At least they tried to.
My name is Blair Williams.
I fight for the Resistance.
With Terminator Salvation: Machinima Series, we're breaking ground.
We are literally melding the feature film or motion-picture development skills with the video-game development skills.
And we're creating something that is new and unique.
LAZ: It wasn't always like that.
Well, soon you'll be able to see for yourself.
Game engines and game environments, by their very nature create real-time environments.
So a video game has to play back in real time.
And because it plays back in real time, it allows you the opportunity to capture video footage, if you will, of that environment.
And therefore, machinima, where it got its origins where the gamers were capturing their exploits, if you will, initially.
And sending the videos to each other.
And then pretty quickly realized they could use that as an environment for filmmaking.
So they could set up shots, they could, you know then edit those shots and actually begin to tell stories.
Machinima is very different than traditional computer animation.
They almost do it much more like a live-action process.
Or almost like a live-puppeteering process.
It's a fantastic medium.
We're stretching the limits with what you can do with machinima today.
BLAIR: Command, this is Williams.
We are under heavy fire.
Delay evac.
Too hot.
HELMSTEIN: So, what I'm actually trying to do here is I'm trying to frame the shot through the office building.
So that we see the windows.
We see the HK through the windows.
LAZOURAS: You know, what we're producing is you know, professionally done and polished and all the rest of it.
But it's essentially coming from the fact that all of us are just fanboys.
I mean, we love this stuff.
I'm probably the biggest Terminator geek around.
And there are many of us that would make that claim.
And so it's always a pleasure for me to work within this mythology that was started by Jim Cameron.
[RAPID GUNFIRE.]
DEBEVOISE: And the thing that really makes machinima possible is that the level of imagery that these games can generate in real time is increasingly sophisticated.
So that you see in the game, the real-time fire effects and all these things that can be generated we can use as filmmakers to make really interesting stories and interesting visuals.
And that's only gonna get better and better over time.
Maybe you don't work with the machines, but you're doing their job for them.
LAZOURAS: I think it's really groundbreaking.
And I think this is the first time a studio with a film-production company or video-game group and, you know And machinima.
I've got to go in and say: "Look, you know, this is a really serious medium.
And there's a lot of things that we can do and explore.
" So when you take the idea that these games are producing more and more sophisticated imagery and you combine that with the self-expression movement we've seen in the blogosphere and on YouTube, and out on the Internet in general.
You really see this kind of new revolution that the next generation is really dealing with.
Which is, they're not just receiving content or experiencing other people's constructed worlds.
They wanna add their own, create their own mix it up together in an interesting way.
BLAIR: So that works.
How much time we have? LAZ: Thirty seconds, maybe.
COURY: So we have two vehicles.
One is a Hunter carrier and one is a jeep that the main characters are escaping from.
And, essentially, what I do is I set it up so the vehicles follow a rail into a certain path and then, as that path is progressed we have timings for explosions and effects to go off.
That's what we call our scripting is we script out explosions, we script out actions.
Machinima is really an interesting phenomenon because it's not only born out of the gamer culture it's reaching us at a time when we have this incredible self-expression phenomenon that we see out there in the market.
So if you look at the blogosphere, you look at the YouTube phenomenon you look at Twittering and Facebook there's this enormous element in our culture now of people expressing themselves people showing, talking about their points of view.
What they believe in, what their lives are, what they're doing moment by moment.
And on the other hand, you have this increasingly interesting and immersive world, these virtual worlds that these games and these online role-playing environments provide.
And machinima really brings these two phenomena together.
You can express yourself based on things and characters and situations and environments that you love.
You can actually document your experience in there more like a documentary filmmaker or create brand-new fictional type of experiences which might not have anything to do with the original game or a very marginal relationship to the original game.
So really, I think we're at a point in the culture where real-time environments are getting more and more sophisticated.
And people's desire to express themselves is becoming greater and greater.
And the Internet, of course, brings you the opportunity to distribute that widely.
