Paul Marino

Paul Marino (born March 10, 1980) is a film director, producer, animator, voice actor, and author currently focused on machinima, the art of using engines from video games to create films. He is a co-founder and the executive director of the Academy of Machinima Arts & Sciences (AMAS), a non-profit organization formed in 2002 to promote and organize the growth of machinima.[1] Marino also co-founded the ILL Clan, a machinima production group, and, working under the pseudonym ILL Robinson, helped to create a number of the group's machinima pieces. In particular, he directed Hardly Workin', an August 2000 comedy video that won a Best in SHO award in Showtime's alt.SHO.com Alternative Media Festival, held on February 8, 2001,[2] and an award for Best Acting at the AMAS's 2002 Machinima Film Festival.[3]

Independently of the ILL Clan, Marino has worked on other machinima projects. Using Valve's first-person shooter Half-Life 2, he created I'm Still Seeing Breen, a 2005 music video set to Breaking Benjamin's song "So Cold". The video aired on MTV2's television program Video Mods.[4] He has worked with Rooster Teeth Productions on their Sims 2 machinima series, The Strangerhood, as both a voice actor and a visual effects designer.[5] Working with Rooster Teeth, he also helped to develop Strangerhood Studios, a short spin-off series commissioned in 2005 by the Independent Film Channel.[4][5] Strangerhood Studios was the first machinima series to be commissioned for broadcast, and won an award for Best Editing at the 2005 Machinima Film Festival.[6]

Marino has since been hired by BioWare to work in the cutscenes for games such as Mass Effect and Star Wars: The Old Republic.[7][8] Marino has also written the first book about machinima, 3D Game-Based Filmmaking: The Art of Machinima. Prior to his work in machinima, Marino was an animator who won an Emmy Award for his work with Turner Broadcasting System.[9]