Dia De Los Muertos

(While you are waiting for the next Bloodspell post, here's something you might find interesting)

Dia De Los Muertos

Every year the Hollywood Forever Cemetery hosts an annual "Day of the Dead" festival among the graves and tombstones. The event takes place on the Saturday before Halloween, even though the traditional date for the festival is November 2nd.

My partner, Lisa Morton, along with our friend, Kevin attended this years festival and it was an amazing experience. Halloween has always been my favorite holiday, but the Dia De Los Muertos festival is becoming more and more interesting to me, especially since the festival is so well produced by the Hollywood Forever Cemetery.

Here are some pictures from a festival documentary I am working on. The last still is a short, 3 min excerpt from the documentary. This Mexican tradition is full of exciting art and music along with a touch of the macabre.

(click for full size picture)

Traditional Aztec dancers

Lots of food stands

Part of the decorations for a stage show

One of a hundred altars to the dead

Mmmnn....sugar skulls

She sells handmade holiday crafts

Traditional Mexican music on stage

Tamales and pina coladas

Giant skeletons guard the mausoleum

A short section from my documentary (uncut)
-Click to play-

Bloodspell Premiere @Second Life: Part Two

Note: We've finally managed to post the complete Bloodspell film at our Machiniplex site. Both the size of the file and technical issues kept us from being able to post it sooner. We are sorry for the delay.

Now that the Bloodspell Premiere is a week old, I know that the event was much more fun that I realized at the time since I was so wound up in the technical issues and the logistics of the event. There were so many interesting people (Hathead told me there were about 40 to 45 people) who came for the Premiere; people like Paul Marino, Moo Money and RobertX (from Lit Fuse films) just to name a few. I wished I'd taken more time to talk to them. Well, we did have a lot of fun dancing at the end of the Premiere.

My only regret was that we were not able to play the introduction that Hugh Hancock, Frank Fox and I created specifically for the Bloodspell Premiere. When I proposed the idea, Hugh loved it and after I got his voice recording I contacted Frank, who is probably one of the best Moviestorm filmmakers we have now, and he agreed to create it for us. As you will see, both Frank and Hugh did a wonderful job. I'd like to thank Frank for taking the time out of his very busy professional schedule to help us out. Thank you!

Here is Mr. Hugh Hancock's Introduction to Bloodspell:

If you are interested you can download copies of the intro here (WMV, 4mb) and the QT version is here (8.4mb). Can you figure out what film we are parodying? If not, look here and you'll see what we were trying to do.
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The Question & Answer Session with Hugh Hancock

I was very frustrated that my own recording of the Q&A session with Hugh was unusable until Ceedj told me he had a fairly decent recording and after a little cleaning up, it's a passable, though not ideal version. We had quite a bit of trouble running Skype voice through Second Life (feedback, echo, distortion) and I think we'll try Second Life's own voice conferencing next time. In any case, I've divided the longish Q&A into two parts; the first part is Hugh and I going at it and the second part is the questions from the people that attended the event (there were some good ones).

Here is part One of the Q&A with Hugh Hancock:


And here is part two of the Q&A:


You can download part one here and part two here. The whole session is available right here.

Note:The music you hear introducing each section was from the pre-premiere set that Hathead performed live for everyone. I don't quite know how he managed to do so many things at once. Not only that, but he's a damn good musician!


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My good friend Damien (Darth Angelus) kindly captured video from the Premiere for me using Fraps. I've quickly cobbled together a short (3 min) documentary of the event using a magnatune by Electric Frankenstein. There is so much great music at that site. If you are looking for music for your machinima, head over to maganatune.com and take a look at what they've got. The licensing is ridiculously easy (even a commercial license is pretty cheap).

Here's the Documentary - (be prepared, it's a little loud..heh heh..)

You can download copies here (WMV, 26mb) and here (QT, 20mb)

Wouldn't you know it? Right after I finished this doc, I received 3 DVD-R's worth of video capture of the Premiere from Ceedj. Hey, thanks a lot, man. I'll see if I can't put a longer piece together for you, CJ. You know, fast and dirty!
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Michelle (Stormy Harker, did you see that dress she was wearing?!) took quite a few pictures for us (thank you very much, Michelle). I've pulled some of the best ones and you can see them here in a slideshow created with software from slide.com.

Call me crazy, but don't the women have better taste in Second Life clothing than the men? Hell, look at me. I look like a thin Stanley Kowalski. It's odd though. If anyone is interested in High Res (2880 x 1700) of these shots, let me know and I'll make them available for you.

