Machinima is an Amalgamated Technology; it's a whole collection of different technologies which when nested together deliver recordable animated tele-visual and sound material.

Machinima is also an Art Form; digitally produced movies.

Machinima takes a number of technologies along with the associated nascent software - mostly from the Digital Video and Gaming Worlds - and has used the various capabilities to produce movies.

Unlike normal Computer Generated Animation (CGA) where the animation is executed, frame-by-frame, just like in Filmed Movies. Machinima takes the digitally homogenised technologies and creates a Virtual Reality inside which the movie is then shot just like you'd shoot a film based movie in the real world. This is all made possible because of real-time 3D Rendering Engines or Virtual Reality programs.

For the uninitiated these wonders of technology take mathematical data in the form of computer models and turn them into visual images fast enough so that they look like moving images. It is not only Computer Games which use real-time 3D rendering it can also be found in Next Generation CGA packages, like Director or FilmBox.

Machinima makes the use of various software tools to tailor make virtual characters, sets, props and environments. These are then hacked into a game engine which displays and animates them instead of the usual `shootemup` material. The action in the game engine is then Video Recorded.

This is all made possible because some game engines use a "first-person" perspective. What you see on the screen is meant to be what you'd see with your eyes if you were really in that world. Substituting the Camera Point of View (CAP) for the game player`s point of view the choreographed action happening inside of the Game Engine can then be recorded.

The Choreographed Action is a matter of adapting the code that Game Designers have put into their Game Engines to make their games interesting such as people moving around in 3D space, driving cars and of course killing people.

And because this is virtual reality, it is possible to do things that film based moviemakers either can`t do, like the CPV passing right through a character`s head, or, are very expensive to do, like the CPV tracking a tiger making a kill.

Also because Machinima works in real-time in a virtual reality which can be shared with others (the capabilities of On-Line Gaming) it is possible to control the characters and props in the virtual world like puppets. Thus allowing scenes to be acted out and recorded through the CPV.

Like filmed movies, the recordings can then be edited by programmes like Adobe`s Premiere. And finally sound can be added to complete the movie.