This week's mail bequeathed upon me the fifth and final season DVD of the popular Web series Red vs. Blue, the comedic application of the video game Halo that introduced me (and much of the world) to machinima.

Machinima, in the words of the series' own Private Dexter Grif, is described simply as "taking [a] video game and puppeteering it to make a narrative story". In this case, the games are Halo and Halo 2, and the effect is produced by linking several Xbox consoles together, recording the video, then dubbing audio over it. In this way, pre-existing animation can be used cheaply and more easily than creating one's own art assets. The result is about 20 three-minute episodes per "season" detailing the ongoing battles of the Red Team and the Blue Team as they battle each other and, more often, themselves, in the Blood Gulch box canyon.

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