Machiniplex3

Machiniplex Blog Closed. Archive to Remain Open

2011-06-26T22:27:00.000-07:00

This is the last post I'll be making here at the Machiniplex blog. We weren't able to find anyone to take over operation of Machiniplex, so we'll close the blog, but keep the library open; at least for the time being.

I want to thank everyone who contributed to Machiniplex over the years. In particular, the filmmakers who submitted their excellent films. At some point we'll be moving them over to a Vimeo.com channel for archiving.

Filmmakers and their films at mplex:

Chantal Harvey - The Joy of Music
Lainy Voom - Push, The Dumb Man
Claus-Dieter Schulz - 9
Ian Chisholm - Clear Skies 2, Clear Skies
Simone Schleu - Saving Grace
Robert Thomas - Ephemeral
Daniel Wasiluk - The Demise
Sam Goldwater - Monad
Tom Janton - Wizard of Os
Katy Fosk - Voices
Harrison Heller - Clockwork, Machinima With Officer Dan
Tony Bannon - Folie a Deux
Tobias Lundmark - Among Fables and Men
Hugh Hancock - Bloodspell
Dr. Nemesis - Beast
Frank Fox - Morning Run Amok
Jason Choi - Edge of Remorse, Only the Strong Survive
Phil Rice - Male Restroom Etiquette, Only
Michelle Petit-Mee - The Snow Witch
Stone Falcon Productions - The Revenge of Dr. Mechanico
Andre Pesch - The Days After
Paul Marino - I'm Still Seeing Breen
KBS Productions - The Adventures of Bill & John: Ep 1
Ill Clan - Hardly Workin'

Thank you for letting us archive your films, which I believe are some of the best machinima films ever made.

-Ricky

Machiniplex Closing down at the end of May, 2011

2011-05-24T12:29:00.000-07:00

Sadly, no one has come forward with a desire to take over Machiniplex, so I've decided to shut the Machiniplex video site down and move the films to a Vimeo channel. I'll also be closing this blog at the end of this month (May, 2011).

I just want to thank everyone who has made Machiniplex a fun and lively place for film premieres and discussions. In particular, Phil Rice, Ingrid Moon and Damien Valentine have contributed enormously to making Machiniplex an important concept/website. Of course, the original idea came from Jason Choi, a terrific filmmaker. My thanks to him for sharing his concept.

But most of all, thanks to the filmmakers who made the Mplex site such a good location for quality machinima films. Thank you all.

I'll announce when the Vimeo channel is up as soon as it's done.

-Ricky

Audio from Machiniplex Forum on Directing Voice Actors

2010-03-24T22:50:00.000-07:00

20+ people sat around the campire

Our March Machiniplex forum proved to be very enjoyable and informative. With about 20 people in attendance, Chantal Harvey, Phil Rice and I discussed methods and ideas on "How to Direct Voice Actors for Machinima". We were also fortunate to have Lorin Tone, Chantals main sound designer/director in attendance and he made many excellent comments throughout the forum. My thanks to him for coming.

We basically approached the Director's job chronologically from how to find actors all the way through to cutting the recorded takes that an actor sends you for the part. I had to leave about an hour and a half in, but Phil took over for the last 45 minutes (thanks, Phil) and it was lively all the way to the end.

Chantal Harvey

Our forum was so successful that we are planning to continue discussing the topic in April. We plan on focusing on practical issues like mic technique, equipment to use for recording, software and specific directing techniques for working with non-actors. We'll announce the date in a few weeks (probably late April).

Thanks to Ben Grussi, we were able to record the audio for the forum, so if you weren't able to make it on Sunday, you can listen to the whole thing right here. The audio quality is only marginal, but it is certainly fine for basic listening. About cassette tape quality. Once we get better at it, we'll improve the quality so bear with us.

I've broken the 2 hour event into two parts for easier listening. As I've pointed out, the main speakers are Chantal Harvey, Ricky Grove (myself), Phil Rice and Lorin Tone. You may also find that some of our comments contradict Iains ideas, but that's just fine as everyone works differently. The important thing is that
we are all passionate and thoughtful about directing actors and editing sound.

Here's Directing Voice Actors Part One:

You can download the file (mp3) here.

Here is Directing Voice Actors Part Two:

You can download the file (mp3) here.

.............................................................................................

Also, Iain Friar (excellent director of films like Clockwork and the recent Embers) was unable to attend as our guest, so we have invited him to our next forum in April. In the meantime, he provided me with a series of notes on the topic that I'd like to share with you here (thanks, Iain). There's a download link for a .doc version of the notes at the end.

Where do you find voice actors?
Usually I ask friends. But rather than simply asking everyone I know I tend to consider each role and decide in advance who I'd like to play the role. I take into account the fact that none of my friends are actually actors, and therefore I try to make sure that the roles are as similar to them as possible. I never ask anyone to pick a role.

In this way I've built up a core of people that I can use regularly. The more I work with them the more confident I am in advance that a particular role will suit them.

What sort of characteristics do I think make a good amateur actor? It's all about not being afraid to throw yourself into the role, to take a chance, and being willing to try different approaches for each take. And being to accept feedback! Using friends means that there are fewer chances for misunderstandings to take place...

When considering your circle of friends, it's usually fairly easy to guess who'll perform well in front of the mic. It's the ones that have been involved in amateur dramatics (of course), those that have been involved with youth groups (because with children you have to get a bit theatrical sometimes), school teachers (who also tend to be good at projecting their voices!) People that have played live music too - they tend to be fairly self-confident which is ideal.

Another approach is to contact a local amateur dramatics group. Usually these groups will have plenty of enthusiastic volunteers, and they have the advantage of acting experience. The disadvantage is that you'll be working with people that you don't know so well (if at all), and you're not guaranteed to get professional-level performances.

From a director's point of view, you want to ensure that every line is spoken as clearly as possible. This means that if an actor makes a mistake during the recording then it's no big panic; just pause for a second (to make it easier for editing out the mistake later) then deliver the line again. Ironically, it is much harder to get an actor with theatrical experience (eg. amdram) to do this. The reason is because on stage if an actor fluffs their line then they will try to "rescue" it - either by adjusting it as soon as they realise their mistake, or by simply ignoring it. This is the exact opposite of what is needed for voice recording though, and in this sense, it is sometimes better to use less experienced actors.

Is it a good idea to use non-actors?
Absolutely. In an ideal world you'd be able to work with the professionals. But back in the real world, you'll be surprised at some of the performances you can get from people who are not professional actors. I also think that as a machinima director I am by definition an amateur, and nothing more.
How does the director present the character to the actor when you are thousands of miles away from each other?

Personally I prefer to direct my actors in person. But if I'm asking an actor to "self-direct" then I think there are a few things you can do to help;

1. Provide the whole script, even if it's for a minor role. The actor needs to understand the context of their part. They need to understand who the other characters are, and how any interactions should manifest themselves.

2. Provide a detailed description about the character and their behaviour- what their state of mind is

3. Use lots of examples. The chances are that any character you have devised will have similarities with well known people, so use comparisons ("Like Clint Eastwood in Gran Torino", "like Sigourney Weaver in Alien" etc.)

4. Use visual aids too. For example, if you've already built some sets and have your puppet/avatar ready then take some screenshots. If you have a particular idea as to any specific post production effects then include them too - if your actor can see what the character can see then it will help.

How to direct an actor virtually?
The Moviestorm workflow means that you don't need to capture a live performance as such. Rather, you need the audio components so that you can create the performance as if it were live. So this approach is different to SL for example. In terms of virtual directing, it doesn't really exist for the Moviestorm approach; if you're not there to direct in person then make sure you give as much assistance in advance (as above), to allow the actor to self-direct.

One alternative idea (which I've never done) would be to listen in to the recording via Skype for example. That would allow for immediate feedback to the actor, but I would worry that the additional technical complexity might actually hinder the whole process. I would consider this approach if the actor felt they needed that interactive feedback.

Helping the actor record clean audio
For me, this is one of the most important considerations. If I really had to make the choice between a lacklustre performance that was low-noise and a thrilling performance that was full of pops, hissing, and humming, I'd take the former. It might make for a less convicing delivery but I personally hate (HATE!) noisy low-quality recordings. And, if you have dialogue between one actor with noise and one without it just makes it obvious that these people are not actually in the same room as one another at all. This may be machinima, but I do think you should strive for professionalism wherever possible, and sound is the one area that is overlooked by machinima directors, that actually isn't too hard to fix.

The first rule is: Prevention is Better Than Cure!
Start with the mic; don't use a gaming headset - it'll pick up your breathing and the the end result will sound like you were recording down a phone line. To record, use a decent condenser mic. It doesn't have to be expensive, and if you're planning on doing voice acting regularly it is a basic tool for the job.
Make sure the it doesn't pick up the sound of the cooling fan or power supply on your PC.
Make sure there are plenty of soft surfaces around; hard surfaces create echoes. If necessary get under the duvet for the recording.

Use headphones - it's amazing what you'll pick up. You can take them off once you've set your levels - I think it's important to be comfortable when you're performing. Of course, you probably won't notice the headphones as you sit hunched under the quilt.

Record with as high settings as possible; e.g. 44mhz stereo. You probably don't need it, but if you're processing sound you're basically taking away from the purity of that sound which means that the quality will deteriorate. Also, there may be parts of your process that you're not completely in charge of - for example if you upload your movie to a website - that movie is going to be processed and compressed in some way that you cannot control, so better to put as good quality into that process as possible.

I'm a little loathe to recommend specific hardware and software for recording because there's is so much choice out there, but I have found a product that I absolutely swear by: the Zoom H2 handy recorder. (Please note that I'm not in any way connected with Zoom, but I love this little machine).
http://www.zoom.co.jp/english/products/h2/

The Zoom H2 is a stereo condenser mic which records in WAV format directly onto an SD card (same as a digital camera). I have a little tripod stand for mine, but it also comes with an adaptor which lets it clip into a conventional mic stand. You can plug it into your computer and use it as a USB mic, but the real beauty of this machine is that it works completely standalone too. So, if I'm recording someone I can arrive at their house, put the mic on it's stand, plug the headphones in and we're ready to go. It has plenty of settings for quality, sensitivity, etc. plus it will record surround sound in 4 separate channels (I've no need for this but it's good to know that I'm not at the limits of the device!) The real beauty of this machine for me is that my regular actors are spread out over a wide geographical area so it isn't possible or practical to bring them together for recording. With this device I have hardly anything I need to take. It means I don't need the PC switched on to record - so no noise from the cooling fan, and I can use it to record my own foley sounds. (as I did in Embers). Amazon sell these for about £150.

Sales pitch over.

Working with non-actors to get a good performance
For someone who hasn’t acted before it can be a bit daunting stepping up to the mic for the first time.
Assuming that you have provided the script in advance and they’ve had a chance to familiarise themselves with the role you’re ready to begin. I don’t usually insist that they’ve learned their lines verbatim. In fact, I prefer them to be familiar with the lines but not able to deliver them without the script in front of them. I’ll get to this a bit later.

So, start by making sure they’re comfortable. Give a demonstration as to how the recording will take place, and a little explanation as to what is going on. Possibly, (probably) they’re not really interested in the technicalities of it all so you don’t need to go into all the nitty gritty about what you’ll be doing in post production. If the actor is in my home for the recording then I’ll often fire up the software to show them what the set looks like (even if it’s still under construction). This will help them to visualise the scenario that they will need to act out.

Then “get a level”. This is of course a standard part of the process to make sure the sensitivies in the recording equipment (hardware or software) are set correctly. But it also serves another purpose; it gets the the actor to approach the mic and begin talking. Ask them how they got there, what they had for lunch, any plans for the weekend etc. it will help them defocus on what is unfamiliar, and focus on the familiar and therefore relax a bit. Plus it lets you get your levels right!

Then we do a run through. Just to get the actor into the role. I explain to them that I’m not recording it at this stage. But of course I am – just in case there is a unique moment of brilliance. In fact, there is a school of thought that says you should record everything, but I don’t subscribe to that for the simple reason that if you end up with hours and hours of recordings it will take a long time to review and select what you’re going to use. Better to focus on recording what you intended to record.

Feedback for the actor is essential. If they’re doing a great job tell them. If their delivery is not quite the way you want it then I think you have to be prepared to demonstrate what you’re looking for (which I always find a bit awkward as I’m not a terribly accomplished voice actor). Do remember that the actor is doing something that is unfamiliar to them, and they are trying to help you out, so sensitivity in your feedback is essential!

Fixing poor voice recordings
As part of the auditioning process you need to hear some of the work that the actor has done previously. When you listen, don't just listen to the delivery, listen to the sound quality itself. I have rejected actors in the past simply because there was too much noise in the files.

If you do receive sound files that are noisy then the first thing to do is consider the actor's setup. If the issue is echo then there are probably too many hard surfaces around - the duvet is your friend here.
If there is popping then have the actor adjust the angle of the mic so that they're not breathing directly into it. If they're using something like a gaming headset then I think it will be difficult to rescue.

If there is any hum (e.g. from a PC fan, or electrical equipment in the vicinity of the recording) then it may be a case of using a noise reduction filter in your sound editor. (Audacity has one for example). Personally, I'd say that this is a last gasp attempt to rescue the audio. NR tends to introduce other characteristics which can be just as distracting as the noise in the first place. E.g. when I listen to post NR audio on my PC I hear a kind of deep buzzing. I don't know if it's something to do with my PC, but I really notice it. Also, you can sometimes hear a "tinkling" sound which is particularly noticable when the audio is played through a high-end system (such as in a cinema auditorium).

Using improv
If by improv you mean “OK, you’re in a bar. Tom has just walked up and tells you he’s been fired. Now action!” then I’ve not used it to any great extent. (Although I would love to at some point in the future). However, I like my actors to have the freedom to deviate from the script as necessary. There are several reasons why you might want this:

1. If the actor is having difficulty enunciating any of the lines then they can adjust the words to have the same meaning, but easier to speak. (And this happens very often because when you write a script, the voice is in your head. It’s not until you try to vocalise your script that you recognise some issues with it.)

2. If the actor has learned the script word for word then the delivery can be a little unnatural. Better to let them say it in the way that feels natural for them. In this way you’re more likely to capture a natural performance.

3. As well as being more natural, it can be more believable. For example, Embers is my first movie that is not set in the UK, so I needed to use remote actors. I deliberately selected US based actors because I felt their delivery would be more authentic. The dialogue in my script was written in a way that I thought Americans would speak. But all along, I knew that the actors, who are immersed in American culture, would be able to enhance the script by making adjustments to certain words and phrases.

So, while this isn’t improv in the conventional sense, I do think that it is important to give actors a bit of freedom to “add value”. Of course, there will always be key lines that need to be delivered in a certain way, and I always point out these lines to my actors in advance.

Files from remote actors
When considering how to get the best results from remote actors it is probably worth thinking about how you would like them to package the recording they send you.

I prefer to receive a single file that has their complete performance (even if it includes mistakes). The reason is that I don’t want them to do one or two lines one day, then a couple more lines the next. If this is how they record then you can be sure the sound quality is going to vary between individual lines, and if this happens within a scene you can be sure that the audience will notice. So, a single complete file will encourage the actor to do a complete run through without changing any settings.

Ideally, I’d like more than one take so I can select the one the I think fits best. I’ve been known to take individual lines from different takes and combine them, even sometimes changing the order. This is only possible if you have a choice of takes.

Another reason for having a single file is that if you are processing the file (e.g. amplifying, compressing, noise reduction), it is far easier to do it on a single file than to have to open up twenty separate files and repeat the process (which can become rather tedious).

You can download Iain Friar's Directing notes here.

March Machiniplex this coming Sunday, March 21st. "Directing Voice Actors"

2010-03-14T23:38:00.000-07:00

We'll be holding our March Machiniplex forum this coming Sunday, March 21st at 12:00PM (Pacific Time) to 1:30PM at the University College Suffolk island in Second Life. The topic will be "Directing Voice Actors" and we'll have special guests Iain Friar (IceAxe) director of last years Expo Grand Prize for "Clockwork", and Chantal Harvey, director of "The Joy of Music" and founder/producer of the annual MaMachinima International Festival which was held last month to great success.

We'll be discussing how directors can work with voice actors many of whom they have never met in real life, to improve the quality of the acting in their films. Some of the main topics under discussion include:

Where do you find good voice actors for your film?
How do you present your characters to them?
Best methods for working with actors over the net
How to help actors improve their work and create good recordings.
The role of improv in voice acting
How to cut multiple takes of a voice actor into one good performance

Phil Rice and I will be heading the discussion. We hope you can join us so we can all learn from each other.

Second Life location is UCSville (University College Suffolk) right on the shore. The main slurl for UCSville is:

http://slurl.com/secondlife/ucsville/141/124/25

Second Life is a virtual world so if you've never been, you'll need to download the software (it's free) and orient yourself. Use the slurl (Second Life url) to teleport to the forum location. Please don't be shy and ask for help if you need it.

http://secondlife.com/support/downloads.php

We'll be using voice chat primarily, but if you don't have headset/mic the text chat will be open.

The time and date again is:

Machiniplex March Forum
March 21st, Sunday, 12PM to 1:30PM (pacific time)
UCSville island in Second Life

Changes to Machiniplex Blog Coming....

2010-03-09T06:24:00.000-08:00

We'll be changing our blog format a bit here in the coming weeks and moving from Blogger to Wordpress. We want to unify the designs a bit between the main Machiniplex.net movie site and the blog. Plus, Wordpress has so much more control and variety in their program we want to be able to customize our site more.

No down time for the Machiniplex blog, but the address will change. We'll do our best to make it simple and easy for everyone.

Thanks!