FYI, I'm using an open source flash player to stream the films you see here (for the Premiere Documentary, that is). It was created by Jeroen Wijering and is very, very customizable for smarter people than me. I did manage to figure out how to get two flv players to play separate films in the same blog entry. Blogger is just not up to a lot of newer plug ins. Thinking of switching over to Word Press. Stay tuned.

The audio plug in for the Q&A is originally a Word Press plug in, but it's been revised to work for Blogger. You can read about it at ourmedia.org in an article by Cindy McAdams. Phil Rice has it working very nicely at his Overcast site, but I can't quite get the player to do more than just play the file yet.

On Tuesday, I'll be posting my conversation with Paul Hamilton and Hugh Hancock on acting in Bloodspell. Sometime Thursday, I'll put up the "Scene Breakdown" article and conversation with Hugh and then finally a wrap up of the Bloodspell Premiere by the weekend. Whew! This post goes on forever. Stay tuned for lots more media.

Finally, an apology to Leo Lucien-Bey for not getting the BEAST premiere media and write up before now. I promise I'll have it up before the end of the week. We are still trying to find out feet with this new website and blog. Thanks for your patience, Leo.

Interview with Hugh Hancock

Hugh and I had a wonderful conversation one morning last week, but being Skype-cursed I managed to record only one half of the conversation - mine. Hugh came through like a little tin can, probably due to a setting somewhere that didn't come up in my tests the night before. There's something eerie about listening to yourself laugh out loud to near-silence.

Anyway, without further ado, and without the humor that I had so much enjoyed and that is to be expected from Hugh in general, I give to you... the transcript.

On Production and Puppets

Ingrid

So the age-old question is… how do you decide where to put the camera and why?

Hugh Hancock

Well, my approach to directing the camera is really pretty utilitarian. Frankly, I'm not the world's greatest cinematographer, and I am well aware of that, so I focus on showing the viewer what's happening in the damn scene, first and foremost. Get the coverage, then you can do the nifty stuff. I also take a lot of suggestions from the crew working with me – they've got great eyes for shooting, one and all of them, probably better than mine.

So, I shoot for coverage, then we edit and see what's missing. In fact you never see the first or even the second or third takes in the series, because we would shoot it, look at it, see where we needed other coverage, go back and shoot it again, edit a rough cut, show it to a small group of people, figure out what we needed to reshoot, shoot again, and sometimes yet again.

Ingrid

So when you go back for a retake, do you have it all set up where you can rewind and click “go” and it plays out for you the same way?

Hugh Hancock

No, not at all. This is all done live. I don’t really like using scripted filmmaking, I prefer puppeteering, where you can have one person click “kick him in the head” and then the other person clicks “roll over in pain” or something like that.

Ingrid

What’s the most people you have had in a session?

Hugh Hancock

Four.

Ingrid

Oh so that small number makes it easy to communicate and manage things. How was it with people sitting around doing take after take – is everyone pretty patient?

Hugh Hancock

It’s very much like working on a live-action film set, where people are sitting around a lot. But they are there to accomplish something, and they were very patient. Sometimes we’d get only 3 shots, and sometimes we’d get 2-3 minutes of footage in one session.

Ingrid

Does Strange Company have a permanent studio?

Hugh Hancock

Yes – We’re working in a room that’s about 6 feet by 10 feet. We have 6 PCs and a Mac.

On BloodSpell – Then and Now

Ingrid

What are some of the changes between the series and the feature?

Hugh Hancock

Oh it’s very different. We like to tell people it’s a whole new experience. It is the same story, but we’ve completely reshot the first two scenes, and we’ve tightened up a lot of the other scenes, filled in plot holes, and overall made it a much better movie. We reshot the Cathedral scene with a better model than the one we threw together for the series. We recut the film and then Phil completely redid the sound track from the ground up.

Ingrid

Do you think that working on the series first really helped you to do a better job with the feature?

Hugh Hancock

Absolutely, we learned a lot from making the series. I might do it differently next time but we definitely learned a lot.

Ingrid

How long as BloodSpell been in production now?

Hugh Hancock

4 years September

Ingrid

Four! Whatever happened to machinima being easy for one person to quickly tell their story or make an independent movie?

