Distortion is a 2023 experimental machinima based in the Philippines, developed by amateur game developer and filmmaker Frederick C. Borromeo and distributed by Studio Moonchalk.
Produced in RPG Maker MV engine as well as using editing software and several RMMV plugins to incorporate camera movements and editing, especially the latter's cross-fading dissolution and minimalistic scenery. Despite its short length with a minimum of fourty minutes, it still marked as the first feature-length (and non-narrative) film or machinima to produce with the RPG Maker engine.
The first installment of Borromeo's proposed trilogy named "Environment", with next two films are unknowingly in development. The machinima was released on January 22, 2023, and is available streaming exclusively on YouTube
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This film provides examples of:
- Boring, but Practical: It's highly possible to getting bored to watch it whole, but it innovates editing and some elements used throughout the machinima to make it more cinematic.
- Dissolve: All scenes of Distortion suggested that the original settings gradually fade into canva-like blank environments, resulting in everyone else disappeared without a trace.
- Ghost Town: In extreme cases, the people in all towns and villages were nowhere to be seen or likely disappeared without a single trace, leaving it abandoned entirely.
- Le Film Artistique: The machinima features both original and minimalistic designs through tilesets, altogether by cross-fade each other scenes.
- Limited Animation: Distortion is considered a limited animation (like waters were moving frame-by-frame) through a single computer, using a game engine with camera core plugin in order to incorporates slow-pacing movement in each scene.
- No Ending: There are no good and bad endings what've you seen.
- No Plot? No Problem!: Distortion, however, entirely doesn't have a plot or story due to lack of creative differences and script difficulties, as well as no story and dialogues, nearly similar to Andy Warhol's art film Empire (1964).
- RPG Maker: Produced only in RPG Maker MV.
- Silence Is Golden: No background music and sound.
- Silent Credits: The entire credits of the machinima.
