Machinima
January 19, 2008
“Alex Chan simply wanted to make a political statement, countering what he deemed inaccurate coverage of the riots in French suburbs. Instead, the industrial designer created an emblem for a hot new form of entertainment. Working on his laptop with software from a $70 video game — a technique called machinima — Chan made a rudimentary but powerful 12-minute animated film about racism, The French Democracy, that is winning applause worldwide. “What I love is how neatly it blends the culture of games with the aesthetics of film,” says Clive Thompson, a journalist in New York who has written about machinima and runs a well-known blog on technology and culture.”
