Operation Bayshield
Encyclopedia
Operation Bayshield is a short 1997 film made by Clan Undead, a group of video game players. The work was created by using the machinima
technique of recording a demonstration file
of player actions in id Software
's 1996 first-person shooter
video game Quake, which could replay such files on demand. The group had seen the first known machinima productions, made by United Ranger Films
, and decided to make a comedy film. The result, Operation Bayshield, follows a task force's attempts to thwart terrorists who have chemical explosives. Released on January 23, 1997, the work received praise from contemporary Quake movie review sites and helped to attract others, including Hugh Hancock of Strange Company
and members of the ILL Clan
, to machinima. It pioneered technical advances in machinima, such as the use of custom digital asset
s and of lip synchronization.
, the terrorists have stolen an "MMX chemical bomb" and are staying at an unknown room in a hotel in Vancouver, Washington
. After the task force finds and stops the terrorists, a man named Big Jim confronts them as they leave, complaining that they "gassed [his] girlfriend". The film ends with the ensuing fight.
with inspiring them to make their own film. According to clan member Tom "Paradox" Mustaine, working for Ritual Entertainment
at the time, the idea arose during a New Year's Eve gathering. where the group decided to make a "larger comedy film in the Quake engine". According to Henry Lowood of Stanford University
, this marked a shift toward narrative conventions of linear media
, in contrast to earlier gameplay-based machinima works, such as Diary of a Camper
and Quake done Quick
. However, filming still required both the ability to program game modification
s and to play proficiently. According to Lowood, Clan Undead probably recorded the raw footage "in a small number of continuous runs". Because there were no publicly available machinima software tools at the time, they handled the significant pre- and post-production
work through custom scripts in QuakeC
, an interpreted programming language developed for Quake.
Operation Bayshield was the first machinima work to incorporate custom digital asset
s. Clan Undead created graphical texture
s specifically for their characters and used custom visual effects, such as manipulating character images to produce first instance of lip sync
hronization in machinima. Although the effect was primitive, it was not used again in machinima for another year. This lip synchronization is an example of crude digital puppetry
; other examples included the shaking of character bodies when laughing and synchronized delivery of dialogue. Lowood believes that Clan Undead pre-recorded individual lines of dialogue to WAV
files, and then triggered playback through a command in QuakeC. In April 1997, Clan Undead distributed the source code
for its Operation Bayshield scripts over the Internet; Lowood believes that this release extended the Quake community's culture of sharing game modifications.
, executive director of the Academy of Machinima Arts & Sciences
, Operation Bayshield received enough attention from the video gaming industry to help to advance Mustaine's career. id Software
employee American McGee
praised it in his .plan file.
Lowood called Diary of a Camper
, Quake done Quick
, and Operation Bayshield "the founding trilogy of machinima". For comparison to early film, he placed these works between the 1895 footage recorded by Auguste and Louis Lumière
and the 1902 film A Trip to the Moon. Writing for the Houston Press
, Robert Wilonsky stated that Operation Bayshield was "a freaky hybrid" of Quakes visuals and of sketch comedy
resembling that of television show Saturday Night Live
. Ben Moss of machinima.com
contrasted the inside jokes in later Quake movies with Operation Bayshields references to popular fiction, including the 1982 film E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial
. In turn, the work's E.T. joke inspired similar mentions of extraterrestrials in in Quake done Quick and other machinima films.
Operation Bayshield helped to attract other artists to use machinima. Inspired by the work, the ILL Clan
, a group of Quake players who had recently graduated from college as film and animation majors, further developed comedy in machinima through their films Apartment Huntin' (1998) and Hardly Workin' (2000). Hugh Hancock of Strange Company
partially credits Operation Bayshield for his realization that there were "possibilities for Quake Movies beyond a toy". Brian "Wendingo" Hess, co-creator of Blahbahlicious, began work on his film after watching a group of machinima films that included Operation Bayshield. In interviews with Machinima.com
, others have stated that the work influenced them.
Machinima
Machinima is the use of real-time 3D computer graphics rendering engines to create a cinematic production. Most often, video games are used to generate the computer animation...
technique of recording a demonstration file
Game demo
A game demo is a freely distributed demonstration or preview of an upcoming or recently released video game. Demos are typically released by the game's publisher to help consumers get a feel of the game before deciding whether to buy the full version....
of player actions in id Software
Id Software
Id Software is an American video game development company with its headquarters in Richardson, Texas. The company was founded in 1991 by four members of the computer company Softdisk: programmers John Carmack and John Romero, game designer Tom Hall, and artist Adrian Carmack...
