What makes something machinima?

look at Haloid, its not ingame at all, and its still machinima...

How about something like a news report entirely rendered in 3ds Max?

How about a machinima about machinima making, including both ingame shots, and film from people's screens, and maybe some real footage?

I would think Haloid isn't a Machinima. It's a CG film. Machinima is the convergence of filmmaking, animation and game development. Machinima is real-world filmmaking techniques applied within an interactive virtual space where characters and events can be either controlled by humans, scripts or artificial intelligence.

machinima = machine + cinema

everything not recorded through applications is not considered machinima.

actually, even 3dsmax renderings arn't even machinima because it's not a game engine,

only game engines are "pure" machinima's, the rest can be considered as it, but the line get's blurred there

for example, the stuff ensemble studios makes, is not machinima, it's an actual movie, just too short for a full one and released as cutscenes for ie halo wars.

simply put: everything which your mum calls a game can produce machinima's.