Hugh Hancock

Machinima still has its advantages if you think of BloodSpell – you’ve got action scenes with 35 people in the background and monsters and enormous staircases and sets and something like that might cost you $5 million in a live-action film, and even more realistically more like $40 million. In BloodSpell we’ve got huge battles with 35 people fighting each other or fighting demons…

Ingrid

If this had been a live action film, you could have had a minimum $40 million budget just for special effects alone.

Hugh Hancock

Exactly.

Ingrid

So the advantage here for you is really in the cost.

Hugh Hancock

Or time. Basically, yes, Machinima is still the super-quick way to make BloodSpell. It might have taken us four years, but that's 12 man-years rather than something like 12,000 man-years for a Pixar or New Line movie!

On Cooking and Impatience

Ingrid

What’s in the future for Strange Company?

Hugh Hancock

I am looking at doing a cooking series…

Ingrid

Cooking series? Wow. Are you a chef?

Hugh Hancock

Well I wouldn’t call myself a chef but I can cook.

Down the road I have some ideas for some other stories. We're working on 'Steelwight,' which is basically a swashbuckling Victorian superhero series, set in a city that was so bad it went to Hell, and 'Industrial,' which is basically about sex, music, magic and mathematics – it’s to the university setting what “Buffy” was to high school.

But of course you might not see them for a couple of years! I'm pretty committed to having something out well before 2010.

Ingrid

I don’t think we can wait that long!

Hugh Hancock

It might be that long for you but it starts for me in about six months.

On Promotion, or Exposing Yourself

Ingrid

What is your strategy to publicity?

Hugh Hancock

Exposure. Right now I want to build publicity around what others say
about BloodSpell and not build up as much hype ahead of time like we did
for the series. We really had a pretty arrogant approach to the series
premiere, partially because we had been working on it for so long, and
it backfired. I can see why. So...

Ingrid

Which do you think works better – hoarding exposure by posting on only your own or a few sites, so that you can track the visitation better, or putting your film out there in as many places as possible?

Hugh Hancock

It depends on what you’re doing, but I’d say if you’re not a big brand or a well-known director, as is the case with most people in machinima, you’re better off posting in as many places as possible, because people are going to view their films where they are – on YouTube or whatever – and they aren’t necessarily going to go to your site to watch them. You want to get it in front of as many people as possible.

Ingrid

Do you count views? Do you think views are a good measure of success?

Hugh Hancock

Again it depends on what you’re doing, but views are a good measure of how many people are watching your film. It doesn’t really tell you too much about whether its any good, unless you are getting something like a million views which could mean that people are sharing it with their friends and so on.

Bloodspell Premiere - Rockin the House!

Hey, my first post! And what better topic to honor it than with pics and a recap of the Machiniplex premiere party for Bloodspell, followed by a conversation with Hugh Hancock about the movie, production, and cooking.

First, let me just say how wonderful it is to (virtually) see so many of our machinima friends, as well as many new faces from the Second Life machinima community. I tried to capture close-ups of all attendees though I don't know everyone's name, and some people popped in and out too briefly for me to snag. Hathead's sky tower is a great place to have a party, and although the screening bit was acting up, we enjoyed the live stream from Skype into Second Life as Ricky and Hugh chatted and fielded questions from the in-world group.

I must say, it was funny to hear Hugh, strung out on coffee from a long night of uploading and preparations for the premiere, as lively as ever, while watching his avatar slump over in AFK mode. Combined with the lack of lip-sync, the experience was a bit surreal.

Following the Q&A we danced - and we danced - and we danced. It may not seem like such a big deal, virtually dancing and watching your avatar Tango, but there's definitely something amusing about it. Meanwhile you can chat and catch up with other friends.

Here are some photos from the event. Click to view the large versions.

In-world preparations, decorations, and tests began on Friday.

I had the impression Hugh was hobnobbing with a TV Producer.

Ricky lookin' stylish. The irony here, is that he has more hair in real life.

I find it amazing how Hugh managed to get an avatar that resembles himself.

I had the honor of the first dance...

And more snapshots from the party...

Bloodspell Premiere @Second Life: Part One

We had quite a time in Second Life yesterday (Sunday) with the Bloodspell Movie Premiere. Despite a near perfect rehearsal on Friday, we had many technical problems that slowed down the event to a crawl at some points. Well, you know what Theatre people say about a great final dress rehearsal leading to a rough opening! Thanks to Hathead's tech tango, we were able to enjoy the Premiere in spite of the problems. My gratitude and thanks go out to you, Hathead!