's 1996 first-person shooter
First-person shooter
First-person shooter is a video game genre that centers the gameplay on gun and projectile weapon-based combat through first-person perspective; i.e., the player experiences the action through the eyes of a protagonist. Generally speaking, the first-person shooter shares common traits with other...
video game Quake, which could replay such files on demand. The group had seen the first known machinima productions, made by United Ranger Films
United Ranger Films
United Ranger Films was a machinima production group responsible for the first examples of machinima. They were an offshoot from the Quake deathmatch clan, The Rangers, and were made up of members of the clan. Their first movie, Diary of a Camper, was a revolution at the time, because it was the...
, and decided to make a comedy film. The result, Operation Bayshield, follows a task force's attempts to thwart terrorists who have chemical explosives. Released on January 23, 1997, the work received praise from contemporary Quake movie review sites and helped to attract others, including Hugh Hancock of Strange Company
Strange Company
Strange Company is a group of machinima creators and distributors based in Edinburgh, Scotland. They are known in the medium as the longest-standing machinima production company, having produced machinima films since 1997, and for creating the Machinima.com website, which distributes such films on...
and members of the ILL Clan
ILL Clan
The ILL Clan is a machinima production team based in Brooklyn, New York City. One of the first of the "Machinima Clans," they created their first short: Apartment Huntin' in 1997, and have continued to produce machinima since then...
, to machinima. It pioneered technical advances in machinima, such as the use of custom digital asset
Digital asset
A digital asset is any item of text or media that has been formatted into a binary source that includes the right to use it. A digital file without the right to use it is not an asset. Digital assets are categorised in three major groups which may be defined as textual content , images and...
s and of lip synchronization.
Synopsis
Operation Bayshield centers on a task force's efforts to eliminate a group of terrorists. Offended by the television series BaywatchBaywatch
Baywatch is an American action drama series about the Los Angeles County Lifeguards who patrol the beaches of Los Angeles County, California, starring David Hasselhoff. The show ran in its original title and format from 1989 to 1999, sans the 1990-1991 season, of which it was not in production...
, the terrorists have stolen an "MMX chemical bomb" and are staying at an unknown room in a hotel in Vancouver, Washington
Vancouver, Washington
Vancouver is a city on the north bank of the Columbia River in the U.S. state of Washington. Incorporated in 1857, it is the fourth largest city in the state with a 2010 census population of 161,791 as of April 1, 2010...
. After the task force finds and stops the terrorists, a man named Big Jim confronts them as they leave, complaining that they "gassed [his] girlfriend". The film ends with the ensuing fight.
Background and production
Clan Undead credits United Ranger FilmsUnited Ranger Films
United Ranger Films was a machinima production group responsible for the first examples of machinima. They were an offshoot from the Quake deathmatch clan, The Rangers, and were made up of members of the clan. Their first movie, Diary of a Camper, was a revolution at the time, because it was the...
with inspiring them to make their own film. According to clan member Tom "Paradox" Mustaine, working for Ritual Entertainment
Ritual Entertainment
Ritual Entertainment was a computer game software developer established in 1996 by Robert Atkins, Mark Dochtermann, Jim Dosé, Richard 'Levelord' Gray, Michael Hadwin, Harry Miller and Tom Mustaine...
at the time, the idea arose during a New Year's Eve gathering. where the group decided to make a "larger comedy film in the Quake engine". According to Henry Lowood of Stanford University
Stanford University
The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...
, this marked a shift toward narrative conventions of linear media
Linear medium
A linear medium is any medium which is intended to be written to or accessed in a linear fashion, literally meaning in a line.This means that the information is written to or read from the medium in a given order, so for example a book containing a novel is intended to be read from front to back,...
, in contrast to earlier gameplay-based machinima works, such as Diary of a Camper
Diary of a Camper
Diary of a Camper is a short 1996 American film made using id Software's 1996 first-person shooter computer game Quake. It was created by United Ranger Films, then a subdivision of a popular group of computer game players, or clan, known as the Rangers. The film was first released over the Internet...
and Quake done Quick
Quake done Quick
Quake done Quick is a series of machinima and speedrun movies in which Quake, its mission packs, and a few of its related games, are completed as fast as possible, utilizing any shortcut or trick necessary...