Something unique to this process in animation is that we are getting individual shots of each thing.
Typically, animation might be a string of shots but here, we're essentially working with single-camera television.
The director is going in with the animators and he is pulling out each one of these shots.
There are multiple takes on each one.
So we have a choice of close-ups and wide shots and establishing shots.
And we can go in there and choose all this.
And then we can be infinitely creative, given the time, to go back and choose any shot to be seen from a different angle.
The world is built.
We can see it from any angle we want.
We can do any camera move we want.
HELMSTEIN: We have two very seasoned and experienced editors on this project.
And it's been great to work together with them.
And get their input on the assembly and the setup of all the scenes.
So that's been a great help for me as a director.
So the world is built in this game.
And what we're doing is going in with cameras and we're flying around and capturing the action.
The action is triggerable so they can set up a scenario to happen again and again.
And we can keep returning with cameras to get the right camera move the right angle.
And it comes out to something like a single-camera television show.
You're scripting this out.
You're getting your close-up shots you're getting your wide shots, your establishing shots and you've got multiple takes of each.
The difference here is that when we look at it here in editing we're able to say, "Oh, we'd like to maybe come from this direction.
" Or, "We'd like to have a crane shot that comes down.
" And in a moment's time, we're able to grab that image and bring that in and try it out.
DEBEVOISE: One of the exciting things about machinima is it is being embraced by a lot of users.
You know, a lot of people talk about user-generated content and, of course, gamers that love their games are making videos.
They're making these machinima videos.
And I think that's an exciting phenomenon.
We're seeing a new type of filmmaker, a gamer-slash-filmmaker, emerge that are making really sensational projects.
And what we think is really important is for the creative community For us to reach out to the creative community.
For that creative community to look at this medium as a real opportunity to tell real, compelling stories that they wouldn't be able to in any other way.
LAZ: Why'd you do that? BLAIR: You're an asset.
ECKLUND: Yeah, I take the same assets used in the game.
Only I do Maya shots to make actions that we can't do in the game engine.
I'm using the same assets I use to create the game assets that we use for regular machinima, but I'm doing a few custom things.
The T-600 in the video game never have a turn-around move.
They only, you know, come after you and fire at you.
So just to make him do something simple to turn around we had to create a custom animation using the same models and character rigs but give him a special animation just for the event of turning around.
What excites me the most about this particular machinima series is that I see it representing a change in the industry in the motion-picture business.
Where we, as a company, are working hand in hand with Warner Bros.
and its executives with the same intensity that we would on a television show or a motion picture.
Except that The Machinima Series is for a completely new, wide-open territory: digital distribution.
HELMSTEIN: And the sound engineers Or the sound designers on this project have really put a huge effort into making this sound more like the movie.
[RAPID GUNFIRE.]
BLAIR [OVER SPEAKERS.]
: Command, this is Williams.
Ghost acquired.
We are heading south under heavy fire.
MAN 1: Say again.
You have Ghost? MAN 2: All right, stop it.
Start working on it.
BLAIR: Negative.
Yeah, that was a bunch of good stuff.
LAZ: We're dead.
You wanna kill me? You should've done it back there.
BLAIR: I'm not letting you off that easy.
I'm taking you to Command.
Let them deal with you.
This is a really important moment.
It's one of those milestones, I think, in the history of machinima where a major studio is backing a project that is being produced.
A major Hollywood director, McG, is involved in this project.
People will, all of a sudden, see a show or see a video and go: "Oh, my God.
Look at this medium.
This is a real medium.
" And I think the future of machinima is not only bright because of the variety that exist there but also the technology curve itself is gonna allow us to make increasingly complex imagery over time.
And every year, we see it.
Every year, there's a new game out that pushes the envelope.
And people look at it and go, "Wow, I can't believe the way that looks.
" And that's because the game engines are better the chips are faster and that will continue to go.
And, therefore, create enormous opportunities for creative people who wanna make compelling content in this medium.