Media Studies (Year 13) Project using Game Engine?

    I have recently been thinking about this idea for a little while. However, I still have a year to go which I can use to practise and improve on doing what I wish to do. I am currently in Year 12 doing 6th Form / A Levels (which ever you prefer to call it) and one subject I'm taking is Media Studies.

    However, if we survive long enough (so much homework to do) until Year 13, one of our coursework is our choice, however I'm not sure on the details. You can film, animate or other means and my idea was to use a game engine and create a short movie in that, also to be a little original from everyone else in the class. I'm deciding to do this now as I mention above to get better with what I want to do.

    The reason I create this topic is, I can't decide out of the two engines/games to use, it's either Far Cry or Half Life 2. The editor for the former looks fairly easy to get used to, and the tropical enviroment can look pretty good to make a short movie on. However, with HL2 I can have a lot more freedom of what I make but will take more time. And the fact I am more used to it.

    My question is which game should I go for instead? Ofcourse I'll need to learn/improve and any good machinima (?) tutorial links would be great. Voice acting will not be a problem though so the only concern is this, or should I not bother and go for some actual filming instead? It's good to think about now as well since I can also prepare for it and learn new skills even if I dont use them. Any help or ideas would be great.

    (I wasn't sure which section to put this in, as it could fit both here or Offtopic)

    A-Level Media studies is a joke, half the people in my year that took it got 90% plus overall. They weren't the brightest bunch either.

    Annoyed a lot of us when they got their three A's and were awarded a prize for it, usually in Media Studies, Pyschology and Music Tech. When we all suffered doing proper subjects like Chemistry, Physics, Computer Science etc

    [/rant]

    it depends on the feeling you want to produce in the movie. every engine feels distinctly different to eachother. I think the most "real" feeling is probably Source, but if you want a slight fantasy-type feeling, I think FarCry or Unreal would be good. for a horror/suspense feeling maybe D3/Q4? know what feeling you want and sample engines with maps similar to what you want.

    Not sure what kind of tools Hammer comes with for creating a movie, but the Sandbox integrated trackview tool in Cryengine is very straightforward and easy to handle (since it was made to be used for cutscenes).

    You got a track for movement, rotation, animation, particles, sounds, cameras etc. There is a timebar and all you need to do is to add keynodes in each track, selecting animations/effects and to jump into game to look at the scene (or you play it in perspective view , that works of course too).

    yeah hammer can do that stuff as well with cameras and func_trains and such and you can ofcourse control the cam with wasd if you want (spectator) and the best: demos and movies/frame

    UE3 is going to blow away Source for machinima when it's released. Kismet, along with Matinee, are the most powerful director/scripting tools I've seen in a game engine.

    Machinima probably wouldn't so as popular with Source if it weren't for Gary's mod.

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