Making a feature movie can be an expensive business—between staffing actors and production crew, equipment, set design, and post-production costs, it all starts to add up. It’s cheaper now with digital technologies but still, to get one made you either need the backing of a studio or be prepared to funnel lots of your own money into the venture. At least, that’s the convention when shooting a film in the real world—not so for making an animated one using footage from a video game.Making films using video game footage is know as machinima, and while it is a firmly established animation form, French filmmaker Mathieu Weschler’s 89-minute magnus opus must surely be the most ambitious work in the medium to date. Using footage from Grand Theft Auto IV, this animated work is a bold and brazen attempt at creating a feature-length machinima that can stand up to the standards of the filmmaking industry. OK, so the voice over sounds a bit daft and the plot—which centres around a maverick trashman who not only cleans the streets of garbage, but also rids them of human scum—is straight from a 1980s action movie (a movie made in GTA IV was never going to be a light-hearted romcom anyway), but in terms of accomplishment and creative innovation, it’s an amazing feat and something to be saluted.The project took Weschler two years to produce from an original screenplay and the end result, while firmly of the macho bent, is definitely watchable—well, at least the first 20 minutes are, which is all we’ve seen so far. It features a soundtrack by The Rolling Stones and a story line that involves our trashy vigilante hunting down a serial killer after finding out that some of his favorite strippers have been mysteriously murdered. Regardless of any shortcomings the project may have, there’s no denying that creating a feature-length film from within the parameters of a video game is nothing to scoff at and is an achievement that should be praised as a new machinima milestone.
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