-Ricky

Recap & Pix from the Chat Noir Forum in Second Life

2010-03-07T18:23:00.000-08:00

My thanks to everyone who came to last Sunday's Mplex forum with Chat Noir (Kate Lee & Sherwin Liu). It was informative and fun. With around 15 people in attendance including Dulci, IceAxe, Jorge Campos, Gabe and many others, Kate and Sherwin spoke for over an hour and answered questions about their work flow primarily in Moviestorm. We also discussed at length the process of working with voice actors. Kate talked about her script writing process a bit and suggested that some screenwriting classes really helped her get a handle on the process.

Their transition from The Movies to using Moviestorm was an interesting topic of discussion. Moviestorm allows for more customization and animation-blending was a big help to them in their desire to make better films. Thinking that both Kate and Sherwin were interested in genre films (40's Classic Hollywood style), I was surprised to learn that they created films like "In the Shadows" because The Movies had so much content from that period. Although they both were interested in trying to create a noir film.

As I'm just learning how to create things in Second Life, I created a billboard with images from some of chat noir's most interesting films along with Kate and Sherwin's name. Placed a few chairs and a couch, but I wish I had picked up some bleacher seats for those attending. I had though that most folks would just sit on the grass, but surprisingly people wanted to sit in an actual chair/seat.

Towards the end of the forum we talked with Sherwin about his process of making music: he doesn't play instruments pe se, but puts together music from samples. Man, you'd hardly know it considering how good his music is. And I'm going to hold him to a promise to post a "music for machinima filmmakers" tutorial at the chatnoir blog at some point in the future.

Sherwin and Kate talked about their new film, "Incubus" which is about half way through the production process. Sherwin mentioned that they'd like to do some short films in the future, too. One of my favorites of their films is their 1-minute movie contest entry "Darren" which is quite an experimental work for them. I hope they are able to do more short films as they both have a real feel for the form.

My sincere thanks Academy Portucalis, a Second Life media/learning center, for use of their land for the chat noir forum.

Note: the forum for March will be announced this coming week.

"Production Process" will be the Focus of the Forum with Chat Noir this Sunday, February 28th

2010-02-26T20:32:00.000-08:00

Our February forum will focus on the the "Production Process" with Chat Noir filmmakers Sherwin Liu and Kate Lee this Sunday (February 28th) at 10:30AM to 12PM (Pacific Time) in Second Life. If you have spent any time watching Chat Noir's excellent machinima you may notice that the production quality of their work is top notch. From working with The Movies to Moviestorm they have shown how attention to detail makes a difference in the stories they are trying to tell.

Come to the Machiniplex forum and find out how they create their films. Share your ideas with everyone and lets figure out how we can help each other improve our filmmaking. Voice chat will be the focus, although we'll be running a simultaneous text chat.

Highly recommended that you spend some time watching their films at their YouTube archive (I'm particularly fond of the "Into the Shadow" 40's noir series).

We'll be meeting at 1030AM in Second Life at the Academy Portucalis. Bring and open mind and don't be afraid to comment or ask questions.

Second Life Slurl:

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Portucalis/187/178/22

February 28th Mplex Forum with Kate Lee & Sherwin Liu of Chat Noir Studio

2010-02-12T22:33:00.000-08:00

The Machiniplex forum will be held on Sunday, February 28th in Second Life with special guests Kate Lee and Sherwin Liu, who combine to form Chat Noir Studio. Over the last several years, they have produced unique hand-crafted machinima with high production values and unusually well written stories. Their recent "Death in Venice" film was nominated for a jury prize at last years MachinExpo.

Kate and Sherwin began making machinima films around 2006 using Lionhead's The Movies as their platform. Their work on such films as "Dignity of Men" showed the community that they were serious about the quality of their film work. Despite the difficulty of working in The Movies, they created such a charged atmosphere and made such important moral points that this particular film became an example of how machinima can overcome it's inherent limitations and become an art form.

Another interesting and accomplished film created in The Movies was the 3-part "Into the Shadow" series, a 40's noir style packed with almost existential crises for most of the characters. What Kate and Sherwin do with the low-rent content of The Movies is simply wonderful. Sherwin's music compositions for the series is superb. I think this series makes a great case for the art that can come from limitations.

Recently, Chat Noir has moved to Moviestorm to create their films, which has allowed them more room to expand their film aesthetic and develop more sophisticated cinematography and character animation. "Death in Venice" is simply one of the best machinima films ever made. Acting, sound work, cinematography and especially the Graham Greene-style story are all first rate.

Currently, Kate and Sherwin are at work on an ambitious new film titled "Incubus" which is being shot in Moviestorm again. You can read their production diary here and follow their very smart and interesting studio blog here. Their main film archive is at their YouTube page. Vimeo also has several high quality versions of their films.

We are delighted that Kate and Sherwin will join us for the Mplex forum on Sunday, February 28th from 1030AM to 12PM (Pacific Time) in Second Life.

The Machiniplex forums are a series of open monthly meetings which center around important filmmakers, films and tools for the Machinima community. We will discuss production ideas, how Chat Noir develops their scripts and anything else that comes up.

Second Life

This month we are meeting at the Academy Portucalis, an organization that furthers education in SL and throughout the world. Here is brief they sent us about their organization:

About Academy Portucalis.

Academy Portucalis is owned by Marga Ferrer and M2life Paravane. At present, the Academy is a school reference in SL, either in the national Portuguese or other nationalities, over the years at work and the merit of their instructors and trainees and has a leading position with regard to education in SL. The Academy works with training in RL from various institutions of higher education Portuguese, accompanied by institutions of the same level of education in other countries (including Spain, Brazil, Argentina and the United States of America). They were also presented papers at international conferences, with publication in specialized journals with referees, who "shoot" the Academy for a landing in international education.
We hope that all stakeholders (trainers, trainees, friends, curious) to collaborate and continue, as always, to enrich Portucalis!

We'd like to thank Marga Ferrer and M2Life Paravane for their support in making this location available to us.

Here is the SLURL:

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Portucalis/190/176/22

Second Life is a free and open virtual world. I if you are interested you can download their software and learn more here.

If you need to convert the time of the event to your time zone, here is a good time converter. Remember the event time zone is Pacific Time (Los Angeles).

Chantal Harvey's JOY OF MUSIC Premiere

2010-02-01T22:14:00.000-08:00

We were very pleased with the Premiere of machinima filmmaker Chantal Harvey's new film, JOY OF MUSIC, this last Sunday. With a wide variety of people in attendance at Pooky Amsterdam's StudioDome in Second Life, the screening was well received and the Q&A afterwards covered both the origin of the film and it's production history. This was exactly the kind of event we were hoping for. Our sincere thanks to Chantal and to all who attended for making this Premiere something special.

JOY OF MUSIC is the pilot for a series that Chantal will be making for both children and adults. The script is an adaptation of a Madcow Cosmos story and was shot on a very fast shooting schedule (3 hours) at the IBM2 sim in Second Life. Chantal's background in TV helped her keep the shoot organized and efficient, although I can imagine it must have been chaotic at times with actors falling off of the set at one point.

Chantal filmed from a detailed shot list of over 70 shots. She also went in for closer shots in case she needed them in the edit. The shoot seemed very much like live action or theater to me (the original set is now gone) and working with so many excellent actors/crew was something that Chantal said she loved most about filming in Second Life. The ability to create new sets was one of the prime reasons she chooses to use SL as a medium for her imagination.

Production moved quickly on the film with Chantal spending about a week (as I recall) on the editing in Premiere Pro CS3. We talked quite a bit about her choice to edit simply with direct cuts and little or no moving camera. "It's better to move your characters and not the camera" is a lesson she has learned from her professional work. Something many beginning machinima filmmakers would do well to learn, IMO.

The audio work on the film was done by Lorin Tone and it was superb; really made the film stand out for me (I'm partial to sound work since I do so much sound myself). And Judi Newall played the boy in real time on set. She was also present at the Premiere and provided some excellent and interesting commentary on the production process. Thank you for coming, Judi.

While JOY OF MUSIC hangs together as a whole, one of the most enjoyable aspects of the film is the superb voice over by Lauren Weyland. I was amazed to learn that the entire narration was done in one take. You couldn't ask for a better performance especially since the narration had the feel of a parent tucking in their child at bedtime and telling them a fantastic story they made up on the spot. Fresh, charming, vital and full of fun (but not lacking in seriousness when those moments come), I was so glad to hear that Chantal hardly did any cutting to the narration as it was strong on the first take.

Narration like Lauren's (in addition to being well recorded, thank God) is not easy to find in a lot of machinima as it has none of the style of, say, a Pixar or Disney film narration: assured, clean and almost omniscient narrators who speak with the smoothness and ease that many years of work have gifted them with. No, this narration is rough around the edges just as if it were being told on the schoolyard or in a cafe. A real person telling a fantastic story with a moral. The simple honesty of the acting matches the style and story of the film perfectly. Can't praise Lauren's work more highly. And pretty much everyone at the Premiere felt the same way.

A lot of the discussion with Chantal centered around Second Life movie making. She uses Fraps to capture footage shot using primarily the main camera controls of the SL interface. Captured in HD 1080p, she edits in Premiere and encodes in H264 codec. We spoke briefly about setting up a live tutorial on SL moviemaking at some point this year in Second Life. Once we have a better idea of time/date, I'll announce it here at mplex.

There was some talk of the future of Second Life and machinima. Attendees pointed out that there has been a lot of interest in machinima from Linden Labs in the last year. Perhaps some efforts at making avatars more expressive in the future will be the result. Let's hope so.

And that reminds me that several people in the audience pointed out how difficult it must have been to work with avatars who have a limited range of expression. Chantal said she "liked the limitation" as it presented a challenge which she felt made her more creative. Something machinimators should keep in mind as they work within the limitations of their chosen game/software.

Although she was mum on future episodes of the JOY OF MUSIC, she hopes to complete them this year and perhaps sell them to the BBC, which she feels doesn't have enough creative children's programming. We certainly wish her luck and will be reporting on any future episodes that are released.

Remember that Chantal's Machinima Festival is coming up fast. The MaMachinima International Festival is on Feb 20th and it is unique in that there are no prizes or contests; just machinima films and discussion. What a wonderful idea. I urge everyone to attend. More info at MaMachinima.eu

PS special thanks to Phil Rice for promotion and encoding on the mplex site.

Machiniplex Premiere: "Joy of Music" by Chantal Harvey on Sunday, Jan 31st

2010-01-24T12:38:00.000-08:00

Machiniplex is proud to announce a Premiere of Chantal Harvey's new machinima "Joy of Music". We will be screening the film next Sunday, January 31st at 1030AM to 12PM (noon) Pacific Time. The location is Pooky Amsterdam's "StudioDome" in Second Life. Our thanks to Pooky for helping out with the Premiere on short notice.

Chantal Harvey has been a major presence in Second Life culture and machinima for several years now. She's created over 30 machinima films, is the producer for the 48hour film project for machinima and is the founder of the MaMachinima International Festival which will take place on February 20, 2010.

"Joy of Music" is the pilot for a new machinima series for children (and adults). It was written by Madcow Cosmos and was filmed on location at IBM2 sims in Second Life. The audio is by Lorin Tone, the boy is played by Judi Newall and the voice over is by Lauren Weyland. Directed by Chantal Harvey.

We feel that "Joy of Music" is Chantals finest work to date. The combination of technical excellence and surreal style reminds us of early Disney. Add to that a superb voice over and great sound and you have a top level machinima, the kind you want to show people who have never heard of machinima.

Chantal (and I suspect some of the crew) will be on hand after we screen the film to answer questions and discuss the details of creating this unique and entertaining machinima. Come early as it may be crowded. Should be a lot of fun.

DATE: Sunday, January 31st from 1030AM to 1200PM (noon) Pacific Time
LOCATION: Pooky Amsterdam's "The StudioDome".
SLURL: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Spindrift/66/217/701
located in the virtual world of Second Life

If you've never been to Second Life before it's very easy to get started. The program is free and is a snap to install. You probably should go through the orientation that Linden Labs (creators of SL) provides so you'll know how to move around and use the interface. The Premiere is "beginner friendly" so there will be plenty of people to help you out.

Second Life info

We will be conducting the Premiere using voice chat so you'll need a headset and mic. But if you don't have a mic, you can use text chat to interact at the Q&A.

Come to the "Joy of Music" Premiere and chat with the director afterwards. It's a great opportunity to learn more about machinima and find inspiration for your own work.

See you there!

1st Machiniplex Forum with Jorge Campos a Great Success

2010-01-10T17:09:00.000-08:00

Get those feet off the couch, guys.

Had a great time at the first monthly forum hosted by Machiniplex today. The event was hosted by Machiniplex and took place at Chatal Harvey's MaMachinima studio in Second Life. Guest of honor, Jorge Campos, spoke at length about his methods of creating machinima in Moviestorm. He's an amazingly productive director and it was a real pleasure to chat with him about it. A long time lover of writing, he develops his scripts simply, but with great passion. "Take a person and put them in a situation they don't like" was one of his comments.

While he waits for his carefully chosen actors to send their recordings to him, he builds the sets and lays out the scenes in MS. He focuses on dialog and monologue driven stories because that's what interests him the most. He likes to finish films and strives to "get it done". Considering the usual high quality of his films, Jorge has a natural instinct for telling stories via animation. And he doesn't waste time "over-thinking" his scenes (like I do). It was refreshing to hear his direct and simple answers from the other filmmakers in attendance.

Jorge spoke at length about what some have considered his "break-through" film, Ad Hominem Attack (a personal favorite of mine). Based on an original story by Jordan Harper, Jorge wrote to Jordan and asked if he could adapt the story. After getting permission he did some editing to make it cinematic and shot it in Moviestorm. Jorge spent considerable time getting the rain right in the film and had to keyframe a lot of it. He also shot greenscreen for the climactic scene which took him a lot of time. It sure shows it in the quality of the film. Jordan Harper liked the adaptation and has it posted on his website

Jorge is a little tense before the forum starts.

Interesting that Jorge never created a film in GTA (Grand Theft Auto) as it's style fits many of his serious films (he usually works in two styles: comic and dramatic) and Jorge said it was because he uses a Mac and the game hasn't been ported to the Mac yet. But he agrees that it would be an interesting game to shoot movies in.

Some talk about shooting films in Second Life ensued and there was a lot of interest and enthusiasm. It was fun also to talk about Dragon Age with Michelle Pettit-Mee in attendance as she was one of the cut-scene artists for the game. She said she always finds things she wished she'd have done differently when she plays/watches Dragon Age. I think it's the glass "half full/half empty" thing. But then again I do the same thing with my own work. Sure thought her cut-scene work in the game was excellent (as was all of the other artists work).

A great pleasure to see James Spencer, one of the Pixel Eyes Productions crew and co-director of the amazing machinima Shelf Life. He came to the forum for what was his first Second Life experience. Man, for a first SL trip his avatar sure looks groovy. Thanks for coming, James.

My thanks to all who came to this first forum. I think someone was recording some of the audio so we might have it to post in the near future. I'm very excited about this forum series. We hope to do some workshop style forums as part of the series as well. Certainly Phil and I will do a sound workshop. Will announce more as we develop ideas.

Keep making movies!

Open Machiniplex Forum on "Productivity" with Jorge Campos on Sunday, January 10th

2010-01-03T20:39:00.000-08:00

Jorge Campos, machinima filmmaker who ,as I write this, is creating/editing/shooting another film idea that is boiling around inside of his imagination (hardest workin man in machinima). Phil, Damien and I were all impressed with his film "Ad Hominem Attack" in particular and Jorge was one of only a handful of filmmakers who screened more than one film at the recent MachinExpo 2009, I we surprised at how good the overall quality of his films were considering how quickly he manages to produce them. Well, if you've wondered how ahe does it, now is your chance to chat with Jorge who is our special guest for the inaugural (January) session of forums which will take place every month on the second Sunday in the virtual world of Second Life.

Jorge's Vimeo site has most of his major films and he's got a strange/funny series called "The Clarks Show" going as well. He's also the winner of the recent 48hour machinima film competition with his "Ring of False God".

The Machiniplex monthly meetings are open forums dedicated to providing a place for monthly discussion of machinima films, culture and technique. All skill levels are welcome, so if you are just starting out you'll find a welcome atmosphere.

The forum will be mostly in voice chat so you'll need a good pair of headphones and a mic if you want to participate. There will also be a text chat going as well, so if you don't have a mic it's still good.

The location is in Second Life at Chantal Harvey's "MaMachiniMa Studio". The slurl is here:

http://slurl.com/secondlife/RastaOpen4/80/78/61

Bring your questions and ideas about how to be a more productive filmmaker.

Note: Second Life is a virtual world that is free for everyone. You'll definitely need headphones if you plan on listening to the conversation. A mic would enable you to voice chat. We will also be running a text chat at the same time. Come early to test your equipment.

See you there!

PS Special thanks to Chantal, an accomplished machinima filmmaker in her own right (see her new film The Joy of Music on Vimeo) for providing her studio for our first Machinplex forum.

Machiniplex Machinima Forums to Start on January 10th

2010-01-01T12:38:00.000-08:00

Phil and I hanging out at Chantal's place

The first of a series of monthly Machinima forums/chats will start this month on January 10th (Sunday) from 10AM to 12PM (2 hours) in Second Life at a location TBA. The goal of these monthly chats is to share information and machinima techniques with one another, talk about new films and/or production issues, discuss current events and news in the machinima community and to just have fun getting together with people of like minds. We hope to feature a special guest for each forum who will discuss a technique or skill they are particularly good at in machinima. January's guest will be the very talented filmmaker, Jorge Campos, who has developed a method of creating films in Moviestorm quickly, but without losing quality. We welcome Jorge to our first meeting.

Jorge Campos

The location of the January meeting is still to be determined, but it will most likely be Chantal Harvey's island studio (which is very cool). We will confirm the location and publish the slurl very soon.

I'll be creating a Facebook event and sending out invites. And here is a link so you can add it to your Google calendar.

