BloodSpell is a 2006 fantasy film produced by Strange Company. BloodSpell employs filming techniques known as machinima, and is the first feature-length production to use BioWare's Aurora Engine, developed for the role-playing video game Neverwinter Nights, to generate the video portion of the film. The film was serially released in short episodes under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License, which allows for redistribution, modification, and creation of fan fiction. Strange Company have asserted somewhat controversially that, as of 2006, BloodSpell, was the largest machinima production. The series features numerous cameo appearances, including several voice appearances from science fiction author Charles Stross.
BloodSpell
Machinima, originally machinema, is the use of real-time computer graphics engines to create a cinematic production. The word "machinima" is a portmanteau of the words machine and cinema. According to Guinness World Records, machinima is the art of making animated narrative films from computer graphics, most commonly using the engines found in video games.
A scene from Diary of a Camper, an early machinima production
Hugh Hancock founded Strange Company.
The ILL Clan performs its machinima comedy talk show Tra5hTa1k with ILL Will in front of a live audience at Stanford University in 2005.
Matt Kelland of Short Fuze (left) and Keith Halper of Kuma Reality Games at the 2008 Machinima Film Festival with the Mackie award for Best Technical Achievement