Apocalypsis Ex Machina (UT3)
This wonderful piece of machinima by Andrzej Kozlowski is both a beautiful demonstration of the power of Unreal Tournament 3 and a remarkable example of an animated film with narrative yet no traditional characters. Part gothic machine, part nuclear allegory, framed in the context of an apocalyptic biblical interpretation. From his Vimeo posting for the film:
Apocalypsis Ex Machina is my interpretation of the Book of Revelation of John; it is an allegory of a nuclear bomb, where the ignition material is Earth (humans) and the igniter is Heaven. The events of the Apocalypse (4 horsemen, the lamb, the 7 seals, the beast and the dragon,…) are displayed as chemical injection mechanisms that support the preparation of the ignition. The visual style is kept in Gothic convention (architecture, painting, sculpture). Realised as a Machinima in the Unreal Engine 3 (UT3).
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Certainly a very interesting film technically. It does show how the Unreal 3 engine can be stretched and tweaked to create dark and beautiful images. The film reminds me of the painter Hieronymus Bosch, or some of the Russian Icon paintings.
But I find myself admiring the film instead of being moved by it. Perhaps the epic style where there are no real human characters makes it hard to get involved. And while the sound effects are good, why were there no human sounds of suffering or pain?
Still, this is a pretty neat film that deserves repeated viewings. Thanks for posting!
Comment by Ricky Grove — August 9, 2008 @ 11:53 am
Aye. I’m, going to echo ricky, but a bit more bluntly. It was interesting for a little bit, but i took nothing away from it. It’s hard to pull off art pieces like this, The more extended your allegory’s are, the more you risk your audience not appreciating the thought processes behind your film. Visually, this is mostly neat, the cutout’s of folks spinning was interesting (at first. it kind of wears on) and the activations of all the elements is a logical and effective use, the statue modelling was good, too. But all the pieces together, just don’t mesh. For me, all I see at the end of the line, is a bunch of things spinning around, with red stuff going into it, and a big clocklike thing. with some sort of overdramatic trailer music? I’m being harsh here. Overly so. It’s an impressive piece and I applaud the artists creativity.
Comment by zachariah — August 9, 2008 @ 5:30 pm
Or. to sum up the preivous post. If I hadn’t read the description overman posted, I would basically have No idea what was going on at all. or what any of that meant. I think had I not read the description. My reaction would have been far worse. A film should tell a complete thought, instead of simply illustrate a scene. that’s the stickler for me, in this respect.
Comment by zachariah — August 9, 2008 @ 5:32 pm
I agree Zach, I was quite impressed by the quality of the machinima visually but without the description, I would have read it as some sort of religious meat grinder instead.
Comment by Byron Mallett — August 9, 2008 @ 8:04 pm
I dunno, guys, I’m not sure having some visual ambiguity is a weakness with a piece of this sort. Impressionist paintings, judged by the values in Realism painting, are just a blurry mess.
I think this guy is coming at the craft from an entirely different direction than what is typical, and with a set of principles and objectives that aren’t at all common (not common for machinima, that is… in the larger art world, it’s not at all unusual to play with symbology and allegory in very abstract ways).
Of course, when a piece leaves so much open and not nailed down, the subjective nature of the viewing experience is highly elevated, as I think is apparent from all our comments here.
Totally unrelated, but I wonder if this piece runs in real time in UT3 (like Friedrich Kirshner’s “The Journey”), or if it was heavily edited once brought to video? I’ll have to ask him about that when I chat with him again.
Comment by Overman — August 9, 2008 @ 9:15 pm
I agree with Zach too, without the description I would have been at a loss. . . but maybe that would have been a good thing. I think a film should speak for itself and not require a lengthy description. It’s the reason why David Lynch refuses to include commentaries with his DVD releases. Imagine “INLAND EMPIRE” or “Eraserhead” if they had a commentary explaining the movie. I think it would ruin all of the fun in watching it.
Part of me thinks that the film would have been a lot more interesting to me had the filmmaker spared us the description, but I’m weird like that.
The concept itself was pretty neat. Kind of a “Doomsday Clock” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doomsday_Clock) incarnate. If no one had told me this was UE3, I wouldn’t have been able to guess.
Comment by kradproductions — August 10, 2008 @ 12:47 am
This feels like a part of a story rather than a whole. Reminds of Tombraider / Indiana Jones movies when one of the characters tries to run off with a religious icon and all the ancient statues come to life. I love the colour palette and the imagery.
Comment by Kate — August 10, 2008 @ 6:27 am
Hey guys,
Thank you for this discussion about the film. I was very reluctant and had many doubts as to whether put my comments in there or not. Well, I showed it to my friends without explaining it, and when I asked them what they think of it, they were impressed and had the feeling that something had gone terribly wrong in this world. And I must say, I was satisfied just with that, I wanted to convey a feeling of finality, a dead end, with no way to stop the whole thing. Perhaps I shouldn’t have put the comments in there, but I guess I’ll never know now :).
And to answer the question from Overman, yes, it runs in realtime, there was no postproduction at all, except for the sound - I had tried to put it also into the engine, but I wasn’t satisfied with the results and had no time to tweak it anymore, so I did it in an external app. It is my first machinima ever done, and my first experience with the unreal engine, so there was also a huge learning curve to master, but I think slowly I’m getting the hang of it.
Thank you guys again for discussing, I actually had doubts if anyone would care about this piece when I put it online, so I appreciate it very much
Cheers,
Andrzej
Comment by Andrzej Kozlowski — August 10, 2008 @ 7:21 am
Well just so you know Andrzej, I Totally respect what you were trying t o do here and admire your technical skill. and hell, it’s a smart piece. It’s just not my particular favorite flavor.
Comment by zachariah — August 10, 2008 @ 11:18 am