Machiniplex is Phil Rice, Damien Valentine, Ricky Grove and Ingrid Moon.

Text Chat from Premiere of Lainy Voom's film "Push"

2009-10-30T22:17:00.000-07:00

Last Sunday's Premiere of Lainy Voom's film "Push" was a very enjoyable and thought-provoking event. We had an excellent turnout to Hathead's new Theatre space in Second Life (thank you, Hathead for providing the space).

This was a different kind of Premiere since all of the conversation was in text chat. At first, I wasn't sure how it would work out, but once we all got going the conversation with Lainy (who was present after the screening to comment and answer questions) grew lively and at times philosophical. Much more open ended conversation in text than with voice. This led to more involvement with the people who attended the Premiere (something I liked very much).

I just loved Lainy's avatar (the one on the left in the above picture). The button eyes and the strange, doll body where something else. She also had some interesting animations built into the character that you could only see if you looked for a while. Subtle touch that. Then again, Lainy is probably one of our most accomplished filmmakers.

Push was a great success (once again) and we screened the film twice. I asked production oriented questions which led to Lainy casually mentioning that she shot the film in sequence, which practically floored us all. She set out to create a film "without thinking about it" and Push was the result. I found it a jazz/dance with a lot of early Cocteau/Dali influence in the imagery. Lainy mentioned that she was trying to express here feelings about time and how inescapable it is for all of us.

I was delighted to Premiere Lainy's Push for Machiniplex. And I'm particularly grateful that Lainy was able to come and spend time with everyone who came. She mentioned that she is working on some poems at present. I know we will all be waiting to see what new and interesting ideas/images she has come up with.

Phil Rice saved the text chat from the Premiere and I've posted it on Scribd.com and here. Only minor changes were made to fix formatting and add photos. It's a bit long, but well worth your time to read. Also, Push has now been added to the Machiniplex rotation where you can screen it or download a very high quality .wmv version to watch at your leisure.

Machiniplex Premiere of "Push": Text Chat

Reminder for Lainy Voom's PUSH Premiere this Sunday

2009-10-21T12:39:00.000-07:00

Just a reminder that we will be Premiering Lainy Voom's film "PUSH" this weekend (SUNDAY, October 25th) from 10AM to 12AM (Pacific Time) at Hathead's Theatre in Second Life. We will screen the film then discuss it with Lainy via text.

Hathead's Theatre:

http://slurl.com/secondlife/HatHead%20II/68/125/756

More info on Second Life:

http://secondlife.com/whatis/

Premiere for Lainy Voom's "Push" on October 25th

2009-10-04T21:00:00.000-07:00

Machiniplex is very pleased to announce the Premiere of Lainy Voom's "Push", an experimental machinima film shot inside of the virtual world of Second Life. The Premiere will take place at Hathead's new Theatre space in Second Life on Sunday, October 25th at 10AM (Pacific Time).

Lainy Voom (aka Trace Sanderson) has been creating real time animated films (machinima) since 2004. She has created almost a dozen films since then all graced with her witty imagination and attention to detail. "Push" is her most recent film and it is one of her best.

In an interview at the excellent Koinup blog, Lainy explains the origin of "Push"

Koinup. Push' made a huge impact on the Machinima community recently, visually it has an immediate & dynamic appeal - what is the story behind this ? Is it more than an amazing eclectic visual collection - Does it tell a story?

Lainy. It began as an experiment, what would happen if I just started filming something, not analysing anything and just making the first thing that sprang to mind. I tried to let the film grow organically by itself. It's more a stream of consciousness exercise than anything with hidden deeper meaning. Towards the end of the filming process it began to become more contrived, I ended up scrapping all the later footage in order to bring it back to the initial experiment.

With last months Premiere of Claus-Dieter Schulz's "9" (also an experimental machinima film) we started a conversation about imaginative and abstract Machinima that I think will inform the Q&A with Lainy right after the screening of her film. I'm certainly looking forward to it.

My thanks to Lainy for allowing us to screen "Push" and for giving our Premiere audience an opportunity to discuss this great film with her (and perhaps many of her other films as well). You can pre-screen "Push" along with her earlier films at her website: Voom-Machine.

"Push" will post at the machiniplex.com site several days before the Premiere which will be on October 25th (Sunday) at 10AM Pacific Time. We'll Premiere the film in Second Life at Hathead's new Theatre. The slurl is here:

http://slurl.com/secondlife/HatHead%20II/68/125/756

If you've never been to Second Life, it's a free virtual community that is an excellent place to have screenings and meetings like this. More info on how to join and learn the basics can be found here:

http://secondlife.com/whatis/

http://www.secondlifebasics.com/

We'll be conducting the Q&A with Lainy primarily with text chat, so don't you don't really need a mic. I'll probably ask some questions via voice chat, but the Premiere will be primarily in text.

Feel free to show up a little early and get oriented. I'll be there at 9:30Am Pacific if you need help. Just look for my Second Life name gtoon jun and text me.

Hope to see you there!

Audio & Text from Machiniplex Premiere of "9"

2009-09-20T19:44:00.000-07:00

My thanks to everyone who came to last Sunday's Machiniplex Premiere of Claus-Dieter Schulz's film "9". At one time, I think we had about 20 people participating. Due to technical problems, we had to shift the Premiere from Hathead's lounge to Bree Birke's performance space at the last minute. Thanks to the quick-thinking Hathead and the grace of Bree (an accomplished composer), we had a location that was not only beautiful but worked very well for our Premiere.

gtoon on the left; rohan on the right.

Phil Rice was kind enough to direct folks to the new location AND to record the audio from the Q&A with Claus-Dieter. We were also able to grab the text chat in Second Life. After a bit of editing, I was able to get it into a form that's easy to understand (I hope).

You can listen to the audio of the Premiere right here (Phil composed some wicked music for the opening of the voice chat):

You can download the text as a PDF file here, or read the Scribd version at the end of this post.

9 Premiere Text Chat PDF

The mood of the Premiere was exactly what I had hoped it would be: intense curiosity, interest and finally admiration for the year and half that Claus-Dieter spent creating this short, abstract work of art. Despite his reservations about speaking in English (his native tongue is German) Claus-Dieter did a wonderful job of communicating often complex ideas and feelings.

He discussed the inspiration for the piece and the tools he used to create the often mesmerizing imagery in "9". He places himself squarely in the tradition of the "concrete" artist, that is, the artist who is focused on concrete shapes like lines, points, surfaces and colors. In concrete are there is no attempt to create symbolic imagery, rather each shape is simply what it is, no more no less.

Sol Bartz listening intently. Nice Crowd, huh?

Good questions were asked about the music used (Boards of Canada), the process of creating the film and what the director was trying to say with his film. I was glad people were so interested in this style of art and I hope the event will inspire filmmakers to attempt their own abstract film. Phil Rice created a new film "Responsibility", which is his attempt to create an abstract film.

One of the major criticisms of abstract art is that it lacks an emotional connection with the viewer. I can understand that is the case for some people, but it certainly isn't for me. Like poetry, which concentrates and isolates words to create poetic effects, abstract filmmaking forces the viewer to create their own context for what they see in front of them. And, of course, there is poor abstract art just as there is poor art of any kind.

I think, however, that Claus-Dieter is the real thing. His film "9" is a wonderful poetic work of machinima art that deserves a wider audiences. Amid the stunt videos, and Halo gags, it's a heartening experience to see someone using their imagination to create a very unique style of machinima.

We screened "9" three times. The last time with two screens!

My sincere thanks to Claus-Dieter for putting himself in the awkward position of being interviewed outside of his native language and for his help in putting the Premiere together. Also, Hathead, Bree and Phil Rice were indispensable in getting this event off the ground. And special thanks to Digital Phil who provided these photos and blogged so nicely about the event at his excellent Tekbreeze.com site. Thank you, sir.

Machiniplex Premiere of "9" Chat Text

Last Minute Change of Location for Today's 99/13) Premiere of "9"

2009-09-13T10:33:00.000-07:00

Due to problems with Linden Labs, creators of Second Life, we've had to change the location of today's Premiere of Claus-Dieter's "9". The new location is:

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Nitida/239/102/228

We will be on hand at the old Hatheads' lounge to steer people in the right direction. So sorry for the inconvenience.

Dragon*Con

2009-09-08T13:31:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I returned home from Dragon*Con. I was there to attend the machinima screenings, which included some of my own work.

Myself with Christina.

The first night was the achievements reel, where I met up with Christina (who did a great job putting together the sessions) and Sarah Howison, one of the cast members of my show. Felicia Day was at Dragon*Con as well and while she was another cast member, she had other things scheduled at the time so couldn't make it. Ben Grussi was also there, much to my surprise and came up to talk to us after the screening was over.

Sarah and I.

Here I am with Felicia.

The second night was a special screening of Stolen Life and the third night was comedy. Sadly I missed that last one as I needed to be at the airport.

However, the first two sessions both attracted a good audience and the films were well received. After Stolen Life, people had requested some kind of discussion so Christina held and impromptu Q&A session which she invited me to take part in. Together we were answering questions from those who wanted to know more about the film and machinima in general. Hopefully we'll see some new people in the community.

There's a complete list of everything that was screened here on the Dragon*Con Film Festival website.

For those interested in knowing what else I got upto there, there is a complete write up on my personal blog and more photos can be found here.

Reminder that Claus-Dieter Schulz's film "9" will Premiere this Sunday

2009-09-07T19:11:00.000-07:00

Machiniplex will Premiere Claus-Dieter Schulz's film "9" this Sunday, Sept 13 at 11AM - 1PM (Pacific Time). Claus will be on hand to comment on the film and answer questions. His film "Liberty City" was recently nominated for a Bitfilm award and his "Ausgedacht (Dreamed Up)" and Desassossego have both been highly praised in the machinima community.

"9" is one of the very few abstract machinima films. Looking back to filmmakers like Hans Richter and Stan Brakahge. I, for one, am very interested in why he chose to make this film and in his production methods. Claus-Dieter Schulz'a website is here. You can watch some of his other films there and catch up on what's happening with him.

Come on by for a screening of "9" (perhaps even two screenings as it's a short film) and a Q&A with Claus afterward.

Of course, our screenings are held at the elegant Hathead's Lounge in SL. Slurl:

http://slurl.com/secondlife/HatHead%20II/68/125/756

If you've never been to Second Life, it's a free virtual community that is an excellent place to have screenings and meetings like this. More info on how to join and learn the basics can be found here:

http://secondlife.com/whatis/

http://www.secondlifebasics.com/

We'll be conducting the Q&A with voice chat, but if you don't have a mic/headphone that's OK because we'll be texting most of the conversation.

Feel free to show up a little early and get oriented. I'll be there at 10:30Am Pacific if you need help. Just look for my Second Life name gtoon jun and text me.

Hope you can make it!

Machiniplex Premiere: "9" by Claus-Dieter Schulz

2009-08-19T18:01:00.000-07:00

Screen capture from "9" by Claus-Dieter Schulz

Machiniplex will Premiere Claus-Dieter Schulz's "9", an experimental film in the tradition of filmmakers like Hans Richter and Stan Brakhage. Claus-Dieter is an important machinimaker who has created several innovative and original films like Desassossego and Liberty City. His Machinima Studios site has his blog and all of his films archived.

"9" is an abstact film which plays with the contrast of circles and lines appearing and disappearing as if in a dream. The effect being somewhat hypnotic and dreamlike. And although "9" is short, it seems much longer because of this effect. Much like the early Modernist experiments with geometric shapes and colors, "9" is unique to machinima. I'm eager to talk to Claus-Dieter about how he created the shapes in a machinima game engine and what how his editing ideas developed. He will be available after the screening for a Q&A.

"9" will post at the machiniplex.com site several days before the Premiere which will be on Sept 13th (Sunday) at 11AM Pacific Time / 8PM Germany. We'll Premiere the film in Second Life at Hathead's Island Lounge. The slurl is here:

http://slurl.com/secondlife/HatHead%20II/68/125/756

Another screen capture from "9"

If you've never been to Second Life, it's a free virtual community that is an excellent place to have screenings and meetings like this. More info on how to join and learn the basics can be found here:

http://secondlife.com/whatis/

http://www.secondlifebasics.com/

We'll be conducting the Q&A with voice chat, but if you don't have a mic/headphone that's OK because we'll be texting most of the conversation.

Feel free to show up a little early and get oriented. I'll be there at 10:30Am Pacific if you need help. Just look for my Second Life name gtoon jun and text me.

Hope you can make it!

Dragon Age and Machinima

2009-07-17T14:40:00.000-07:00

Gamespot have recently posted an article looking at the toolset that will be included with Dragon Age.

As with Neverwinter Nights, the toolset is designed to give players a chance to create their own worlds and adventures. As far as machinima goes, it was used to create Consanguinity and Bloodspell.

But what really caught my eye was how customizable the characters are. Bioware have taken their face editing tool from Mass Effect and applied it not just to player characters in the game but you can use the same thing with NPC characters in the toolset.

The third page of the article talks about how you can use the conversation editor to animate characters and make cutscenes.

It looks very promising for machinima and hopefully we'll see some good stuff.

Check out the full article.

Audio/Pix from Clear Skies 2 Premiere

2009-07-02T18:02:00.001-07:00

Members of the audience enjoying Clear Skies 2

The Premiere for Clear Skies 2 went swimmingly this last Sunday. With about a dozen people attending, we screened CS2 while director, Ian Chisholm, commented via text chat. Watching some scenes that seemed very simple on screen while Ian told us that the scene had a very high level of complexity in the HL2 engine gave us all an even healthier respect for what Ian and his team have accomplished. The difficulty in combining two separate game engines (Valve's Half Life 2 and Eve Online) is great in the idea stage, but the technical obstacles are enormous.

Hathead's great new screening room

Ian felt that Clear Skies 2 is a better film because he had a much better grasp of tools like Faceposer and voice recording. And you can see this in the quality of the film itself. The voices are much clearer (a fan loaned him some good audio equipment to record with) and the style of the film seems smoother than the first one.

Virtual Ian Chisholm relaxing during the Q&A

It was a great pleasure to watch the film in Hathead's new screening room on Hathead Island in Second Life. He's been working hard to re-vamp and upgrade his SL constructions and the place looked great. My thanks to you, Hathead, for providing a space for us to have our Machiniplex shows. Please visit his blog when you get the chance or check out some of his live music sets in Second Life (his King Bee rendition is wonderful). He's a very supportive and talented person. Thank you!

Clear Skies boys have their eyes on the stars it seems

The Q&A after the screening was very enjoyable. With Phil Rice moderating, we covered the making of the film, how it was put together, problems encountered and, something I liked a lot, celebrated just how damn good the film was. Ian was constantly witty and amusing with anecdotes on voice recording, script-development and "star cruiser" wrangling in Eve Online. I challenge anyone to spend an hour with Ian and not understand immediately why his films are so well done and feature characters with such a sense of fun and mischief at the same time.

I was fortunate in being able to record the Q&A. With Phil moderating, I could capture decent audio and after a bit of cleaning and editing, I think it's a decent recording. There are some SL sounds that come and go, but nothing too distracting. For those who would like to listen to the Q&A session with Phil and Ian (about 60 minutes) you can stream it here:

Or, if you'd like to download the mp3 file you can do that here (right-click, save link as). You can also watch and/or download the film in a variety of formats at our Machiniplex site. My thanks to Phil for providing the excellent encoded streaming version of Clear Skies 2. What can't you do, Phil?

Phil on the left; Ian on the right.

At the end of the session, Ian indicated he felt he was at a crossroads with his career. He had learned so much over the last three years while making Clear Skies and Clear Skies 2 that he didn't want to chuck it away and so he's looking to figure out how to work animated filmmaking into some sort of career. He's not sure what direction he'll go in, but with his talent and personality, I have a feeling he'll do very well.

Here's wishing you the best, Ian, and your entire crew. Clear Skies 2 is a film to be proud of.

Clear Skies 2 Premiere this Sunday, June 28th

2009-06-26T22:25:00.000-07:00

Just a quick reminder that Machiniplex will be Premiering director Ian Chisholm's Clear Skies 2 this Sunday, June 28th at 8AM (Pacific Time) / 11AM (Eastern Time) / 4PM (Great Britain) at Hathead's Screening Room in the virtual world Second Life.

We will screen the film (which is about 46 minutes long) and then have a Q&A with the director and members of his crew. We also hope to show some outtakes from the production (time permitting). Phil Rice will be moderating

Clear Skies 2 will be added to the Machiniplex.net collection on Sunday. You'll be able to stream and/or download the film in high-quality formats.

A good site to check the time in your are is here:

World Clock

And the slurl for Hathead's Screening Room is here:

Screening Room

I'll be there early to help those who are new to Second Life. My Second Life name is

gToon Jun

Remember, you can join in the discussion either using text chat or voice chat (if you have a headset and microphone).

See you there!

Machiniplex Premiere: Clear Skies 2 on Sunday, June 28th

2009-06-14T12:00:00.000-07:00

On Sunday, June 28th at 8AM (Pacific Time) / 11AM (Eastern Time), Machiniplex.net will host the premiere of Ian Chisholm's Clear Skies 2 at the screening room on Hathead's Island in Second Life. We will screen the film (approx. 46 minutes long) and then have a Q&A with director Ian Chisholm and members of his team. Ian will be texting a director's commentary during the screening. Phil Rice will moderate the discussion.

For those who haven't seen the first chapter in the Clear Skies saga, James Egan's comments at Massively.com describes the plot quite succinctly:

“Clear Skies follows a trio of down-and-out misfits who've seen no end of bad luck. John Rourke is the obstinate captain of the Clear Skies, a Tempest class battleship manufactured by the downtrodden Minmatar race of New Eden. Rourke's attitude toward his hazardous chosen lifestyle is cavalier, although this does not sit well with his friends among the crew. Solomon Burke is the pessimistic ship's engineer, while Charlie Fodder -- a gunner with an ironic name -- does his best to keep the crew alive. Typical of life in New Eden, Fodder is doomed to remain a rather busy man.