. However, filming still required both the ability to program game modification
Mod (computer gaming)
Mod or modification is a term generally applied to personal computer games , especially first-person shooters, role-playing games and real-time strategy games. Mods are made by the general public or a developer, and can be entirely new games in themselves, but mods are not standalone software and...
s and to play proficiently. According to Lowood, Clan Undead probably recorded the raw footage "in a small number of continuous runs". Because there were no publicly available machinima software tools at the time, they handled the significant pre- and post-production
Post-production
Post-production is part of filmmaking and the video production process. It occurs in the making of motion pictures, television programs, radio programs, advertising, audio recordings, photography, and digital art...
work through custom scripts in QuakeC
QuakeC
QuakeC is an interpreted language developed in 1996 by John Carmack of id Software to program parts of the computer game Quake. Using QuakeC, a programmer is able to customize Quake to great extents by adding weapons, changing game logic and physics, and programming complex scenarios...
, an interpreted programming language developed for Quake.
Operation Bayshield was the first machinima work to incorporate custom digital asset
Digital asset
A digital asset is any item of text or media that has been formatted into a binary source that includes the right to use it. A digital file without the right to use it is not an asset. Digital assets are categorised in three major groups which may be defined as textual content , images and...
s. Clan Undead created graphical texture
Texture mapping
Texture mapping is a method for adding detail, surface texture , or color to a computer-generated graphic or 3D model. Its application to 3D graphics was pioneered by Dr Edwin Catmull in his Ph.D. thesis of 1974.-Texture mapping:...
s specifically for their characters and used custom visual effects, such as manipulating character images to produce first instance of lip sync
Lip sync
Lip sync, lip-sync, lip-synch is a technical term for matching lip movements with sung or spoken vocals...
hronization in machinima. Although the effect was primitive, it was not used again in machinima for another year. This lip synchronization is an example of crude digital puppetry
Digital puppetry
Digital puppetry is the manipulation and performance of digitally animated 2D or 3D figures and objects in a virtual environment that are rendered in real-time by computers...
; other examples included the shaking of character bodies when laughing and synchronized delivery of dialogue. Lowood believes that Clan Undead pre-recorded individual lines of dialogue to WAV
WAV
Waveform Audio File Format , is a Microsoft and IBM audio file format standard for storing an audio bitstream on PCs...
files, and then triggered playback through a command in QuakeC. In April 1997, Clan Undead distributed the source code
Source code
In computer science, source code is text written using the format and syntax of the programming language that it is being written in. Such a language is specially designed to facilitate the work of computer programmers, who specify the actions to be performed by a computer mostly by writing source...
for its Operation Bayshield scripts over the Internet; Lowood believes that this release extended the Quake community's culture of sharing game modifications.
Reception and impact
The major Quake machinima review sites of the day rated Operation Bayshield highly. In a short review, Stephen Lum of The Cineplex gave the work a 9.5 out of 10 and called it "one of the best and funniest Quake Movies ever made"; he saw inconsistent camera manipulation as the only flaw. Rating the film 100% out of 100%, Roger Matthews of the Quake Movie Library pointed to humorous parts of the work in his synopsis, and thought that the last scene was nonsensical. Paul Coates of Psyk's Popcorn Jungle, who gave Operation Bayshield a 10 out of 10 rating and awarded it a Golden Popcorn award, considered the work "very polished" and the most technologically advanced Quake machinima film until Blahbahlicious. He praised the humor, but said that repeated viewings weakened its effect. According to Paul MarinoPaul Marino
Paul Marino is a film director, producer, animator, voice actor, and author currently focused on machinima, the art of using engines from video games to create films. He is a co-founder and the executive director of the Academy of Machinima Arts & Sciences , a non-profit organization formed in...
, executive director of the Academy of Machinima Arts & Sciences
Academy of Machinima Arts & Sciences
This is a list of film festivals dedicated to machinima, the use of real-time 3-D engines in filmmaking. The Academy of Machinima Arts & Sciences regularly holds such festivals, and recognizes exemplary machinima works through awards nicknamed the Mackies.-Machinima Expo:The is an annual...
