Game Art: Dupuy Benjamin's Beyond The Mind (2018)

In Beyond The Mind,  Dupuy Benjamin's latest machinima, a policeman discovers a strange place and makes an unexpected encounter that will bring him to overcome his greatest fears.Dupuy Benjamin received a Master of Science in Computer Science at the Faculty of Toulouse, France and today mainly works as a web developer. "Cinema has been my passion since childhood. I love all genres, but I consider myself a die hard fan of fantasy, science fiction, and above all horror movies. I have always liked video games and when I discovered the GTA IV editor in 2008, I realized I could do some really interesting things, merging my passion for cinema with the possibility of games.". He started making machinima and collaborating with the members of a now defunct small online community, Machinigamers. Movies like Mathieu Weschler's The Trashmaster (2010) and Ezequiel Guerisoli's Mastermind (2010) convinced him of the potential of machinima as an art form. "I realized that it was possible to use games as platforms to bring to life stories more powerful, more interesting and evocative than a simple pursuit in the streets of Liberty City." The introduction of Grand Theft Auto V in 2013 was another milestone. "The game featured a powerful editor, but the real revolution was that the fans began making incredible mods, and after a few years of inactivity, I decided to return to machinima-making." image from i.vimeocdn.com
According to Benjamin, "machinima is fascinating because it allows any creator to make all sorts of narratives with a limited budget and with excellent visual quality if the craft is there. A filmmaker must understands the potential but also the limitations of the medium (e.g. the movement of characters, their facial expressions, the kinds of available places and scenery...), but playing with these constraints can be very interesting and constructive. Machinima makes it possible to express oneself in a way that is inaccessible to most of us outside this medium. The problem today is the vast majority of movies that are produced tend to mimic the original game's genre - for instance, the gangster movie for GTA V. With Beyond the Mind, I wanted  to tell something else, to make another kind of machinima. I am convinced that the possibilities are there: one only needs to experiment." Asked about his personal vision as a filmmaker, Dupuy Benjamin says that "As a filmmaker, I have no specific goals for the moment but telling these stories I have in mind, have fun making movies, not only machinima. There is so much I want to discover and the room for improvement is huge."LINK: Dupuy Benjamin

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