These likeable dropouts from the entrenched corporate lifestyle of New Eden eke out a meager living on trade runs and the odd courier job here and there. Still, they manage to find humor in their grim lot as they narrowly avoid being blown out of the stars by pirates, hired thugs, or whatever threat awaits them on the other side of the next jump gate. This is life aboard the Clear Skies. It's not a comfortable lifestyle by any means, but the crew is free to live and die by their own terms. Of course, their exploits do make for some good stories.”

-James Egan, Massively.com
massively.com/2008/06/09/eve-online-meets-half-life-2-in-machinima-masterpiece

Clear Skies 2 improves on already excellent production values and adds impressive writing and characterization. Ian Chisholm and his team challenged themselves to improve on the hugely popular first film and have done a truly remarkable job. The combination of Eve Online for exterior scenes and Half Life 2 for interior shots is creative and high successful. The Faceposer work alone is at the highest level of machinima animation.

We'll be streaming Clear Skies 2 at our Machiniplex.com site several days before the June 28th Premiere. In the meantime, you can stream our download both films at Vimeo.com. Ian has recently added an amusing "Outtakes Bucket" for Clear Skies 2.

Machiniplex premiered the first Clear Skies film at the first annual Machinima Expo in November of 2008. We are proud to present the second film in an ongoing series.

If you've never been to one of our Premiere's here's how it works: you will need to join up at Second Life (a free virtual community), or simply log in if you are a member. Then you'll need to teleport to the screening room on Hathead's Island. You can follow this link to do so:

http://slurl.com/secondlife/HatHead%20II/72/124/1029

Once you arrive at the screening room, you'll find many other people chatting either by voice or by text chat before the screening. After a while, we'll announce the screening and we'll all watch the film on the large screens in the center of the room (be sure to click your "play" button at the bottom of your SL screen). When the film is done, we will talk about the film with director Ian Chisholm and members of his team. Phil Rice will be moderating the discussion. Feel free to ask questions and/or make comments about the film.

Generally, we talk for about an hour or so and then head over to the dance floor to boogie away (this is where the REAL conversations happen). If you've never danced before, just click on the silver ball over the dance floor to initiate the animations.

If you are a beginner, don't be afraid to ask questions; everyone there was a beginner once and we are happy to help you out.

8AM in Los Angeles (Pacific Time) works out to 4PM in London. If you need a time conversion chart, there is a good one here:

http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/converter.html

No Altered States

2009-05-26T21:03:00.000-07:00

Well... as it turns out, I am in Ecuador during the Altered States conference, so I won't be on the panel. So sad... so disappointing in that regard. I won't need to have the pre-conference discussion (although we really should have some kind of event/discussion soon anyway).

I'll be thinking of machinima and altered states and UCLA and this missed opportunity from 20,000 feet (and the farthest point from the center of the Earth, farther than the peak of Everest), though, so don't cry too hard. Just keep making great films! :)

-- Ingrid

State of “Play”: Narrativity and Gaming

2009-05-13T10:52:00.000-07:00

I have been invited as a panelist for the following event at UCLA's first annual Altered States Media Conference next month. In order to prepare myself for an intelligent discussion, I was thinking of hosting a live discussion with machinimators and Machiniplex viewers and anyone else with two cents to contribute on the following topic.

State of “Play”: Narrativity and Gaming
Moderator: Peter Guber (Chairman, Mandalay Entertainment)

Any recent look into the business pages will show a video game industry outpacing the traditional film industry by ever-widening margins. Interactivity is now a common theme whenever discussing the future of narrative storytelling. But concepts such as scarcity, broadcasting, authorship, and predetermination are fundamental to the art of storytelling; can the “narrative” exist in an environment of peer-to-peer authorship? And as stories turn into games, how does one play a story?

I haven't selected a date for the discussion yet but I think 5:00 pm on Sunday, May 31 would work, giving me two weeks (some of which will be me climbing volcanoes in Equador) to ponder and absorb our discussion. I'm not sure if we should do Second Life or something else.

In any case, please let me know if you can attend - and please feel free to send me your thoughts, references, blog entries, etc. related to this panel, or leave a comment.

This panel is Sat. June 13 at UCLA - so if anyone's local, you should consider attending! There are a lot of other very interesting sessions going on and I am definitely going to make a day of it.

-- Ingrid

Looking For New Films to Premiere

2009-05-07T11:38:00.001-07:00

It's been a few months since our last Premiere at Machiniplex, so we are looking for new, quality machinima films that would fit for a Premiere. If anyone has suggestions or has seen a machinima film recently that just knocked your socks off, send us a link either in the comments section here at the blog or to me privately at: rgrove@iliadbooks.com

We are also working to develop the "classics" section of our Machiniplex site. We'll be archiving and featuring classic machinima from the earliest Quake period of machinima up to a couple years ago. Admittedly, the "classic" moniker is subjective, but our desire is to present the best of machinima in years past. Any suggestions are welcome!

-Ricky

Ivy Film Festival 2009

2009-04-21T09:53:00.000-07:00

The Ivy Film Festival Machinima Competition has been through its judging period for both the audience and jury awards, and I just wanted to point out a few of the finalists that I thought were worthy of mentioning.

First is Damien Valentine's Star Wars: A Galaxy in Darkness, jury award winner and by far the highest production value of the group. This fourth installment in Valentine's "Darkness Saga" is worth a watch. In fact, all four of the films are worth a watch (if you have about 3 hours spare), as it shows the five-year progression of a filmmaker's talents as he learns new skills, fine-tunes his craft, and takes increasingly greater advantage of the gaming and modding technologies he is using to create the story, which combines well-written scripts with acting voiced by both professionals and talented amateurs.

A Galaxy in Darkness adds what was most lacking in all the previous films: lip sync. Valentine had recorded most of his footage before learning the technique to create lip sync in Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy, after which he had to re-record that footage to include it. Over the previous films Valentine had intertwined the JKA footage with epic space battles using Star Wars: Empire at War and its sequels, which provide high resolution, highly coordinated combat scenarios. Editing the footage from these very different games together results in a well-crafted fan film that is sure to please Star Wars fans, machinima enthusiasts, and general audiences.

Second on my list of watchables is the audience award winner, Flying. This is a short piece that vaguely reminded me of Wall-E in that it is about a robot with personality. The animation of the robot is very well done in that it conveys emotion from what is otherwise a chunk of steel with arms. The theme of breaking free of monotony and following your passion usually works well with non-living subjects, as it does in this story of a robot who wants to get off the assembly line and fly. While I was most impressed by the conveyance of frustration at the robot's ill-fated attempts at liftoff, the light-hearted (and explosive) humor is also well-timed if a little campy.

Congratulations to both these films on their achievement in the Ivy Film Festival 2009.

Two other films in the finalist list worth a watch are Hurt, which is perhaps a bit over-dramatic but entertaining for its five-minute length, and Nintendo Bushido, a mash-up that is well-composited and well-edited if a bit long.

-- Ingrid

Machinima and Copyright Conference

2009-04-12T14:01:00.000-07:00

"Machinima.
...It has been hailed as the art form of the 21st century.
...It is redefining music videos.
...And reinventing the videogame.
...It might be the future of cinema.

But there's a catch: if you make machinima, you might be breaking the law.

Or are you?

Find out at Stanford University. "Play Machinima Law" from April 24-25, 2009."

I don't know if they'll be offering any new information but it could be interesting to see what comes out of here. More details at the site. Thanks to Amy for letting me know about this.

Machiniplex Site Hacked?

2009-03-01T21:54:00.000-08:00

Sorry about all of the duplicated posts in the RSS feed. I think maybe our site has been hacked as I haven't worked on the blog since the 'Saving Grace' post. Does anyone have any suggestions on how to combat this kind of thing?

???

Saving Grace: An Excellent Premiere

2009-02-16T22:37:00.000-08:00

Sisch and her SL avatar.

The "Saving Grace" premiere took place in Second Life this last Sunday. We had a good turn out (about 15 people) and everyone enjoyed the film very much. Sisch (Simone Schleu), the director, gave a text commentary during the screening and afterwards stayed to discuss the film with Phil Rice and then the audience. Phil did a great job running the Q&A for Machiniplex (his first time) and I thoroughly enjoyed finally being part of the audience.

"Saving Grace" is a science fiction story in the tradition of Isaac Asimov and Lois McMaster Bujold (both authors Sisch reads and admires). It's the story of one woman's crises of identity and how the AI aboard her ship, which has been sent on a mission of vital importance to the future of Earth, through an act of devotion and friendship, helps her understand her reason for living. It is a story of choices and of their consequences. A character driven science fiction film beautifully performed and very well written.

Part of the audience watching the screening of Saving Grace

Sisch worked on Saving Grace for about 4 months. She said she struggled over the script, rewriting it many times until she got the story she wanted. Then she put together her voice cast (including her own performance in the lead role) and go the voice recordings first. She smartly waited until she had the other actors performances recorded before she did her own and adjusted her interpretation to fit with the other actors. Sisch mentioned that she wasn't trying to be "realistic", but wanted the style of the acting (and the film) to be real for the story she was telling. A distinction often forgotten not only in machinima, but in commercial filmmaking as well.

She used three different real-time engines to create "Saving Grace": Moviestorm, The Movies and X3: the Terran Conflict. Her background in machinima filmmaking was primarily with The Movies, so she was comfortable with that game and it's various mods. Sisch said she really loved the animation system of Moviestorm since it allowed you to stack several animations to get unique ones that fit perfectly with the internal drama of her characters. X3 was used primarily for space shots and The Movies Game was used for a few dream sequences (to great effect).

Phil on the left and Sisch on the right during Q&A

Sisch spent a lot of time getting the individual animations just right for various scenes. At one point, for the climatic scene between the AI and Grace, she spent 4 days just trying to get Grace's reaction right. Her careful and meticulous attention to detail pays off in making the film one that involves you with the characters and their moral choices. Something you don't often find in many machinima films.

Phil made an excellent point about how the AI characterization works against the cliche of Hal 9000 in 2001: A Space Odyssey and instead of being the emotionless villain, the AI in "Saving Grace" actually becomes more human, more empathetic in the end. Sisch's decision to make the AI very stiff and artificial at the beginning, then move to a characterization that has more subtle movements (and I think more subtle performance) at the end is the mark of a thoughtful and careful director. In fact, the entire film is so well edited and shot that it's hard to believe Sisch has only been directing machinima for a few years.

And, of course, the fact that the central character, which is usually portrayed as a heroic male, is female. Exploring the nature of female heroism (and her final decision is heroic, imo) is another example of how subtle and intelligent this film is.

Sisch also mentioned that she thought that the story of Grace was complete and that she wasn't considering going back to the story as a kind of series. "What else is there to say?", she said (paraphrased). With the popularity of the film and because both the AI and Grace's characters are so interesting, there has been some interest in her extending the story some. I was very glad to hear that Sisch wasn't interested. Her reasons make so much sense.

Much more was discussed over the 1 hour + conversation, but it's too much to summarize here. We are working (Phil and I) on a way to archive these Premiere's in some fashion, so those who can't make it can at least get a feel for what the event was like. In the meantime, you can screen or download the film at machiniplex.net and if you follow the links there (or here) you can read her interview at the Moviestorm site and on her own blog.

Screen cap from Saving Grace early in the film

It's a testament to the impact of this film that many people asked if the film was going to be screened again on Sunday. Phil was able to set the server to continue to show the film at the Z-Studios Theater continuously through the evening. I know when I signed off there were several people in the audience eager to see it again.

My sincere thanks to Sisch for letting us Premiere her film and for archiving it at Machiniplex. I was also very impressed with here poise and her thoughtful answers to the questions she was asked. Also, thank you Phil Rice for running the discussion and for setting up the film both at Machiniplex and in Second Life.

Machiniplex Premiere: "Saving Grace" by Sisch. Feb 15th, 10AM @ Second Life

2009-02-01T21:39:00.000-08:00

Machiniplex will premiere "Saving Grace", a new machinima film created by Sisch, on February 15th (Sunday) at 10AM (Pacific Time) at Z-Studios Theater in Second Life. Created using a mixture of three separate real-time engines (Moviestorm, The Movies and X3 Terran Conflict), "Saving Grace" has a unique style along with an intriquing storyline that is very well done. It's themes of loneliness, self-sacrifice and human/machine authenticity remind me a bit of the sci-fi writer Philip K. Dick with some Ursula K. Leguin thrown in as seasoning. "Saving Grace" is an excellent blend of style and content.

We are proud to present "Saving Grace" as a Machiniplex Premiere. We will screen the film at 10AM (Second Life time) after which Sisch will answer questions and comment on the making of the film.

We will be posting "Saving Grace" at the machiniplex.net site a few days before the premiere, so you can stream it there or download a copy if you'd like to see the film early.

If you've never been to Second Life before, it's a virtual world where people create things and host virtual events. It's a free download and is fairly easy to learn. You can come early if you are a first-timer and we'll have someone there to help you out. We generally use voice chat for the discussions afterwards, but if you don't have a microphone or headset, we'll also be doing text chat as well.

Here is a link that will tell you more about how to get going with Second Life:

Getting Started with Second Life

In world, you can instant message me (gtoon jun) or Phil Rice (Sol Bartz), and we'll respond promptly. You can also ask any questions here in the "comments" section of this post and I'll do my best to answer quickly.

Hope to see you there!

Ephemeral Premiere Wrap Up

2009-01-18T20:13:00.000-08:00

Dizzy Banjo

I'd like to thank everyone who attended the Ephemeral Premiere today (Sunday, Jan 18). It was well attended and the conversations about the film were excellent. Particular thanks to Dizzy Banjo for coming despite a bad cold (drink that lemon tea!) and to Poid Mahlovich for her comments. And thanks go to Sol Bartz (Phil Rice) for letting us use his theatre and for setting up the video.

Despite having some problems with our video server for the day, we manage to play the film as a file and everyone got a chance to see Ephemeral, although at different times. Dizzy commented on some aspects of the production via text while the film was playing. I've copied and edited the local chat logs, so you can read them here in pdf format (Dizzy's words are in blue):

Ephemeral Chat

To summarize some of the voice comments (we are working on recording the sessions for those who can't make it), Dizzy created "Ephemeral" in Second Life as a way of documenting the excellent work that Poid Mahlovich did on a section of the Princeton University SL site called "Princeton Aspire". He mentions that most of the work on the film was already done (in Poid's build) and he just pointed the camera and recorded. In a session that I remember he said took about a day, he captured footage in Fraps and then edited it in Sony Vegas, which he felt very comfortable with since it was much like the music/audio programs he was used to working with.

Dizzy works as a composer for games, commercials and many Second Life installations like the Ruta Maya region in Mexico's Second Life island. His DynaFleur installation at the Princeton Unviersity Sim is remarkable as well. The guitar music composed for Ephemeral was actually written some time before the film was made and he ended up cutting the piece a bit and re-performing it so that it had a more melancholy feel. All of the other sounds, with the exception of a few weather elements he drew from his own stock sound collection, are a part of the Princeton Aspire setting. He mentions that Ephemeral is an extension of an earlier film he worked on called "Passage to Zhong Fu"

Dizzy mentioned that in creating the film he was trying to depict "the passage of characters through a landscape" with just a little bit of story involved. Poid added that she loves the Narnia
series and brought some of that influence to the world of the film. You can see this in the big cabinet that the main character comes out of at the beginning of the film. The spider at the end perhaps has echoes of the Shelob character in Lord of the Rings.

Screen cap from Ephemeral

Considerable work was done in tweaking the world build in Second Life by adding fog and adjust other elements of how SL renders. It certainly was beautifully done. The lighting in particular is superb. Dizzy initially rendered the film as a jpeg mov file then he compressed the film in quick time pro using the h264 codec, although he wasn't completely happy with the results (some banding issues). He ended up getting the best results, he said, by exporting the film directly out of vegas in the .wmv format. He followed a process created by Torley and documented here.

Finally, Dizzy and Poid reflected a bit on Second Life machinima. Dizzy felt that SL machinima was different than other forms of machinima in that everything in the film is custom content and hand made. SL machinima is influenced by SL culture a good deal, too. This is evident in Ephemeral itself, being the offshoot of a lot of sound/music installation work Dizzy has done in Second Life. Certainly the stories and types of films you see being created in Second Life are often more adventurous in form and content than other types of machinima.

A site both Dizzy and Poid recommended as a good one to see new SL machinima is:

Second Life Showcase

You can read Dizzy's blog here; and Poid's blog here. And here's an excellent interview with Dizzy at the "7" site. He mentions his method of composing music and creating installations. There's also mention of his work on an interesting program called "Parsec" which is a way of creating music/sound in Second Life through gestures and speeach. Dizzy spoke a bit about his goals of creating a kind of music synesthesia for virtual worlds.

Poid has a first machinima posted at her site. It's called "Life is a bowl of...". You can watch it right here, if you like. Congratulations, Poid. Really wonderful work.

Machiniplex Premiere: "Ephemeral" by Dizzy Banjo (January 18th)

2009-01-08T21:44:00.000-08:00

A new Second Life machinima, "Ephemeral", created by Dizzy Banjo will be Premiered this January 18, 2009 from 1oAM to 12PM (pacific time). Dizzy Banjo / Robert Thomas is a composer, virtual media artist and machinima filmmaker. "Ephemeral" was shot in the Princeton Aspire region of Princeton University's Second Life property. Dizzy c0-wrote and directed the film along with composing the wonderful soundtrack. He was assisted by Poid Mahovlich who also designed the film.

