How To Make Minecraft Machinimas - Ideas and Planning!

So, you want to make machinima videos involving Minecraft, but you don’t have any idea where to start. In this series, we will be discussing various tips on how to make your #Minecraft machinimas the highest quality they can possibly be. Let’s get started!

Getting The Idea

Let’s start as basic as we can possibly get. You want to make a video and you have an idea. If you have an idea for a video involving a Creeper or anything else that you can think of, jot it down immediately. The faster you jot this idea down, the less likely you are to forget it. If more ideas come to mind when writing it down, write down those as well. At times, you’ll find yourself confused by what you meant when you go back to read a note if time has passed, eliminate this by being extremely descriptive in what you’re writing. Once you have a general idea down, you can begin scripting.

Scripting Your Video

When scripting a Minecraft video, keep in mind the elements that the game features (for example, if you’re wanting to make a video about a character finding Diamonds and then falling into a pit of Lava). Using mods can be a great advantage in helping you out with a wider variety of functionality and elements in your video.

A major deciding factor in how your script can be formated is whether or not your script will have dialogue. A large majority of people will use text on screen to emulate the fact that people are talking, rather than using voice actors themselves. Neither of these techniques are better than the other, but each has it’s own pros and cons in terms of storytelling, jokes, flow of the video and more. When writing dialogue, let the characters speak as if you were speaking to a friend. A nice way to tell if a script sounds good is to let friends and yourself do a live script reading, to understand how each character should speak and how the words will flow when spoken aloud.

Another good thing to keep in mind when scripting a Minecraft machinima is that there are not set locations in Minecraft. This is both a positive and a negative to making machinimas in Minecraft. A positive to this is that if you are in need of a set (a bus stop, for example), you can build it. A negative to this situation is that you may not necessarily know exactly how it should look and how to build it in Minecraft. Think long and hard when making a set, as it may not come across to the viewer as that is what you are attempting to showcase in your video if it ends up looking sloppily built.

Building The Scene

So, you’ve got all of your ideas down and your video scripted. Now it’s time to build your set. When building a set for any movie, you should only build what the camera will see. You will also need to pay very close attention to detail when making a set for a machinima. As you can see from the aerial view of the set, only areas that will be seen by the camera is built with a roof. From a lower perspective, if a building has a window and there is no roof or back wall, you will see the sky. Any inconsistencies (such as seeing the sky through a window, noticing all the surrounding grass, etc.) will more than likely be noticed by the viewer and will diminish your #video’s continuity. 

In Conclusion

With what you’ve been given in this article, you are ready to begin scripting your next #Minecraft video and planning your set. In upcoming articles involving the “How To Make Minecraft Machinimas” series, we will be going over concepts such as developing a good shot using composition/subject placement, editing, effects, body actors, and much more.