Hathead began the event with a shortened live set (which was great) and then after a wait, Hugh Hancock and I began the Q&A with about 40 people in attendance listening to our conversation live via Skype. Second Life has a new voice chat function, but we didn't get a chance to test it, so we stuck with what had worked for us in the past. Despite some feedback problems at one point, Hugh and I talked about the changes he had made to the film in order to adapt it into a feature length film. We also talked about the new color correction process (via Adobe Premiere Pro) to add vividness to the color and depth to the backgrounds. After about 30 minutes we opened the questions up to the audience who passed them on to me (and Ingrid Moon) via the Second Life chat function. There were some very good questions like; "are you sick of the Neverwinter Nights engine now?" and "Have you changed your mind about Second Life now?". Hugh had written somewhat dismissively about Second Life as a machinima tool in his new book, "Machinima for Dummies". Lively debate occured with Hugh bravely holding his own (of course, no one else had voice chat function). The debate ended with Hugh agreeing to meet with SL machinimators for a tour of Second Life. Here's hoping they keep to their bargain!

Unfortunately, we were unable to show the very amusing Intro Hugh had recorded and Frank Fox had animated in Moviestorm. The intro was a send up of the original (1933) Frankenstein film. We just couldn't get it to play on the video screen in world. I'll be featuring this short intro along with photos and a complete audio recording of the Q&A on my next post. Stay tuned!

For now, here's a taste of some of the people and moments from the Premiere:

Bloodspell Movie Premiere This Sunday

Machiniplex will be hosting the premiere for Strange Company's Bloodspell this Sunday, Sept. 21st @ 11AM (Pacific Time), 2PM (East Cost) & 7PM (GMT) live in Second Life. Hathead (Doug Dyson) has graciously loaned us the use of his world famous Tower Bar area to conduct a Q&A with Hugh Hancock, the director of the new movie version of Bloodspell. Originally a 14 part series, Bloodspell has been re-edited into a feature length film.

You will be able to see the film in it's entirety before the Q&A by going to Machiniplex.com starting at 1Am (Pacific Time), 4AM (East Coast) & 9AM (GMT). After watching the film, come on over to Hathead Island and join in a Q&A with Hugh and other members of the cast & company. You can use this link to get the slurl for Second Life:

http://slurl.com/secondlife/HatHead/108/143/609

Hathead will provide live music before the show. We will start the Q&A at 11, which should last about 1 1/2 hours. Then we'll party with Hathead's dance animations until we stop! If you are a newbie to Second Life, don't worry because we will have helpers there to give you a hand.

Earlier today, we had a short rehearsal for the tech part of the upcoming Premiere. Everything went very smoothly, thanks to Hathead. I'd like to thank Ingrid, Michelle, CJ and Damien for coming by and helping out and for the upcoming help at the Premiere. Couldn't do this without you.

Here are some quick snaps from the rehearsal. Like the free T-shirts Hathead made for the Bloodspell Premiere?


L to R: Ricky, CJ, Michelle, Hathead & Damien:
Just hanging out after the rehearsal

Ingrid showing off the free Bloodspell T-shirt

Doug & Ricky "workin hard". Note the whiskey on the table

Hope Damien and Michelle like my new shirt!

Didn't Hathead do a great job decorating for Bloodspell?

Welcome to Machiniplex!

Welcome to Machiniplex!

So... just what the hell is Machiniplex? Just another machinima site, that promises much but expires in a few months? Maybe, maybe not.

Machiniplex is a collaborative project between Ingrid Moon, Ricky Grove, and myself (Jason Choi). The idea for the site began many years ago. When I first stepped onto the machinima scene, it was still relatively small. Machinima.com featured many cool videos that any aspiring machinimator could live up to. The majority of the videos on the site were new, fresh, and still had that indie feel to it. The whole movement was centered here, community intact. Filmmakers shared their films on the forums, and everyone saw what everyone else did.

Things are a little different now, isn't it? Machinima has grown in ways nobody imagined, and much too quickly. The movement exploded beyond any one site could hold, and as a result the community splintered in different ways - communities formed completely separately from the general machinima movement, and as a result the films themselves were strewn all over the web. In the past, when introducing someone to machinima, all I would have to do is log on to machinima.com to show them a variety of films that they'd be impressed by. Now, that's no longer possible. Some greats are on machinima.com, some only on YouTube, some only on blogs, and some are only on the author's website. More than this, as time went on and new machinima fans were born, it became increasingly harder to show people how machinima all started. Worse, many older films have had their links outdated and broken, and those films only became harder, if not impossible, to find. Thus the idea for Machiniplex was born.