The film will screen at Zarathustra Studios in Second Life at 10am. (Here's a time converter you can use) Immediately afterwards there will be a Q&A with the director and possibly some of his collaborators. The slurl for the event is:

Zarathustra Studios in Second Life (http://slurl.com/secondlife/Jamville/149/205/23) (map)

"Ephemeral" is a film poem that takes place in an almost fantasy pastoral setting. The two main characters meet and eventually come to a mutual discovery. The tone is dark and strange with a beautiful music and soundtrack. It's one of the best Second Life films I've ever seen and I'm excited that Dizzy, an accomplished musician as well as filmmaker, will be attending the Premiere and answering questions. I can't wait to figure out how he accomplished some of the effects in the film.

If you've never attended a Second Life event before, you can download the software (it's free) and try it out before you come, as it takes a little bit of practice to move around and interact with others. We'll be conducting voice chat primarily, but there will also be text chat going on at the same time if you don't have a mic/headphone. When you are ready, just click the link above and it will take you right to the location. If you get lost just text me in-world. My name there is gtoon Jun. Many arrive early for the Premiere, so don't be afraid to ask questions.

If you have any questions please contact me at: rgrove@iliadbooks.com.

See you there!

Machinima in Bristol

2008-12-05T13:15:00.000-08:00

I was recently invited to the Brief Encounters short film Festival in Bristol for a presentation and panel on the subject of Machinima.

The other two panelists were Grethe Mitchell from The University of East London and Britta Pollmuller another veteran with Machinima.

My presentation served as an introduction to Machinima, included some clips of various pieces that represented the medium well. I also discussed why I first became involved with Machinima, as a means to tell stories through film that I couldn't do live action.

Grethe followed with her research into Machinima and how it takes elements from all forms of media (film, gaming, music etc) and brings it all together.

Sadly, Britta was unable to make it in person due to bad weather but was able to join us virtually via Second Life where she could to walk us through the work she does for Schome.

An excellent day and a chance to make new friends and bring new people into the world of Machinima.

I'd also like to thank Hanna Wirman for being so helpful and Hugh Hancock for setting me up with that.

"Clear Skies" Live Premiere at Machinima Expo 2008

2008-10-30T12:04:00.000-07:00

One film that stood out among the 130 that were submitted to the Machinima Expo competition was "Clear Skies". Beautifully shot in a combination of Eve Online and the Half Life 2 engines, this 30 minute film is a masterful work of storytelling. I was so impressed with the film that I immediately contacted the director, Ian Chisholm, and asked if he would be interested in doing a live Machiniplex Premiere at the Expo on Nov. 9th.

I'm very pleased to announce that Ian has agreed and we will be hosting a live Machiniplex premiere of "Clear Skies" at 1pm (Pacific Time) on Sunday, Novemember 9th at the Expo complex in Second Life. Ian will be present to answer questions after the screening and I suspect other members of the "Clear Skies" team will be attending as well.

Here is the slurl for the Second Life location.

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Jamville/151/214/23

And here is a site where you can figure the time in your neck of the woods.

http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/converter.html

If you've never used Second Life before it's free and a lot of fun. You can download the client
here. Be sure to try it out before you come to the Expo so you'll know how to get around and interact with others. We will have people "helpers" at the Expo who can answer your questions and give advice if you are a new comer to Second Life.

Thanks to Ian for allowing us to screen his film and for taking time out of his busy schedule to attend.

Surgee has a New PC & Other News

2008-10-14T10:51:00.000-07:00

Just finished recording the next Overcast where Phil and I discuss the Montreal Expo debacle and even though we both covered a lot of recent news in Machinima there is still a lot we left out. I thought I'd cover some of it here at Machiniplex3.

The big news is that Daniel Wasiluk (Surgee), director of the WoW film "The Demise" has a brand new PC. If any of you recall, Daniel had some financial difficulties around the time we were premiering "The Demise" and had to sell his computer to make ends meet. I decided right then and there to take up a collection at the premiere and to collect as many computer parts as we could to get him up and running again. He's such a great filmmaker, I just couldn't see him not being able to make movies.

Thanks to a lot of donations and some scrounging around by yours truly, I was able to send him most of the components he needed to put together a decent machinima-making PC, along with some cash as well.

Just got this email along with some pix from him the other day:

Hey Ricky,

I just wanted you to know that I was able to get all missing parts and the PC is up and running.Everything works great! I'm now downloading WoW client (left my CD's in Germany) . On this slow connection it will take about a week with all the updates. When it's done, I'm gonna create some trial accounts (had to stop my subscription,got no time to play MMO's) and will start making new movie right away! I'm working at day time and I plan to find new ways to make this movie bigger and better than last one so it might take a bit long before I will complete it.
You said that you can help out with the sound. Do you have some sound effects library or you take care of equalization? Biggest problem with my movies is that I got no source of sound effects , if you got any and could help out in future that would be great! Good sound is half of success :)

Thanks again for helping me out :)

Daniel

So, thanks to everyone who helped get Daniel his new computer. It's this kind of support that makes our community a good one.

Other News

Just some quick notes on developments in the machinima community recently.

-ZenCub3d has a new October beta out with several fixes and tweaks. I really like this program and the people that created it. Do yourself a favor and check it out. 100% Free.

-Expo submissions are closed as of Oct 13th. We've gotten over a hundred entries and the general quality is very good. I'm actually encouraged by the direction of contemporary machinima. Having the opportunity to view so many films really gives you a perspective you might not have otherwise. Now it's on to picking the films that will be screened and passing on the best of the best to our Expo jury. Yay!

-Antics3D has come out with a new version 5 which includes decent facial animation. Haven't had a chance to dig very deeply yet, but from what I've seen it looks good. One downside we didn't mention in the Overcast ( didn't know at the time), is that Antics has decided to do away with their Free version of the program. No explanation has been given, but comments in the Antics forum are not very positive.

-Ian Chisholm, director of "Clear Skies", has agreed to premiere the film at the Machinima Expo on Nov. 9th. This film was one of those that made me sit up in my chair when it was submitted. I'm so grateful that Ian was able to take time out of his busy schedule to attend and answer questions.

-John C. Martin is at Renderosity.com in the "Spotlight" on the front page. It's an interesting feature where John will answer questions all week from the community. If you like iClone, or are just curious, head over to renderosity.com and ask John. He'll give you the straight dope.

-Lastly, Phil and I have just completed an article for the UK magazine PC Plus about the contemporary machinima scene. Not sure when it will be published but I'm guessing it might be in the November issue. We are also going to write a 2-part iClone tutorial for the mag at some point in the future. Really enjoyed this project and working with Phil was a breeze. My only disappointment was that we had to leave too many things out, but we were limited in space.
I'll update here when our article is published.

Pineapple Pictures Releases Promotional Film for the Expo

2008-10-06T09:15:00.000-07:00

We are so proud of Michael R. Joyce's and Kate Fosk's new machinima film: a promotional for the upcoming Nov. 9th Machinima Expo. Despite a change in venue from Montreal to Second Life, both Kate and Michael stayed the course and created an excellent (and very funny) film. It's great sense of fun and the use of a variety of machinima programs perfectly represent the spirit of the Expo.

Our thanks to Kate, Michael and Dan (who did the voice work) for putting this together so well.

MachinExpo from Pineapple Pictures on Vimeo.

Michael has also sent us a few words on how they put this film together.

The MachinExpo promo has been a joyful experience, as all our projects have been in the past. We were honored by Ricky Grove and Phil Rice to be asked to provide a promo for their event.

We brainstormed several idea paths for the story. Working to keep the promo to a reasonable length (instead of the massive expansions we tend to lend towards). It is an open season on ideas. Many screwy ideas tend to lend themselves to new approaches and in the end, Kate produced a tight script which allowed for many different approaches.

Apart from a change in venue for MachinExpo from Montreal to Second Life, the choice of Machinima engines proved to be a challenging time. Just as we were beginning the process, new massive updates were in appearing in the community for Moviestorm and iClone Pro. So a quickly we tried to get up to speed so as to be able to use the new technology being offered.

We at Pineapple Pictures believe that not one Machinima engine may suit all our needs. In this case we focused on four engines, iClone Pro 3, ZenCub3d, Moviestorm and Second Life. With those in hand we began to cast the engines to the characters and sets. ZenCub3d provided our Professor Pugh character and when we needed some additional props and motions, Billy Chang and his team delivered the goods in lightning speed.

Each Machinima engine was chosen for their strengths. Moviestorm has a strong music video side. iClone allows us to easily incorporate Visual Effects and strange characters. ZenCub3d provides a unique look into human characters.

Using extensive greenscreen and bluescreen backdrops, we were able in Sony Vegas to blend multiple layers of video into a cohesive whole. Sony Vegas has the ability to use many tracks of video and sound. So we preferred to edit on first generation video material and build the entire film into a complete version. This allowed us to render the film visuals and sound into a second generation format. What that allows us is as clean a copy of the original material as possible.

To the first time Machinima filmmaker, we cannot stress strongly enough that all the engine should be reviewed and used. Each has a free version which allows a filmmaker to test the waters. And each has good tutorials for learning the programs. And as our good friend Tom Jantol has espoused in his discussion regarding Anymation, many other programs, designed for other uses can and should be incorporated into a film.

With Machinima, we have discovered that the only limitation is truly your imagination.

Out on the Town with Damien and Marilyn

2008-09-30T11:59:00.001-07:00

Damien Valentine, better known as Darth here at Machiniplex, and his mother, Marilyn, came through Los Angeles a week ago and along with Ingrid and my partner, Lisa Morton, we hit the town and had dinner at three great restaurants.

Damien recently celebrated his graduation from college and Marilyn rewarded him with a trip to the U.S. where they took a tour of some major tourist spots while losing enormous amounts of sleep in the process. Still, they both looked good when we helped them move from downtown to a hotel just off of the Hollywood Freeway.

First up was a Saturday night dinner at the Odyssey Restaurant in Granada Hills. It's a wonderful location on top of a mountain looking down over the Valley. We were fortunate to get a window seat and the early-evening view was spectacular. Both Marilyn and Damien love steaks, so they both had two hefty ones, much to their delight. Ingrid brought her son along and he was pretty well behaved. We were all so stuffed, I wonder how we managed to get up from the table. No wonder the Romans at lying down so often.

Next, it was Don Cuco's mexican restaurant in Burbank. A very popular spot that was filled with partying, mexican food loving people. We were crammed into a small booth, but when the food came were forgot about the tight fit. Our waiter suggested we take a picture with sombreros and you can see the result at the top of the page. I really think the women should have worn the sombreros, but what do I know.

After Don Cuco's we wanted some good gelato so Lisa and I took everyone to Pinocchio's Italian Deli in Burbank. The gelato was fabulous and we chatted and took pictures for quite a while.

Then on Monday night, we decided to hit another Mexican restaurant (Marilyn told us they have dreadful Mexican food in the UK), this time it was the landmark El Coyote restaurant in Hollywood. After a bit of a wait, we had even better food than at Don Cuco's. Our waitress was enchanting and the conversation was lively. Both Damien and Marilyn loved the place.

Lisa and I were sad to see Marilyn and Damien go. How much fun it would be if we could see them every week. The visit was much too short. At some point we'd really like to visit them in Bath.

Our congratulations to Damien for graduating and thanks to Marilyn for coming to visit! Until next time.....

PS I've learned that they arrived at home safely and are currently sleeping all week to get back to normal.

Montreal Expo Canceled - Becoming a Virtual Event

2008-09-17T08:29:00.000-07:00

Last year, organizers Ingrid and Damien enjoyed a rich, exciting, and well-attended Machinima Roadshow event at Festival Arcadia in Montreal. So when the organizer invited us back, and expressed his desire to make the machinima component a bigger and more extensive part of his show, promoting it to us as a turn-key event and possibly including prize money for top films, Ingrid and Damien enlisted the help of Ricky and Phil and created the First Annual International Machinima Expo (MachinExpo, or just "the Expo"). With great enthusiasm, the acceptance of our proposed budget and program, and the need to get an early start in our call for entries and other planning, the four of us booked our travel arrangements and began the hard work and investment involved in organizing such a cool, fun event.

As it turns out, assurances of funding and all the time and effort we have put in have been for naught. Festival Arcadia has suddenly dropped the Expo from its program, including pulling all funding. The reason is not clear. The organizer of Festival Arcadia clearly did not seek funding early or earnestly enough to follow through with his plan to include machinima in the overall program. He also had a sudden 180-degree change in attitude toward machinima, claiming it is not accepted by the industry. Why the sudden withdrawal of funds and change of heart, we may never know.

Not only are we angry and disappointed in this outcome, we are ashamed for acting on what turned out to be empty promises and a handshake. We were in the process of formalizing a contract as recently as two weeks ago. Then last Friday he dropped the bomb on us. We tried to negotiate a smaller, less expensive variation so that the Expo could go on, but he cannot commit an answer soon enough. Meanwhile we worry that our participants and speakers are making plans to attend, and we can't in good conscience allow this to go on indefinitely when there is still the looming possibility that the Expo will be cut entirely. In hand with our frustrations are our own losses, both financially and in the time and energy invested.

Thus we have decided to detach ourselves from Festival Arcadia and carry on the Expo in a new form, so that at least the effort invested will not go to waste. We have considered a new venue for a live event, but given how little time we have left and the grueling and time-consuming nature of obtaining our own funding, we have instead chosen to change the Expo from a live one to a virtual one. With the use of voice technology and the flexibility and creativity offered by virtual space, we will still be able to offer the exciting panels and presentations that we had planned, as well as screenings for all the films accepted into the festival and the awards that we were expecting to hand out in person. The one element that will not likely happen is the Roadshow workshop, which was dependent on a LAN. We may replace this with another exciting program. More information on this virtual event will be forthcoming as we hammer out our strategy.

We extend our sincere apologies to everyone who is affected by this terrible turn of events, and accept responsibility for proceeding on verbal assurances in our effort to provide ample time for everyone to make plans to participate. We welcome your comments and concerns. And we hope that this will not discourage you from participating in and enjoying the virtual Expo.

Ingrid, Phil, Ricky, Damien

Another Amazing Fall PC Game Line-Up

2008-08-27T12:35:00.000-07:00

I thought last years Fall PC Game line-up was amazing (Crysis, Mass Effect, etc), but this Fall 2008 looks even better. Here's a nice overview from PC.GameZone.com of the top games coming: And another list from Gamestooge.com with release dates:

Of course, Fallout 3, Far Cry 2, Wrath of the Lich King and Valve's Left For Dead are all going to have a legion of fans. But there are a couple games I'm particularly looking forward to:

The Witcher: Enhanced Edition. The Polish company, Projekt Red, actually took the crits of fans and went back to the original release of The Witcher last year and worked to improve the gameplay and enhance the story. They've also added two completely new adverntures to the game. An editor for the game will also be enclosed for people who want to design their own gameplay (machinima, anyone?)

: screencap from The Witcher: Enhanced Edition

Stalker: Clear Sky. I loved this game when it first came out after years of delay. Now, this russian game company, GSC Gameworld, has put together a prequel to the original Stalker and have added all sorts of fixes, enhancements and upgrades. It's one of those "open world" games on the PC that I love so much. No editor for the game has been announced but so what, I can't wait to play this game.

: Stalker: Clear Sky has an amazing "open world" design

Grand Theft Auto IV (PC): I can't wait to start making movies with this game. Play it? Well, only to location scout and look for interesting characters. The graphics, the improved look and animations are like machinima candy to me. Of course, it will take a bit for people to develop the game hacks we need, although there is a "demo" like function being promised for the PC.

MIrror's Edge: I only recently discovered this game which is a fascinating re-imagining of the FPS genre, but without the "shooter" part (you can use guns if you choose). The story is pure contemp sci-fi with the player as an information "runner" delivering crucial data for shadowy organizations. The parkour-like actions of the main female character are amazing. Watch this trailer and you'll see what I mean.

So, what games are you looking forward to this Fall?

The Demise Premiere: A Director's Message

2008-08-25T21:48:00.001-07:00

We had a very enjoyable Premiere for Surgee's (Daniel Wasiluk) film "The Demise" yesterday at Hathead's Island in the virtual world Second Life. Approximately 15 people showed up for a screening of the film and a short audio message from the director. For those who couldn't make it, here is what Surgee had to say: (press the play button to listen)

Surgee's method of using Photoshop to create layered images for "The Demise" was a labor-intensive, but wonderful choice for the art design of the film and for adding simple facial expressions. By taking a snapshot in WoW model viewer of the shot/angle he's going to use in the film, then removing everything but the part of the model he wants to modify, and finally using the "liquid" tool to change a facial expression for example, he was able to import the image and use a simple cross-fade in Sony Vegas DV editor to create the effect (facial expressions). And by hand-drawing almost all of the backgrounds, he created a unique style for "The Demise" that is missing in most other WoW machinima.

We were also impressed with how Surgee created such a simple, yet beautiful style for the story he was trying to tell. In an email to me, Surgee said his "goal was to touch people's emotions". Considering the great response to the film, he certainly has succeeded. Here's part of an email Surgee sent me in response to questions about the film:

So here it goes:

Storyline: Adopted by rich and very strict couple from Silvermoon ,little Alasse is deprived of her childhood. One night as she looks out of the window, she sees a strange, bright light comming from a nearby forest. Night is the only time when guards hired by Alasses parents don`t follow her.She decides to take her chances and sneak out through the window, to check out the mysterious light. This isn't another simple story about incredible people and heroic acts.This is a breathtaking story, about simple people, forbidden love, hope and drama.

Making of :

1. The idea
The idea for this film came when I saw an annoucement about WWI Machinima Contest. Few months before, I made two short films from World of Warcraft. They appeared to be succesful and I wasn't even thinking that they would be so popular. At first I wasn't thinking seriously about taking part in this contest, but my girlfriend convinced me to give it a shot.

