Diary of a Camper

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Diary of a Camper
A scene from Diary of a Camper; dialogue is presented as on-screen text messages.
Engine(s)Quake
Genre(s)Action
Running time1 minute and 36 seconds
Release(s)October 26, 1996
Format(s)Quake demo recording

Diary of a Camper is an American short film released in October 1996 that was made using

deathmatch
.

Machinima had its roots in the

speedruns
. Diary of a Camper was the first demo to contain a narrative with text-based dialogue, instead of merely showing gameplay. Commentators have called Diary of a Camper primitive, but acknowledge its importance in establishing video games as a medium for filmmaking; the film inspired machinima filmmakers and spurred more complex machinima works in Quake and other games.

Synopsis

Diary of a Camper is set on the Quake map "The Dark Zone", with dialogue displayed as text messages. First exploring some of the map, the Rangers next gather and send two members to scout a room above. After teleporting into the room, a

remains, they identify their foe as John Romero, designer of Quake.[1][2]

Background

In the 1970s and 80s,

1993 computer game Doom featured a gameplay recording tool that produced its own demo files; these files contained information about character positions and game events, and could be played back by others using the Doom game engine. This enabled smaller file sizes than rendered video frames, and facilitated easy file sharing in an era of slow internet speeds.[3][4] Doom's successor, Quake, included new multiplayer gameplay and customization options,[5] and expanded the gameplay recording feature.[6] As Quake's multiplayer became popular, players began recording matches to study their performance or impress others with their skills.[7] Director and animator Paul Marino noted that players shifted to recording deathmatches with a more cinematic flair, and that the player's point of view increasingly became that of a director as well. Groups of players known as clans hosted demo files on the web for easy distribution.[6] Uwe Girlich, a German doctoral candidate,[8] had documented the Quake demo file format, and suggested that Quake could replace a dedicated 3D modeling program.[9][10]

One such Quake clan, the Rangers,

IRC discussed making demos to show off to the wider Quake community. "One of the members made a joke, saying something along the lines of 'wouldn't it be cool if we could make a movie out of a demo.' [We] sat for a second [...] as the wheels turned", and they excitedly began making plans.[13]

The demo was recorded in Quake's networked multiplayer deathmatch mode.[7] Even the simple story of the film required complex choreographing of the players in the scene, with one player's point of view acting as the camera from which action was perceived.[14] As the film was created before any demo-editing software tools had been publicly released, clan member Eric "ArchV" Fowler instead created his own tools to reposition the camera, splice recorded footage, and place custom text in the demo files.[13][15] Heath Brown wrote the story, and Matt "UnknownSoldier" Van Sickler was the director and camera.[16] In the release notes, Brown credits clan members Chris "Sphinx" Birke[17] and "Mute" with helping Fowler with movie packaging.[1]

The Rangers released Diary of a Camper on October 26, 1996.

Stanford University media curator Henry Lowood wrote that "Diary of a Camper broke with the demo movie as documented gameplay by moving away from the traditional first-person perspective of players."[9]

Diary of a Camper and the films that it inspired were initially called "Quake movies"; the term machinima (a fusion of "machine" and "cinema") was coined in 1998,[22][23] in response to the increasing use of other game engines to make similar content.[24] Differentiating machinima from the demoscene and earlier demo recordings, Diary of a Camper is often called the first work of narrative machinima,[2] or else the first work of machinima outright.[25]

Reception

Diary of a Camper was widely shared in the Quake demoscene, and later via rendered video versions on sites like

Machinima.com, garnering millions of views.[13] Despite the film's importance in establishing machinima, critics often panned the film's actual content. The plot was deemed simple,[7][26] with Lowood writing that "the plot offers little more than a brief sequence of inside jokes".[9] Major Quake movie review sites of the time called the film dull.[27][28][29] Stephen Lum of The Cineplex criticized the film's sense of humor, but gave the film high marks for originality.[30] Reviewer Paul Coates gave a negative review, but later commented on his low score of the film: "I feel I overreacted at the fact that Diary of a Camper was old. It's the first ever Quake movie. I have to give the Rangers massive credit for that... But, by today's standards, the [low rating] seems to fit."[29] Despite the effort put into creating a narrative, authors Michele Knobel and Colin Lankshear noted that it still looks more like a straight recording of gameplay, rather than film.[14] In comparison, professor Daniel Cermak-Sassenrath argued that despite the simplicity of the resulting work, "Diary of a Camper still displays an artistic vision and perspective that is informed by expert players."[2]

Professor and video game researcher Riccardo Fassone described Diary of a Camper as a "ur-machinima", stating that it would go on to define machinima but that the medium would use more complex narratives and become more institutionalized in the following years.

Australian Centre for the Moving Image exhibit.[35]

Notes

  1. ^ a b Brown 1996
  2. ^ a b c d Cermak-Sassenrath 2018, pp. 106–8
  3. ^ Marino 2004, 3–5
  4. ^ a b c Byrd 2017
  5. ^ Lowood 2005, 12
  6. ^ a b Marino 2004, 4
  7. ^ a b c d e Kelland, Morris & Lloyd 2005, 28
  8. ^ Kelland, Morris & Lloyd 2005, 37
  9. ^ a b c Lowood 2006, 33
  10. ^ Girlich 1996
  11. ^ Harwood & Grussi 2021, 13
  12. ^ a b Lowood 2006, 32
  13. ^ a b c d Harwood & Grussi 2021, 14–15
  14. ^ a b c Knobel & Lankshear 2010, 138–140
  15. ^ Lowood 2006, 33; Wu n.d.
  16. ^ Wu n.d.
  17. ^ Real name established in Salen 2002
  18. ^ Salen & Zimmerman 2003, 550
  19. ^ Marino 2004, 21
  20. ^ McGraw–Hill 2007, 1
  21. ^ Lowood 2005, 13
  22. ^ Marino 2004, 1
  23. ^ Heller 2006
  24. ^ Marino 2004, 12
  25. ^ Marino 2004, 4–6; Lowood 2006, 32; Kelland, Morris & Lloyd 2005, 28
  26. ^ Marino 2004, 6
  27. ^ As listed in Marino 2004, 7
  28. ^ Matthews 1997
  29. ^ a b Coates 1998, emphasis in original
  30. ^ Lum n.d.
  31. ^ Fassone 2019, 139
  32. ^ Chico 2014, 25
  33. ^ Lowood 2008
  34. ^ Lue 2005
  35. ^ Marino 2006; Butler 2006

References

External links

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