Originally my idea was barebones simple, just a sort of digital machinima museum. A site that only featured the great films of the past, present, and future - nothing more, nothing less. All of the old Quake movies that were in-engine only, would be captured and immediately watchable on the site. Award winners, films that caused controversies, films that were rated highly by community members, etc., these were the types of films that would be focused on without any distractions such as advertisements or user comments. The idea was to replicate the real-life experience of visiting a museum or movie theater, and as a tribute to the filmmakers whose work deserves to be seen by people, without having to spend hours searching for it.

I pitched this idea to Ricky and Ingrid, and they were both excited about it. Soon they offered their own opinions on how the site can come to be. This included the idea for 'special features' - much like a DVD you purchase that comes packaged with the film itself, an audio commentary, and features on how the film was created. What a great idea!

Another idea that came about was the idea of premieres. What happened to the days of posting your film on the forums, having everyone watch it and having a lively 5 page discussion on it? I think we all miss those days, I know I do. It was even a big motivation for me to make a new film - the stress over how people would react, what they will like and dislike, the praises and the criticisms. The premiere idea brings this back, as well as offering a fresh perspective on it, taking advantage of modern technology, and at the same time giving the hardworking filmmaker the attention he deserves. A community doesn't have to be just on a forum - communities also thrive when there are fun and interesting events that they take part in, as I realized when I attended the Machinima Film Festival in 2006.

Currently, the machiniplex.com is an ongoing project, and the site you see now is only the beginning (perhaps 10% of what we ultimately want). We have some really cool ideas that we'll pull off in the near future, and once we do, you'll probably want to link machiniplex.com to random people and their mothers, without being embarrassed or fearful of their response. Machinima is here to stay, and as it continues to grow, we want people to walk away with the right impression of it!

Premiere 01: "Morning Run Amok" by Frank L. Fox

The idea of a premiere for each of our new Machiniplex films came from my own background as a stage actor. It seemed to me that good quality machinima films were getting lost because so many filmmakers were simply posting their film on a related machinima site and then hoping someone would watch it and offer comments. When Jason, Ingrid and I met for the first time, I told them that we needed to draw attention to our films by having a sort of "opening night" with an audience who would come specifically to see the film we would premiere and then to have a Q&A session with the director in "real time". That the event would occur in real time was critical since it seemed to me that it would provide a more complete give and take with the director and that the level of comments and questions would be higher than those we often find on the standard machinima sites. Additionally,We would archive the session on our site so that people who couldn't attend could have access to the session 24/7.



Our first Premiere was for Frank L. Fox's film "Morning Run Amok". We premiered the film at machiniplex.com on Friday, Sept 7th, 2007 by posting the film at our site at 5pm (Pacific time; 1am GMT). After everyone had a chance to watch the film, we had a 2 hour Skype text chat an hour later. Initially, we had some troublesome technical problems because we wanted to "voice conference" on Skyp via their Skypecast Beta program since it allows for voice communication for free for up to 100 people, but we were never able to successfully connect, so we opted for the standard Skype Text chat. Skypecast is a great idea, but it's simply not working well right now
in the Beta stage. Here's hoping Skype gets their technical problems solved in the future.

In addition to the director, Frank L. Fox, we had Phil Rice who composed the music for the film and assisted with sound editing and mixing. We were pleasantly surprised at the attendance for this first premiere. Not counting Jason, Ingrid and myself, we had seven additional people for our first Q&A session. My thanks to:

AkiraKenobi
Animize
Bilius
Jim Mcdougal
MooMoney
Darth Angelus
Krad Productions

(Jim Mcdougal, if you have a link to your site let me know and I'll add it)

We appreciate all of you taking time to join us and for making our first event such a success. While text chat is a slow process, it allows for a more deliberate progression with the questions and comments. Ingrid and I moderated the chat session which allowed us to focus initially on our own thoughts about "Morning Run Amok". Then we opened the session up to general questions which went on for over an hour with many excellent questions and comments.



Frank elaborated on the process of working with Moviestorm to create "Morning Run Amok". He shot digital photos for most of the backgrounds in the film and used Sony Vegas to composite them into his scenes. He spent about 3 months working on the film from start to release. Phil Rice came on board to write the music for the film and I helped Frank with sound effects and mixing. I must say that the collaboration with Frank and Phil was one of the best I've ever experienced for a machinima film (and I've done quite a few). Many of the Q&A questions focused on the technical process of putting the film together and on Moviestorm as a machinima platform. Phil also commented extensively on why he decided on using a kazzoo chorus for the main theme and on how he thought about the music as a whole.