2. Genre
With my movies, I wanted to bring out people's emotions. With my last two movies, I made people laugh. But with "The Demise" my goal was to touch the audience's deeper emotions, like compassion, sympathy, maybe sadness. It was a great challenge for me and I'm happy that it found so many viewers all over the world. It was very risky because it is much easier to win people's hearts by making them laugh than with making them cry.

3. Development
Before I started developing this movie, I've decided to make it look unique and innovative (the first WoW machinima to show real heros' emotions-moving lips, eyes, eyebrows,facial muscles,tears). To do so, I've "photoshopped" nearly every object and character. On top of that, every background was drawn by me, except the town background in one of first scenes (this one was a recorded scene with later usage of Photoshop). To add more realistic animation to greater objects (ex. writing hand,"Magical Tree",etc.) I had to create many smaller ones and animate them separately. To keep it in this unique style, I didn't use any video editing software's built-in effects (except simple blur and chroma keyer to cut blue background off).

The intention was to make this film understandable without any voice acting. Because of the contest's time limitation (four minutes) I had to compress the whole story so it would be very short and clear. I am an autodidact. I haven't studied any tutorials or whatsoever. For example, I could see a scene with my imagination but I wasn't quite sure how to bring it to life so I was just experimenting till I reached the desired final look. All in all, I'm very happy how it turned out.

Because of my very slow computer (which unfortunately I don't have anymore), the whole project costed me a lot of time (about 3 weeks) and trash bags for empty coffe cups:). If I had a chance, I would improve my skills by setting up the bar a little bit higher with my every next production.

We also discussed the music in the film and how much we all liked it. Since there were no credits at the end of the film, we don't know what the music was or who composed it. I've got an email question sent to Surgee to get an answer to that question.

I'd also like to re-iterate that Surgee is without a computer because he had to sell the old one in order to get by financially. I asked for donations towards Surgee's computer and was very pleased that so many people donated. Surgee sends his thanks. And if you care to donate via this blog, just leave a comment and I'll tell you how to send money via Paypal. Let's get Surgee back to making films again.

My thanks to Hathead for running the event so smoothly and for letting us use his great (and newly designed) space. And I enjoyed talking with you all. Your participation and support of Machiniplex really makes it worth the time and effort to get these great films screened.

"The Demise" Premiere this Sunday in Second Life

2008-08-22T19:53:00.001-07:00

A still from the title sequence in "The Demise"

Daniel Wasiluk's (aka Surgee) film "The Demise" will Premiere this Sunday, August 24th at 12PM (Pacific Time) at Hathead's Tower Lounge in Second Life. "The Demise" is Daniel's third film; all of them shot in the World of Warcraft game engine. "The Demise" is a gorgeous film shot with no dialog, but with wonderful imagination and feeling. I've just come from a rehearsal with Hathead at his lounge and although we had to do a lot of tweaking, the film should look great when we screen it on Sunday. Daniel won the World of Warcraft "best special effects" award for "The Demise" this year. Be sure to check out his personal page at warcraftmovies.com for additonal comments and photos Daniel has provided for "The Demise"

Daniel is unable to be with us at the Premiere, although I've been in contact with him about the event for the last month or so. He had to sell his computer not long after he finished "The Demise" and because of financial difficulties has not been able to buy another. I've decided that I want to get him a new one somehow. We've set up a poster with Daniel's picture and all you have to do is click on it to donate. The money will come to me and I will send it to Daniel via Paypal.

You can see Daniel's poster on the right. Be sure to make a donation!

You can also contact me directly via this blog or at my personal website rgrove.com about sending any computer parts you might want to donate. It's possible we could send him a combination of money and the parts (graphics card, motherboard, ram,etc) so he can put it
together on his own. As Dan lives in Europe, shipping is high for heavy items like a computer case or monitor, so hold off on those things. But small items will work. Contact me if you have any questions.

"The Demise" is streaming at our newly designed Machiniplex site (thank you, Phil Rice), so head on over and watch/download the film, or you can wait until Sunday. Daniel has sent us message he recorded about the film which we will play after the screening.

A beautiful shot from "The Demise"

If you've never been to one of our Premiere's here's how it works: you will need to join up at Second Life (a free virtual community), or simply log in if you are a member. Then you'll need to teleport to Hathead's Lounge. You can follow this link to do so:

How to get to Hathead's Lounge

just follow the directions to teleport. For SL veterans, the slurl is:

http://slurl.com/secondlife/HatHead/85/148/607

Once you arrive at the Lounge, you'll find many other people chatting either by voice or by text chat, before the screening. After a while, I'll announce the screening and we'll all watch the film on the large screens in the center of the room (be sure to click your "play" button at the bottom of your SL screen). When the film is done, we will head over to the conference area and I'll offer some commentary on the film and talk about my conversations with Daniel. Then we will open up the conversations to comments and questions.

Generally, we talk for about an hour or so and then head over to the dance floor to boogie away (this is where the REAL conversations happen). If you've never danced before, just click on the silver ball over the dance floor to initiate the animations.

If you are a beginner, don't be afraid to ask questions; everyone there was a beginner once and we are happy to help you out.

If you need to check the time in your area, here is a time converter. The Premiere will take place at 12PM Pacific Time (Los Angeles).

Hanging around after rehearsal at Hathead's Lounge

Siggraph 2008: A Most Extraordinary Conference

2008-08-19T13:15:00.001-07:00

I've been writing reviews and articles for Renderosity.com for year or so now. A couple months ago they asked me if I'd be willing to cover Siggraph 2008 convention as it was taking place in Los Angeles this year (my hometown). I was overjoyed at the prospect having read so much about this enormous convention in a recent history of Pixar Studios called "The Pixar Touch" by David A. Price.

After spending several months preparing, I finally got to attend the convention this last week and it was (honestly) an extraordinary event. Filling both convention Halls of the downtown Los Angeles convention center, the convention featured panels, classes, presentations, an animation festival, a huge exhibit hall and many, many smaller events all wedged in creatively to the schedule. And, of course, the exhibitors like Alias, NewTek, Lucas Studios and the like all had parties and classes of their own just a few blocks away from the convention center.

The event was overwhelming at times and I found myself seeking out a quiet place (the media room) in order to catch my breath and re-group. Since this is my first time attending Siggraph, I asked many of the veteran reporters what events were the most interesting. They all had completely different answers and I realized that you just pick what interests you and then see what happens. I had a prepared a tight schedule from 8AM to sometimes as late as 8PM every day, but by the third day (Wednesday) I realized that just wandering around and talking to people would actually provide more interesting opportunities to learn and discover. My legs and feet were so tired from walking miles and miles each day, I wasn't sure if I could last the day sometimes.

But I managed somehow and with my backpack, recording device and camera met all kinds of people; students, amateurs, professionals, CEO's, salesmen, filmmakers and reporters like myself. The classes sometimes went over my head. I took a class on "Motion Planning & Autonomy for Virtual People" and quickly realized what the lack of a computer science degree could do to you. But many of the panels were filled with animators and filmmakers who went way back with the Disney company. At one point during the "Future of Character Animation" panel, the veteran, Don Hahn, was asked what Disney would have thought of flash animation and immediately said "He'd love it".

I suppose the highlight of the convention was the Ed Catmull keynote address on Monday. I say "suppose" because there were so many other events that captured my imagination and inspired me. But Ed's comments were very special to me as I've been mulling over how small groups of people interact and work together. I've collaborated so much on machinima projects this year that I've wondered why some projects worked well and others were less effective. His personal discoveries of the value of trust and honesty in work along with empathy and commitment seem obvious, but in the context of a complex project, individual ego, incredibly long hours and looming deadlines, it's not so easy to hold to those values. His speech, told as a long response to an unnamed Hollywood Producers quote that better ideas are more important than people, Catmull spoke for nearly 90 minutes. At times appearing frail (he mentioned a recent hip replacement), but always intense and focused.

Maxon Cinema4D Luncheon

As an example of how well the Siggraph crew handled the tech aspect of this and all of the other events I attented, there were three huge digital monitors to view Catmull up close and a superb sound system so you could catch the nuance in every word. I came away, as did the majority of the 500+ people who attended and applauded him wildly, with renewed commitment to working with a creative team I admire and respect towards projects that not only interest us but engage us passionately. Unlike Hobbes, who saw the world as one huge process of self-interest, there is real hope and pride in working with others of a like mind. Again, while it seems obvious, it's often the simple lessons that we forget. No wonder Mr. Catmull has been so important to the development of computer graphics and animated films; he's an authentic genius.

Speaking of "passion", that was the one word I heard over and over at Siggraph. That and "commitment". From the "Careers in Computer Graphics" to the "SpeedLab" final presentations, the idea that passionate devotion to the computer graphics field was a universally held assumption. And after meeting dozens of people and many panelists and teachers, I can honestly say that they practice what they preach. Siggraph was alive with people excited about what they were doing no matter what their age. Even the people on the sales floor in the Exhibit hall were passionate about their projects. At one point, "Ralph", floor spokesperson for NewTek (Lightwave, etc) offered a 20 minute story about his efforts to place "Speed Edit" in Mexican and South American schools. He was successful and I've got a copy of "Speed Edit" on it's way for review. Absolutely one of the best promotional speeches I've ever heard; and I've heard a lot.

Look closely: notice the Crytek poster? This was a station with the map editor for Far Cry2

I suppose if I had any regrets about attending Siggraph this year it would be that I didn't spend more time in the Exhibition Hall talking with smaller vendors and talking with the career/job reps. I'm considering changing careers to character animation and I missed talking to some of the better schools represented there. And the small vendors often had a more low-key approach to telling you about their project. I really wanted to talk to some of the smaller motion-capture companies. I chose to attend more classes and panels for my first Siggraph. Next time, if renderosity sends me again, I plan on giving myself more free time to let networking and chance meetings happen. These were the most interesting encounters I had while I was there.

By accident I ran across Friedrich Kirschner, but we only had about 10 minutes to chat. I took a picture, but it came out strangely (all a blur). Sorry, Friedrich. Spent time with my friend John Martin at the Reallusion suite (IClone 3) and met their CEO Charles Chen, a sharp guy who listened much more than he spoke. And I wrote Peter Rasmussen's name on the Memorial board which was in the West Hall. It made me feel good to write "machinima filmmaker" underneath. Peter would have loved Siggraph

On a final note, which will be of interest to our machinima community, I attended a panel late Tuesday night called "Anti-Auteur: User Generated Content" which featured several indie game producers and, surprisingly, a volunteer from the audience for a panelist who couldn't make it. The volunteer turned out to be a Microcoft dude who worked in their game development branch (if memory serves me) and did a good job for such a spur of the moment thing. I could have kicked myself for not volunteering as there was nary a mention of machinima (can you belive it?). Of course, I was falling asleep (literally) and would not have made a good panelist since I couldn't focus on anything after 12 hours of Siggraph and little sleep the night before. I didn't quite stay for the whole 2hr event, so they may have brought up machinima after I left, but I have a feeling they didn't, which is very strange to me. Their "user generated content" consisted of mod's for games and indie game development for the most part. In fact, I never once heard anyone discuss machinima during the my entire time at Siggraph. Even when I brought the subject up, most people either didn't know about it or were not that interested once I told them what it was. I suppose it's odd, but I'm not really troubled by this. Machinima and main-stream computer graphics are as far away as they could be. This "Anti-Auteur" panel was scheduled at a time when the regular Siggraph events are already over; it was a nod to the younger people attending the Conference.

One last aspect of Siggraph that I want to mention: their incredible organization. During the entire 5 days, despite some big problems that came up for me, not once did the conference structure fail to help or to provide answers. I was amazed at how kind people were how well-managed every event was. I discovered that Siggraph is essentially run by volunteers who give freely of their own time to help make the conference work. I imagine they've been doing this for a long time and it shows.

I urge you to buy a day-ticket to attend Siggraph if it comes to your city or you happen to be able to attend. This is without question one of the most inpiring (and tiring) events I've ever had the pleasure to attend. I feel as if I've only just scratched the surface of what one could get out of the conference. And that's without even talking about the extraordinary Animation Festival that was spread out over 5 days. After spending Friday afternoon at the Nokia Theater watching 3 hours (a small part of the festival), I really am sorry I didn't see more films. This was the best animation in the world without question.

For fun here's a link to one of the films I was enchanted with:

Morula

You can also find out more about Siggraph here. I haven't even touched on half of the things I did and the events I attended. There 's a daily blog at renderosity.com you can check for more. I'll be posting a large flickr picture file soon and will post a link here.

Trippy Machinima Series "Chadam" for Warner Bros.

2008-08-04T19:30:00.000-07:00

Quiet Earth is a movie site I visit frequently as the "post-apocalyptic" theme is a favorite and the entire website is devoted to it. Imagine my surprise when I was reading through the description of a trailer for an animated film series called "Chadam" that is to premiere on the Warner Bros. website this Fall, and came across this description:

"CHADAM is an upcoming project that will premier on The WB this fall (wow, they'll actually have a show someone wants to watch for once!) and from the looks of it, it might just be post apocalyptic. The project is based upon characters Alex Pardee created for the rock band The Used. This is supposedly an internet "phenomenon" but I haven't heard of it before now, when the teaser premiered at SDCC.

"Chadam lives as the "chosen one" in the hyper-stylized and exaggerated metropolitan island city of Vulture. His power of imagination is strong enough to physically change his environment and, therefore, his world … to save it from evil. The series will find Chadam in a place of refuge where he and others have retreated to plan their attack against a serial killer known as Viceroy. A dark, emotional action-horror-adventure fantasy story filled with self-discovery, Chadam will come to full 3D animated life via the magic of the Unreal Engine 3, the leading technology and development framework that powers cutting-edge games such as Gears of War and BioShock on today's popular platforms, including PC, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. The Internet series will serve as an incubator for future expansion of the Chadam universe, from additional online episodes to television, film, videogames and more."

An Unreal machinima series on the Warner Bros. website? How did I miss this? Take a look at the trailer which was shown at the recent ComiCon.

Sure makes the Unreal engine look good.

Digging further (the official website is just a photo with no info at this point), I found the MySpace page for the writer/producer, Alex Pardee, which has a lot more info. Alex has a background primarily in graphics and apparel design. He kind a hit it big with graphic design for a group The Used on their album. Now he's doing a machinima series in collaboration with producer Jason Hall and HD Films.
“As film, television and video games continue to evolve, the convergence of their associated tools, techniques and audiences are providing a fantastic opportunity for creative, cost-effective and compelling storytelling such as 'Chadam,'” said Jace Hall, Producer and President of HDFilms. “Utilizing the Unreal Engine 3 as part of our overall production process has enabled us to realize our full vision for the 3D series.”

I'm sure there is a very interesting story behind this production. I'm going to try to contact Alex and see if I can't set up an interview.

Stay Tuned

Machiniplex Premiere: "Demise" by Surgee. August 24th, 12PM Pacific Time

2008-08-03T17:29:00.000-07:00

Our next Machinima Premiere will be held on August 24th (Sunday) at 12Pm in Second Life at Hathead's Lounge. We will be screening "The Demise", an excellent World of Warcraft machinima created by Surgee. The production values for this film go far beyond the typical WoW machinima. It's available in a HD quality format at Vimeo right now and there is a nice page of comments and worshop clips provided by Surgee at warcraftmovies.com. We will be posting our streaming and downloadable copy of the film a week before the premiere.

I've been in correspondence with Daniel (Surgee) who is currently in Poland, and it doesn't look like he'll be able to attend the Premiere personally. But he's given me a written statement about the film and it's creation. Also, he hopes to send an audio recording that we will play at the premiere.

Recent financial problems have forced Daniel to sell his computer, so I'll be passing the hat around at the Premiere to come up with a little moola we can pass on to Daniel to get him a new one. Or, does anyone have a decent computer they'd like to donate to Daniel? Shipping to him will probably be costly though. Contact me if you have any ideas.

Expo Update

Over at Machinima-Expo, we've posted about confirmed guests for the Expo. At this point there are five confirmed guests and two corporate ones. We've really gotten great response for the Expo and will be posting more info as we update.

Be sure to submit your film to the Expo! As long as you have approx 25% machinima, we will accept your film for review. All films accepted at the Expo will be shown at least twice and will recieve a certificate of screening.

International Machinima Expo: Call for Entries

2008-07-29T09:33:00.000-07:00

After several weeks of waiting for our budget to be approved, The International Machinima Expo has hit the ground running. Ingrid, Phil Rice, Damien Valentine and I have all been pulling together to make this Festival unique and exciting for those who can attend. We have a new website at machinima-expo.com where you can go to find out more info about the Expo.

Today, we putting out a call for Entries for the Expo. Our approach is different than that of the Cambridge Fest or the NY Machinima Festival because we are not requiring that the films be entirely machinima. We are encouraging the idea of "anymation" where the filmmaker uses multiple programs and tools to create their film. Just be sure you have a minimum of 25% of the film shot in a real-time environment.

I'm very excited about the Expo. We'll be posting more information as often as we can.

Here is our press release:

International Machinima Expo Call For Entries
July 29, 2008

The International Machinima Expo (MachinExpo) is now accepting submissions for its 1st annual showcase which will feature the best work by emerging and established machinima directors. Part of Festival Arcadia in Montreal, Quebec, the event takes place from November 7-9, 2008 at Place Bonaventure in downtown Montreal before an audience expected to exceed 20,000.

Sponsored in part by Machiniplex.com, the expo is organized by Ingrid Moon of The Machinima Roadshow as well as three other veteran machinima producers: Ricky Grove, Damien Valentine, and Phil Rice.

MachinExpo will feature workshops, panel discussions, live film premieres, and several hours of screening of machinima films from all around the world. A jury of professionals from the entertainment and video game industries will select five (5) films for a Jury Prize, with a special 6th film awarded a Special Jury Prize honoring one exceptional Canadian machinima film. There are no category / genre restrictions on submissions, and there is no entry fee. Deadline for submissions is October 6, 2008.

For more information, including submission guidelines and instructions, please visit www.machinima-expo.com, or contact expo2008@machiniplex.net.

