In an interview with ground-breaking Oddworld creative director Lorne Lanning, VFX World explores how processing power is changing digital animation (Oddworld’s ‘Real’ Reel World). Of particular interest (read the whole thing for more) is this bit on machinima, something I've been touting for some time:

The Machinima Movement

One of the most interesting developments Lanning cites is Machinima, which he characterizes as a kind of virtual filmmaking environment. “Machinima is not as much a technology as a genre of game engines producing linear footage. I'm sure that — just like virtual reality — there will be people claiming that they own it. However, no one does.”

To illustrate how Machinima might apply to his company, Lanning offers, “Let's say Oddworld wanted to do a 90-minute, direct-to-DVD movie. If we wanted to do it with pre-rendered CG, we’d probably be looking at a $30 million-dollar budget, even with very aggressive economics. If instead we went the Machinima route, and ported it to the PC and took advantage of 2MB RAM for texture mapping instead of 64MB, then we could do 90 minutes for $6 million. And what would come out of that would be far more epic than anyone would expect. We could generate enough quality for HD.

“This also lends itself to producing a series. If the first 90-minute piece using Machinima cost us $6 million, the second one becomes a serial. It’s like having the sets built for a TV show. And the sound cues are in the sampler for the audio guys. We know what this show is, and now we’re running episode after episode. For the first one you're paying to build all the databases. The second one is derivative. In 10 years, it will be the same database, except it will be realtime, and it will be used for film.” (More information about Machinima can be found at www.Machinima.org.) [link and emphasis in original]

The Slashdot post where I found this article has some very informative links as well (Lorne Lanning On Real-Time CG & Machinima).