Here's a small taste of the conversation you'll find in the full document. Both Frank and Phil were informative and interesting in their answers to a lot of good questions. Towards the end of the conversation we branched out into more general questions about the Machiniplex site and the ideas behind it.

Morning Run Amok sample of the Q&A:
(Frank is answering a question about how the script to Morning Run Amok came about)

Frank Fox:
I wanted to come up with a story that pushed Moviestorm's limitations but still worked within them. I have amassed a bunch of jokes told to me over the years. I m terrible with remembering them and retelling them so I write down the ones I like

Frank Fox:
I hunted through my stash and found the more vaudevillian (sp?) one to string together. This is the result.

Ricky Grove:
What gave you the idea to use the morning run as the plot device to string the bits together?

Frank Fox:
I am so proud of all of the work my family, old friends and new friends have done on this

Frank Fox:
The runner was a good tie-in for all of the settings

Ricky Grove:
Next question: why the photo realistic backgrounds?

Frank Fox:
The backgrounds were me trying to make up for my compositing mistakes in Screen Scenes and I wanted to see what realism looked like up against the Moviestorm models

Frank Fox:
The interior supermarket was fun to shoot I got busted by the manager for taping and shooting





Ricky Grove:
Where there problems in matching the lighting?

Frank Fox:
Vegas has a good FX called bump map. It also lets you position the lights where you want them but I turn off the bump feature

John Martin2:
What version of Vegas is that?

Frank Fox:
vegas 6

Evan L Ryan:
*taking notes*

JOHNMARTIN2:
Thanks

Frank Fox:
I can get the dark scene in the fortune tellers place by focusing the spot on just the candle and keyframe it movements......you can drag the light source from any position and it under exposes or overexposes the clip as you desire





Ricky Grove:
Phil....tell us a bit about the score!

Philip R. Rice:
Alrighty.

Frank Fox:
I wasn't prepaired for the joy I got when I heard what phil came up with

Ricky Grove:
me, too! ....What a perfect score for the film. I thought it lifted the whole film up a notch.

Philip R. Rice:
Frank got me a cut of the film, and when I watched it the first time, I could hear that "bouncy" kind of shuffle in my head. And that seemed to go well with Frank's notes about what he wanted for the score.

Ricky Grove:
The kazoo chorus was a a great touch!
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I recorded the complete Skype chat and re-formatted it as a pdf file in OpenOffice. Using the blog tool Scribd, I was able to embed the entire chat right here. You can read the document here or download it if you like. Use the controls at the top of the window to enlarge the text or to open it as a full page document (icon on the far top right).





Next up: Premiere 02: BEAST

Machiniplex3: A Trio of Voices

I'd like to welcome you to our new blog, Machinplex3. This blog is written in support of our main site at Machiniplex.com. .

Why do we add the "3" after the name? Because all three of us; Jason Choi, Ingrid Moon and myself (Ricky Grove) will be sharing this blog. We hope that by combining our ideas we can post more often and provide a greater variety of content than a blog written by just one of us (or three separate blogs). Since each of us have very different personalities and different opinions on just about everything, we think that Machiniplex3 will be a lively and interesting site.

Our focus is on the films and filmmakers themselves; no forums, no news, no banner ads, no top ten lists and no excessive self promotion. We believe that Machinima is an art form and we intend to treat it that way.

The Machiniplex3 blog will be where we archive the text chats and voice Q&A's we have created for each of our machinima "Premieres". It will also be a place for the three of us to discuss ideas related to the films we present and to debate the concepts and aesthetics of machinima filmmaking in general. We also plan to spend a large part of our time on the practical aspects of machinima film production. When you see the word "Workshop" in the title of a blog post, you will know it will contain a specific tutorial based on one of the films we have presented at Machiniplex. We will work directly with the filmmakers themselves to present our "workshop" tutorials, so any aspiring machinima filmmaker can watch the film and then "see how it's done".

Over time this blog and our main Machiniplex site will grow as our ideas change and we learn more about how to achieve our goal of presenting quality machinima in the best possible format.


Next Up: A Report on our first Machiniplex Premiere: "Morning Run Amok" by Frank Fox.