Some thoughts about Creative Freedom

2008-06-24T21:06:00.000-07:00

This is my first post here on the machiniplex blog and as such it seemed appropriate to share this, it's earliest examples of animation, dating back to 3200BC.

A few months ago, as I was working on my current machinima project (an original sci-fi series), a question popped into my head, “Wouldn't it be great if the BBC or some other studio picked this up and broadcast it?” and as I continued, I thought it over and came to my answer. No.

Sure, it would be nice to have an easier time casting the characters, being able to hire a dedicated team of 3d modelers to create more custom content than I'm able to produce myself, having a budget so I'm able to actually pay the people who contribute their voices and other talents, the list goes on.

Those are all good things and I'd still like to be able to do them but there's an something important about producing the series the way I am. There's nobody telling me to change this or that for whatever reasons, no threat of cancellation, no scheduling decisions out of my control. I'm able to make the series, tell the stories and release them as I see fit. Of course there are limitations with this approach but nothing that prevents me from carrying on with the project.

A web series I've been following is The Guild. It's not machinima but it's a good example of a show created without studio involvement. Several attempts to pitch the series were made but it was ultimately rejected. My understanding is the people approached didn't quite get the gamer humour and thought it wouldn't draw a big enough audience on television.

That didn't stop the series creator, Felicia Day. She went ahead and produced it anyway, self funding the first few episodes and the others with fan donations. I think it's great to see initiative like that and it's rather inspiring. The show has quite a big fan base now, with episode views in the hundreds of thousands.

That leads to another great thing about to this independent web based method of telling stories and film making, that's being able to interact directly with the audience. Executive Producers for television shows probably don't have the time to take a good look at what the fans are saying online, let alone post on forums and reply to comments. In fact, only one person who has filled that role comes to mind, J. Michael Straczynski who created Babylon 5. From the early planning stages to the present day, he has maintained a presence on Usenet where he discussed how the show was developing and even though it's been over for many years, he posts about his current projects.

I'm sure just about everyone who has made and released machinima has had some kind of online feedback. It's all part of the fun to know that after the time and effort you put into creating something, people are finding it, watching it and getting something from it. In some cases, even inspiring them to start working on their own videos (machinima or otherwise).

While this pretty much covers everything I had to say, I'd be interested to hear what other people think of all this. Any good thoughts or stories? Please share.

1st Annual "MachinExpo" Set to Inspire and Inform in Montreal

2008-06-12T10:40:00.000-07:00

The 1st Annual International Machinima Expo, now in the planning stages, is set to debut November 7-9, 2008, in Montreal, Quebec as part of Canada's largest game industry event, Festival Arcadia 2008. A combined effort from Machiniplex and the Machinima Roadshow, the "MachinExpo" is expecting to be the biggest exposition of machinima films, filmmakers, tools and techniques in the world with an expected audience of 20,000 in attendance at Festival Arcadia.

MachinExpo will consist of live "hands-on" machinima workshops, continuous international machinima film screenings, truly LIVE Machiniplex premieres, a keynote speaker, discussions and panels, machinima software presentations, and awards for selected submissions. We are also planning a few special surprises.

In addition to great content relevant to the machinima community, MachinExpo offers three days of non-stop gaming and contests at the Festival Arcadia, a multi-band dance party on Saturday night, the exciting international city of Montreal, a Machinima community exclusive event, and much, much more.

Events and panels are currently in the development stages. MachinExpo will announce its web site shortly. In the meantime you can contact the program directors below for more information.

Ricky Grove at grovericky[at]gmail
or
Ingrid Moon at hockeygoon[at]gmail

Sam Goldwater and "Monad" Premiere

2008-05-26T11:36:00.000-07:00

Yesterdays "Monad" Premiere was not as well attended as previous events, but the conversation with Sam Goldwater, the director, was lively and informative. Sam is an articulate and refreshingly candid person who answered questions for an hour and a half before we all retired to Hathead's dance party.

That's Sam on the right under that hat.

We are working on trying to record some of the Q&A session so that people who couldn't make the event can listen to at least some of conversation. For now, let me recap some of the main talking points.

-"Monad" is a final project for one of Sam's college classes. Although he had conceived of the film a year or so ago, he delayed working on the film until a month before the project was due. He was actually composing some music up to 5am on the day he was to submit the work. We talked a bit about the benefits from such "concentrated" work; the accidents that work out in your favor, quick decisions leading to subconscious connections in content and the build up of isolation/passion in your work.

-We all enjoyed the irony of being in a large virtual world as virtual characters watching a film employing virtual characters and telling a story critical of the very activities we were participating in.

-Sam wanted to make a realistic "character" driven film that was distinctly different from typical machinima stories of guns and vehicles and violence. He took many digital photos of the city he lived in (Middlesex? in England), esp at night, and composited them into the shots he filmed in HL2.

-Careful attention to detail gave the film a life of it's own. Sam spent considerable time working on the depth of field shots (see the first bar scene) which took a lot of time to work out in After Effects. He also worked hard on finding the right combinations of HL2 animations (you can layer them to produce variations), a sort of "trial by error" method that produced impressive results.

-Sam was also quick to point out that the sound and the sound mix were not as well done as other parts of the film; he simply didn't have the time, he said. Also, the opening shots that were meant to establish a virtual funeral were not well crafted and resulted in some confusion about what was going on in the story. I'm hoping at some point Sam will consider re-shooting these scenes as it would start the film more clearly.

-Much was made of the effectiveness of the story and the empathy Sam created with his characters. I pointed out two scenes I thought were remarkable: one was the scene right after the protagonist has painted stencils on the wall and remarks to his girlfriend "Do you miss the stars?" - the camera pans up to the sky which is subtly replaced by a spaceship flying in a void; the image becomes something on a computer screen and we realize the game is "Eve" thus re-enforcing the theme of confused realities (games/real life). The second scene comes earlier where the guy (why can't I remember his name?) meets the girl in an internet game bar. The subtle animations and beautifully crafted shots really create a reality all their own; one that is convincing and compelling.

-While Sam was a bit disappointed with the acting of his female lead (Sarah Speak), many of us felt that her work was excellent and wondered why Sam was frustrated. It turned out that Sam wanted certain aspects of the characters personality to come out in performance, but felt he didn't get it and so perhaps missed what the actress actually did in the performance. My respect for Sam here really went up as he was willing to concede that he may have missed something in Sarah's work. I'd also like to say that Dan Jackson, the male lead, was equally as good. And despite a few popping "p's", the recordings were excellent.

-And finally Sam told us that he had received very good feedback on the film and was going to start work on his first really "team" effort for his next, longer film. He hopes to license the rights to make the film from Valve (a notion most of us were not sanguine about) and conceded that they might have to switch to another engine (CryEngine in Far Cry 2 looks fantastic, Sam said) if Valve is uninterested.

Of course, we all retired to the dance floor at the end and let Hathead do his DJ thang. The music was wonderful and HH really has a feel for creating a fun, party atmosphere. Even Sam was dancing away! I love the chat during this time as it's more informal and chaotic. What fun!

My thanks to everyone who attended. Special thanks to Sam for making such a great film and for coming into SL to talk about it with such candor. And also to Hathead, whose continuing support for the Machiniplex Premiere's is much appreciated.

"Monad" by Sam Goldwater is currently streaming at Machiniplex.com. There is also a high quality 800x600 wmv download link just below the main movie screen.

Machiniplex Premiere: "Monad" by Sam Goldwater, Sunday, May 25th, 12PM Pacific Time

2008-05-18T20:36:00.000-07:00

Machiniplex is proud to announce another Machinima Premiere this Sunday, May 25th at 12PM (Pacific Time). We will be presenting Sam Goldwater's film "Monad" at Hathead's Lounge in Second Life. Sam's previous films, the experimental "Dead Dogma" and "Robes" are both beautifully crafted films using the Half Life 2 SDK. While both of these films are excellent, I think Sam has surpassed himself with "Monad". I don't think I'm exaggerating when I say that "Monad" has some of the best character animation I've ever seen in a machinima film.

"Monad" is a tweaked love story between two very different people. The backdrop is any urban city where young people are disenfranchised and have become obsessive gamers. When a young woman gamer starts a passionate affair with a man who is committed to freeing himself from the contstraints of society, an unexpected tragedy ensues.

The set design and style of the film is beautiful and poetic. The acting is excellent. And the entire film comes together in a way that serves a sad and moving story. I really like this film.

We will show the film at around 12:15PM (Pacific Time) and then have a Q&A with director Sam Goldwater. I'm looking forward to discussing the film with Sam. Especially his faceposer work and custom set designs.

Details on how to attend the Premiere in Second Life

Hathead's Lounge slurl (web address to take you to Second Life location):

http://slurl.com/secondlife/HatHead/85/148/607

If you have never used Second Life, you can download their FREE software and give it a try. There will be plenty of people on hand at the event to help you figure out the interface and move around.

http://www.secondlife.com

We will be communicating primarily via voice chat, so if you want to talk you'll need a mic/headphone combination. They are pretty cheap now and you can find them at most electronics/computer stores. My favorite brand is Sennheiser.

However, you can communicate your questions or comments via text chat as well, so it's not necessary to have a headphone/mic to attend the Premiere.

Oh, and if you think of it, drop a few linden dollars in the cup for Hathead.

See you there!

"Iron Sky" New Collaborative Movie

2008-05-06T10:58:00.000-07:00

Intriguing post on boingboing.net today regarding a collaborative live-action/animated film called "Iron Sky". The teaser is really something:

This creative commons licensed film is being produced/created by the same crew that developed the "Star Wreck" collaborative film a few years ago. The idea is to become part of the beta group for the new film and collaborate with them by filling in work that needs to be done. Their blog site has more information and the site where you can sign up is wreckamovie.com

I'm sure gonna join. What an interesting project!

Machiniplex Bulletin Board 01

2008-05-02T21:26:00.000-07:00

I've always enjoyed the posts at Shattered Keyboard and Overman's site where they occasionally feature a huge collection of links. Using this idea, I've decided to create the first of what will be several "Bulletin Board" entries for Machiniplex. The difference will be that it won't be just links, but media, pictures and short announcements that don't necessarily need a full post.

Here we go....

The Wizard of OS Premiere

Overhead shot of the OS Premiere.

Last Sunday's "Wizard of OS: The Fish Incident" premiere went very well. Tom Jantol (director of OS) and I spoke for an hour or so and then fielded questions from the audience, which consisted of around 20+ people, including several Second Lifers who just came because the event looked interesting. It took a bit for Tom and I to warm up, but once we zoned in together the conversation was wide-ranging. Everything from Tom's favorite author, a surprising G.K. Chesteron, to Tom's frank statement that he has no trouble with film technique, it's the story that is hard work. We discussed his "anymation" idea and the various programs Tom used to create OS. Motionbuilder, Sony Vegas, Moho (now Anime Studio) and Poser are his main tools. He indicated he spent "too much money" on some live motion shots that he brought into the scene. Tom was keen to let everyone know that the live motion scenes were not composited, but rather painted on surfaces as video textures using Motionbuilder.

Tom and his mysterious Butoh avatar

After the Q&A we were able to lure Tom on to the dancing floor and once he figured out how to activate the dancing animations that Hathead had built in, Tom was twirling around and having a ball. It's interesting to me how conversation changes while people's avatars are dancing; very different from when every one is just sitting or standing around. People seem to loosen up while dancing. At any rate, after thanking Hathead for setting up the event and once again letting us use his island for our event, I had to head out to an appointment and left Tom dancing and chatting away. You know, for someone who's worried about his English, he didn't seem to care once he got his rhythm down. Thank you, Tom.

-Two New Members of Machiniplex-

I've asked Damien Valentine and Tom Jantol to become members of Machiniplex. They have both accepted and will be blogging here starting in May. Both of them are well-known members of the machinima community, but aren't heard enough in my opinion. Damien has directed over a half a dozen Star Wars related machinima and has been active in supporting Machiniplex from it's inception. Tom is a Croatian nut case who's "anymation" ideas are becoming increasingly popular. He promises to write some controversial stuff. Good. That's what our Machiniplex blog needs. I welcome them both.

-Bitfilm Machinima Nominees-

Overman has a list of the Bitfilm Machinima Nominees and, boy howdy, is it a hot line-up. Machiniplex is proud to have hosted Leo's "The Beast",Tobia's"Among Fables and Men" and Lainey's "The Dumb Man", all three of which are imaginative and wonderful films. Watching the other entries, I was particularly struck by Egils Mednis's "The Ship". A simply beautiful film. Hard to believe it was created in the Unreal Game engine. My congratulations to all of the nominees.

-Recent Machinima Program Updates-

Antics has updated their machinima/previz software to 3.1 in the last week. The main adjustment is in adding the ability to import the free Google Sketch-up format (.skp) directly in to and Antics scene. Antics 3.1 can now search the Google Warehouse while inside of Antics and download just about anything available. This is a huge step up in available content. Also, a recent tutorial there shows how to animate your Google Warehouse character using some simple techniques. Antics also has a new blog, which looks to be an excellent way of staying up on developments with this excellent program.

Moviestorm has a significant update to their popular (and free) program. Version 1.04 has many improvements, most notably a new interface, a gesture previewer and improved shadows for furniture. There are also many fixes for known issues like footsliding at the end of a walk cycle. The forum at Moviestorm is very lively and supportive.

Iclone is preparing to launch a significant upgrade this summer (July). IClone 3.0 should be a major improvement over previous version. In-scene motion editing, sky and terrain editing, new timeline, real-time vehicle control and many enhancements make this version of IClone the most interesting version yet. There's a good "First Look" video on Youtube and an IClone Blog that has screenshots and updates. This version of IClone should be a big one.

-Overman's ZS forum is the place to be-

I thought I had given up on forums last year, but increasingly Overman's (Phil Rice) forums are becoming a new hang out. Not only are there interesting people posting, but many new faces are showing up and offering content and commentary that is inspiring. With Phil ramping up plans for 52 weeks of content on his Youtube.com channel (Phil has to be the hardest working man in machinima, eh?) and with some interesting new (ahem...) developments with his Overcast podcast, I think that z-studios.com is going to be the place to be. What a guy!

-"Louis Revenge" a new film from Andre Pesch-

After working with Andre on "The Days After" a few years ago, I've been a huge fan of his work. His new film "Louis Revenge" is not quite as accomplished as "The Days After", but it sure is a beautiful film to look at and the story is just right for a short film. Andre, if you're listening: I want to work with you again!

-Amorphous Blob's Experimental Machinima Film Exhibition-

Our own Nefarious Guy (Mr. Harrison Heller of "Clockwork") has created an interesting page for a recent class project, which is an exhibition for experimental machinima. Mr. Heller profiles 6
experimental films and comments on each. His goal is to raise awareness of the film experiment in machinima. Well worth your time to stop by his site and see what he's created.

-3d World Magazine-

Despite it's hefty price-tag in the US ($15), I've become addicted to 3d World Magazine. The new issue, #104, has an article on the current state of machinima. Unfortunately, it takes a month or so to show up in Los Angeles magazine stores, so I have to make do with issue #103, which is a hum-dinger. If you don't know about this magazine, it adds a DVD of tutorials, free programs, demo programs and animated films with each issue. Issue #103 came with a special DVD which had 50 of what is, in the magazine's opinion, to be the best short animated films of the last decade or so. I've only made my way through half of the films and they are astoundingly good. It's an expensive magazine (comparatively), but for what you get it's worth every penny.

-Creepy CGI Animation-

Boingboing.net featured this interactive CGI of a young Asian woman recently and it just creeps me out. Apparently, it's flash-based, but darned if I can see how they've made it so life like. And what's with the strange blood-shot eyes? Eeeuuuwww...

-Interview with Alex Sandri, Maya Artist-

I am a staff writer for Renderosity.com this year and recently interviewed an extremely talented Maya artist, Alex Sandri. He is a very popular, but somewhat secretive, artist at the site. After an extended email interview, I've come to wish I could go to Thailand where he lives and spend time with him. Be sure to look through his gallery if you want to be blown away. This guy is good!

-Masters of Russian Animation-

I finally splurged and bought the entire "Masters of Russian Animation" Collection on DVD. What a collection of masterpieces. I've only just finished Disc one. The gem of this first disc is Mikhail Aldashin's, "Kele" (1988), a masterful abstracted story of a flute-playing monster and the two young girls who encounter him. The character movement, the style and the story are remarkable.

-Muxtape - Mix Tape Site-

And finally, although it's not animation related, if you like putting together music mix tapes for your friends, head over to Muxtape.com and set up an account. With a wonderful minimalist design, you can upload mp3's of 12 pieces of music (or spoken word) and create your own mixtape. Phil Rice has an excellent one up. Mine is not to shabby either.

Tom Jantol Interviews...er....Tom Jantol!

2008-04-25T23:39:00.000-07:00

Dress rehearsal for the Premiere of "Wizard of Os: The Fish Incident"

Of course, nothing associated with Mr. Tom Jantol is traditional or even predictable. I think that's one of the main reasons why I like him and his work so much. So, while trying to follow up on the idea that maybe Tom would like to post some sort of "directors statement" to help viewers understand his new film; or perhaps a short interview that might give viewers a background on Tom and his work, he sent me the following interview....with himself.

Take it away, Tom!

F.A.Q. you, Tom

Q: Are you schizophrenic?

A: No, I am not. Tom Jantol is. Or maybe other way around, I am not sure. Any other movie related question?

Q: It is movie related. Very reason I am asking this is split personality of your movie. Split on any level I can think of. For beginning, story is confusing (probably something what your Europeans read as artistic); The Tin Win man in chase for flying fish!? Of course, fish is made of old geographic map. What the hell is this?

A: As you said, we European call that art. No explanation for art. By the way, I like "Tin Win" name. Not bad, almost European.