, Operation Bayshield received enough attention from the video gaming industry to help to advance Mustaine's career. id Software
Id Software
Id Software is an American video game development company with its headquarters in Richardson, Texas. The company was founded in 1991 by four members of the computer company Softdisk: programmers John Carmack and John Romero, game designer Tom Hall, and artist Adrian Carmack...
employee American McGee
American McGee
-Career:McGee began his career at id Software, working on level design, music production, sound effects development, and programming in such games as Doom, Doom II, Quake, and Quake II. In 1998, he moved to Electronic Arts, where he worked as creative director on several projects, including...
praised it in his .plan file.
Lowood called Diary of a Camper
Diary of a Camper
Diary of a Camper is a short 1996 American film made using id Software's 1996 first-person shooter computer game Quake. It was created by United Ranger Films, then a subdivision of a popular group of computer game players, or clan, known as the Rangers. The film was first released over the Internet...
, Quake done Quick
Quake done Quick
Quake done Quick is a series of machinima and speedrun movies in which Quake, its mission packs, and a few of its related games, are completed as fast as possible, utilizing any shortcut or trick necessary...
, and Operation Bayshield "the founding trilogy of machinima". For comparison to early film, he placed these works between the 1895 footage recorded by Auguste and Louis Lumière
Auguste and Louis Lumière
The Lumière brothers, Auguste Marie Louis Nicolas and Louis Jean , were among the earliest filmmakers in history...
and the 1902 film A Trip to the Moon. Writing for the Houston Press
Houston Press
The Houston Press is an alternative weekly newspaper published in Houston, Texas, United States. It is headquartered in Downtown Houston....
, Robert Wilonsky stated that Operation Bayshield was "a freaky hybrid" of Quakes visuals and of sketch comedy
Sketch comedy
A sketch comedy consists of a series of short comedy scenes or vignettes, called "sketches," commonly between one and ten minutes long. Such sketches are performed by a group of comic actors or comedians, either on stage or through an audio and/or visual medium such as broadcasting...
resembling that of television show Saturday Night Live
Saturday Night Live
Saturday Night Live is a live American late-night television sketch comedy and variety show developed by Lorne Michaels and Dick Ebersol. The show premiered on NBC on October 11, 1975, under the original title of NBC's Saturday Night.The show's sketches often parody contemporary American culture...
. Ben Moss of machinima.com
Machinima.com
Machinima.com is a gaming and media streaming website, that aims to be a hub for machinima, the art of creating animated videos in real-time virtual 3-D environments. The site features machinima-related articles, and news. Machinima productions can be submitted for possible redistribution after...
contrasted the inside jokes in later Quake movies with Operation Bayshields references to popular fiction, including the 1982 film E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial
E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial
E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial is a 1982 American science fiction film co-produced and directed by Steven Spielberg, written by Melissa Mathison and starring Henry Thomas, Dee Wallace, Robert MacNaughton, Drew Barrymore, and Peter Coyote...
. In turn, the work's E.T. joke inspired similar mentions of extraterrestrials in in Quake done Quick and other machinima films.
Operation Bayshield helped to attract other artists to use machinima. Inspired by the work, the ILL Clan
ILL Clan
The ILL Clan is a machinima production team based in Brooklyn, New York City. One of the first of the "Machinima Clans," they created their first short: Apartment Huntin' in 1997, and have continued to produce machinima since then...
, a group of Quake players who had recently graduated from college as film and animation majors, further developed comedy in machinima through their films Apartment Huntin' (1998) and Hardly Workin' (2000). Hugh Hancock of Strange Company
Strange Company
Strange Company is a group of machinima creators and distributors based in Edinburgh, Scotland. They are known in the medium as the longest-standing machinima production company, having produced machinima films since 1997, and for creating the Machinima.com website, which distributes such films on...
partially credits Operation Bayshield for his realization that there were "possibilities for Quake Movies beyond a toy". Brian "Wendingo" Hess, co-creator of Blahbahlicious, began work on his film after watching a group of machinima films that included Operation Bayshield. In interviews with Machinima.com
Machinima.com
Machinima.com is a gaming and media streaming website, that aims to be a hub for machinima, the art of creating animated videos in real-time virtual 3-D environments. The site features machinima-related articles, and news. Machinima productions can be submitted for possible redistribution after...
, others have stated that the work influenced them.