Q: Seriously, in movie you had every attention to be experimental, technically and story wise, and yet you build whole movie on oldest possible cliche - the chase. Good guy chasing bad guy. So, what is experimental in cliche?

A: It is experimental cliche. Another good term. You know, you sound as somebody which movie I will like to see. Are you a movie maker?

Q: I am the one with questions. And no, I don't making movies, have better things to do. Again, what so special about weird Tom chasing strange Jerry?

A: I like cliche. Because it is so easy to hate them. What I like the most about them is this infamous universal level of recognition. Hero against villain situations is part of our everyday life, of everything we think or do. Of course, we jump often from role to role but it is that kind of simplicity what drives us to make till another day without loosing sanity or to make another movie, book or song.

Q: Well, I am not sure this is what I was asking...

A: Yes, you do. But I am probably unable to answer you anything about movie without some some kind of framework. I live in Croatia, country small in everything except history. And just in the middle of my life, this country history had dramatic change of... everything. Socialistic country became capitalistic over night, culture oriented to east starts to run to opposite direction, and suddenly - childhood with Yuriy Norshteyn's movies was replaced with Schrek 8. Huge legacy of wonderful "Zagreb School of animation", at that time the stronger animation philosophy in whole universe, starts to fade away behind cheap Disney copycats. Everything changed in political, cultural, social, any possible way. And of course, war did the final job; anything and anybody with even resemblance to healthy brain was put on side, in shade where they still are, without chance to come out.

Q: Still waiting for point here...

A: I was young filmmaker then. Naive half brained artist went to war as camera man and came back with absolute certainty that there is no hope to human kind, that art of any kind is to weak to change anything. Helpless art. Without any use art.

Q: Art have no use, this is why is art.

A: Well, you are much smarter then me, I don't have a clue what is art and why. I can't think that way, I must have use. So, I found one.

Q: I smell conclusion larger then life. Can you just answer something normally? For example, your movies are quite dark, why is that? In "Fish incident", if I understand correctly, winning battle over Fish was for nothing because that river of human traffic is new, bigger threat? Same was in "Bridge" where you literary crashed child to a nothing, to dot behind a word "The End". Do you really believe that hopeless end is near? Why bother than? Why make movies or any kind of art?

A: If we are all on road to hell, and we are without any doubt, somebody must takes notes. I am film maker so my notes are movies. People are already characters in every possible way, so I will use animated ones. Simple as that. Making animation for me is watching apocalypse from front seat. Exchanging notes with other observers is just inherited curiosity from that old socialistic time of my country. Nobody is perfect.

Q: I always had problems with this "I am just observer" attitude. It is so comfortable place. Nothing constructive to offer, no seeking for a solution, just criticism. And than you have a nerve to unplug yourself from any responsibility because you are.. oh, what a glorious word - observer? If this is a case, why your movie is so likable? Why need for viewers, festivals, contests? Why are you trying to portrait ugliness with so pretty pictures? This is at least dishonest.

A: Because I want to promote my animated observations to full time job. I want to earn enough money to attend any festival I want and there talk how I don't have money to attend every festival I want. Pretty pictures are for buyers, ugliness is for viewers. Sometimes this are the same people, sometimes not. This way I will never loose any artistic integrity - because I already was, I did it myself. I calculate all the time and this calculation, this integration of likability is framework important for me as any other. This makes me untouchable. There is nothing some producer or company can ask me to change in my movie I didn't calculate already. If they come up with some insane request, this is just because they didn't recognize that I already did it. This is their mistake and I am not here to correct other mistakes. So, I will not change anything. I've been there. Also, I worked in visual marketing for one very, very big company and I know how these things work. To hell with all of them.

Q: Responsibility part of my question you skipped? Or I didn't recognize your answer?

A: What do you want to hear? I am responsible only to myself and to my movie. First response I got after "Fish Incident" was that movie is eye candy and brain candy. This is exactly what I want to do with my movies. To make candies. Only responsibility I am willing to take.

And this is not just my case; very often from this part of the world contemporary animated shorts made by my generation are surrealistic and strange but crafty, thanks to Jury's. In same time visually impressive with readable simplicity easy to digest - thanks to Schrek's. Culture in my part of world is full of "we are going down, but we will look good doing that" philosophy.

Anyway, to use linearity of classic dramatic conflict or to use "frame in frame" (circus, toybox, browser) is imperative for me, it is only way I can think of to surround movie with some kind of inner logic and drive movie to the end. This is also reason why I need to obey any possible rule of craft, any known 180 degree or stage blocking rule, any camera angle must have reason why is chosen. My movies are very conservative made and it is quite strange that everybody talks about this movies as experimental. I even take couple awards in experimental categories on festivals. This is more surrealistic then my movies.

Look closer, there is nothing really experimental in this shorts; lost guy coming home to a girl, trapped toy reciting Poe, funeral of Pacman, broken toybox, child fighting to grow up ends crashed in process, rusted antivirus hardware chasing fishy virus. Business as usual.

What can look experimental is toying with 2D and 3D but this is another story...

Q: Oh no. Here we go...

A: Yes, but this also is not experimental, really. Maybe it can be in some other form of movie making, but in animation... I mean, everything is possible is animation, houses can fly, horses are talking, people are good and gentile... Animation is experiment and to declare experiment as experimental, well...

Using mixed 2D and 3D is simply my understanding that nothing is really 3D in movie. I am not sure what "3D" actually mean. We see everything in 2D, we have only two eyes laying on same axis. If we get third eye on top of the nose, which I seriously doubt we will, then it will be possible to see that third dimension. Till then it all comes down to nothing more then convention. This convention became really obsolete when software like AnimeStudio starts to pop up. Actually, every software where you can mimic 3D space using 2D planes makes this convention obsolete. AfterEffects are good example. Cubism artists was aware of that long time ago.

But what really makes this type of mixing possible isn't some new tool, or new definition of old one, but incredible power of human brain to - believe. This will never stop to amaze me. In the moment when art - in this case movie - start, all what we now about dimensions, physics, any kind of science, any possible knowledge simply stop to exist. Or, better yet, all this perception of reality becomes easy to shape material. That material then, shaped in any way author want, brings completely new set of knowledge. Very convincing rules are then born just to be alive between opening and closing titles.

That horse is still talking, but if he start to make sound of waterfall he will not be convincing. Because we know he just talk. We know that horse talk!?

Of course we do.

So, you see, there is no need to separate animation by how much axis it show, or animation as form by tools author use. CGI, real time, no time, pencil, clay, love - it isn't matter what technique author choose if he is capable to give audience key for reading his mind.

Q: Should I go puke now?

A: Not yet, ask me about "Anymation" first.

Q: My god. When I came back. You can wait. As long as you want.

Mr. Jantol in his Second Life persona.

Tom will Premiere his new film "Wizard of OS: The Fish Incident" this Sunday, April 27th at 12PM (Pacific Time) in Second Life at Hathead's famous Tower Lounge. Tom will come all the way from Zagreb, Croatia, to attend a screening of his film and to answer questions from himself...uh...the audience.

Fun at the Ivy Film Festival

2008-04-24T19:31:00.000-07:00

Now that I have recovered from a sleepless but very exciting trip to Providence, RI for the Ivy Film Festival, I finally have the mental faculty to tell you a little about it. I believe it is the largest student-run festival in the world and its purpose is to recognize the artistic achievements of student filmmakers and writers.

First, let me thank "Nefarious Guy" (Harrison Heller), currently a Freshman at Brown University, for his hard work getting a machinima category added to the festival, organizing a contest through Machinima.com, and organizing and promoting a panel on machinima among the many other exciting events at the Festival. Right up to the moment when he nervously went on stage to announce the winner of the machinima category - and did a great job without missing a beat - the festival was a success and an exciting experience for me and everyone in attendance.

Here's Harrison's machinima video promoting the machinima category and contest.

Despite some technical difficulties getting started, I presented a pretty broad introduction to machinima to a small but very interested audience of students of film and digital media. Harrison's wonderful parents were also in attendance, and for them it was an opportunity to learn about this strange hobby that had become a driving force for their son's creativity.

I spoke primarily of the use of built-in features of game engines and other means of "cheating" to raise the production value of a machinima movie, showing a clip from my Roadshow library as an example for each. For example, I explained (generally speaking, as I'm not a technical guru) how Andre Pesch used environmental effects to create the surreal, washed-out, medically sterile look to The Days After. For another example I explained how Jason Choi used the model viewer and a lot of green-screening to achieve a particular visual quality in Edge of Remorse. We also discussed techniques used to get around the lip-sync issue, both in terms of story design and film composition. Everyone was impressed to realize that in Bill et John you never really see any "people" in the film - the "characters" are expressed through action and acting, and the "on-screen actors" are jets.

Near the end I demonstrated the difference between "puppeteering" and "script-based" machinima, explaining the concepts and challenges with each method. I had footage from last year's Festival Arcadia workshops and the end results of two of the movies (SWA1 SWA2) (we had used Jedi Knight II: Jedi Academy on an 11-computer LAN with an overhead screen). I also had the most current update from MovieStorm, which is always fun to demo (but difficult without a mouse plugged in).

After the talk, Harrison and I went to the Master Class with Martin Scorcese (exerpt & link below). I had a third-row-center VIP seat surrounded by professional filmmakers and writers and actor Ben Kingsley. I had a fantastic view of the talk and everything he said reminded me of why I went to film school so many eons ago, and all that I had learned but haven't taken the opportunity to apply, and so much more that I had never learned or even thought about... it was enlightening and humbling and entertaining all at once.

Excerpt:

Martin Scorsese revisited some of his most iconic films Saturday in a master class at Brown U, reflecting with Paramount prexy John Lesher on his signature style, the spirit of improvisation with Robert De Niro, some of his early studio encounters and his efforts to preserve film history.

The line for Scorsese’s master class, part of Brown’s seventh-anniversary Ivy Film Festival, snaked a thick S over the university’s manicured lawns, with many attendees filing in from an earlier campus screening of Scorsese’s Rolling Stones doc “Shine a Light.”

Read the full article at Variety.com

("Shine a Light," by the way, was screened at the same time as my machinima talk, which is unfortunate in that respect but I'm still very happy with those who did come.)

Later, at the awards, I met Tom Rothman, Chairman of Fox Filmed Entertainment, whose amiability and charm belies his power and strategic mind. Rothman gave the keynote address in which he delivered an uproarious depiction of the realities of the "Industry" without the least hint of discouragement or intimidation.

Winners are posted on the Ivy Film Festival site. Congratulations to Xanatos for his winning film, "Halflife 2 Anxiety" in both the judged and popular categories.

One of the highlights of my trip, I must add, was my driver, Bob (not depicted above). Ever-available with a car or limo, he made me feel like a VIP at every turn, and with my Harrison-family entourage in tow, I was certainly in good company all the way back to Boston Logan airport.

The End. Hugh, you missed a good one :)

Machinma Premiere: Tom Jantol's "Wizard of OS: the Fish Incident" (4/27)

2008-04-21T23:31:00.000-07:00

This Sunday, April 27th at 12PM (Pacific Time), machiniplex will host experimental filmmaker Tom Jantol's new film "The Wizard of OS: the Fish Incident" based on a fragment of writing by renowned inventor/eccentric Nicola Tesla. The event will be held in the virtual world, Second Life, in Hathead's Tower Lounge. We will screen the film and afterwards Tom will be present to answer questions and discuss the making of this action-packed potboiler.

A still from the beginning of "Wizard of Os: the Fish Incident"

Tom is one of our most interesting and, to my mind, important machinima filmmakers. There is not a single machinima film like what Tom creates. His concept of "Anymation", meaning to use whatever tools help you create your projects/films with, has been taking hold in the community and among animation filmmakers for the last few years. His films are also filled with ideas and concepts that only start to become clear after repeated viewings.

I'm delighted that Tom is allowing us to Premiere "The Fish Film" (as he calls it) since I consider it his finest work to date. The mixing of form and content is just right. And while Tom has been experimenting/playing with the "Wizard of OS" figure for a while, it seems to me that in this film, the character (if you could call it that) has matured and grown into a kind of crippled super hero. The scope of the film is wider and the clear conflict presented is both funny and strange at the same time.

Our "protagonist" is watching a drunken Santa stagger across the snow

Of course, I could be full of shit and not even know it (most likely), but that's the beauty of poetic films like Tom's "Fish Film", it can support many different interpretations and they all work (some more and some less). Which is why having Tom present at the Premiere to discuss his films is such a cool situation. Unlike, say, David Lynch, who likes to play the Cheshire Cat when asked about his films, Tom wants to discuss them. I'd say he's even eager to ask questions of the viewer himself.

Tom is Croatian and lives in Zagreb, Croatia (my god, I wrote him recently and asked if he lived in Belgrade...he politely told me to **** myself since Belgrade is the capitol of Serbia, a country Croatia is at war with....Christ, I'm sorry Tom!) and is worried about his "mangled english", but I have a feeling he's going to do just fine. Let's all try to make him comfortable by using as much American and English slang as we can. Like let's make him cheesed off a bit so we can give him a bit of the habdabs..yeah, bobs yer uncle, mate! I'm sure Tom will love it.

Still trying to find that damn fish!

Some details on how to attend the Premiere:

Second Life slurl (web address to take you to Hathead's Lounge):

http://slurl.com/secondlife/HatHead/85/148/607

If you have never used Second Life, you can download their FREE software and give it a try. There will be plenty of people on hand at the event to help you figure out the interface and move around.

http://www.secondlife.com

We will be communicating primarily via voice chat, so if you want to talk you'll need a mic/headphone combination. They are pretty cheap now and you can find them at most electronics/computer stores. My favorite brand is Sennheiser.

Oh, and if you think of it, drop a few linden dollars in the cup for Hathead. In fact, drop a couple hundred.

See you there!

"Voices" by Katy Fosk to Premiere Today (4/20)

2008-04-19T23:36:00.000-07:00

Here I am standing next to the new Interview Table

As previously announced, the experimental machinima "Voices", co-created by Katy Fosk and Michael R. Joyce, will Premiere today (Sunday, April 20th) at 12PM (Pacific Time) or 8PM (GMT) in Second Life at Hat Head's Tower Lounge. As you can see from the snap above, Hathead has made us a nice interview table & chairs for the Q&A, which will come right after we show the film "live" in Second Life. "Voices" is currently showing at Machiniplex.com exclusively. You can stream the film there or download it via the link under the video screen.

With Hathead & Michael watching, Voices plays on the screen

You can reach Hathead's Tower Lounge by following this slurl (if you already have Second Life
installed):

http://slurl.com/secondlife/HatHead/85/148/607

If you have never used Second Life, it's free and easy to use. There will be plenty of people on hand to help you out if you have never tried SL before. Here is a link to download the software. You don't need a beefy computer to get it to work. It's built for the PC, Mac's and Linux.

http://www.secondlife.com

We'll be using voice chat primarily while we are in Second Life, so you need a headset and a microphone, but there is also a text chat that will be happening at roughly the same time so you can keep up with what's being said.

Here is a world clock that will help you convert the 12PM Pacific Time to the correct time in your area/country:

http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/converter.html

- ALSO -

Next Sunday (April 27th) we will feature Tom Jantol's new machinima "Wizard of OS: The Fish Incident". Tom will be attending the Premiere and will be answering questions afterwards. The Premiere for "Wizard of OS" will also start at 12pm (Pacific Time, 8PM GMT). I'll be sending out invites via Facebook on Monday.

The enigmatic central figure in "Wizard of OS: the Fish Incident"

Two Machinima Films Premiering in April

2008-04-13T18:18:00.000-07:00

A clip from "Voices", directed by Katy Fosk.

Machiniplex will be featuring two new films at the end of April. On Saturday, April 20th at 12PM (Pacific Time) we will be presenting "Voices", a Machinima film by Katy Fosk. Once again, we'll be having the premiere at Hathead's Tower Lounge in Second Life. We plan on showing the film a bit after 1pm and then Katy and Micheal R. Joyce (who co-created the film) will be on hand for a Q&A.

A scene from "The Wizard of OS: the Fish Incident"

And then on April 27th (Sunday) at 12PM (Pacific Time) we will be premiering Tom Jantol's "The Wizard of OS: the Fish Incident", also at Hathead's Tower Lounge in Second Life. Tom won the European Machinima award for best experimental film last year. This film is even better, in my opinion.

I'm very grateful to Katy and Tom for allowing Machiniplex to premiere their films. We are particularly pleased to present both films since they are experimental in nature. This type of film is not often seen in machinima, a medium dominated by realism and genre. Both films experiment with form and content, and yet tell interesting stories that are filled with ideas as well as poetic imagery.

Katy has created a blog entry discussing the film here. It's the April 7th entry (2nd one down). And Tom's blog has most of his previous films, including previous "Wizard of OS" entries.

The address (slurl) of Hathead's Tower Lounge is:

http://slurl.com/secondlife/HatHead/85/148/607

Second Life is free and easy to sign up. We use a combination of voice chat and text chat for our premiere events. So if you have a mic/headphone set up come early to make sure you are ready to go.

http://www.secondlife.com

We will be streaming the films on a large screen in the Tower Lounge. Be sure to update your Quick Time version, since Second Life uses QT (.mov) as the video stream of choice.

You can use this time converter to find out when 12pm Pacific Time is for your time zone

And, as always, both films will be available at our Machiniplex.com film site a few days before the premiere. We hope you can find the time to see these exceptional films and to come by our Second Life premiere and chat with the directors.

More on Peter Rasmussen

2008-04-07T08:42:00.000-07:00

Jackie Tenure, Peter's friend and collaborator, has written about Peter Rasmussen's recent death at her Rockpool blog. In addition to her comments about his death, she includes her moving and surprising speech at his funeral.

How painful his death must have been for her; for all of his friends and acquaintances. That he chose to walk away from his life (in Jackie's words) is just so very hard to understand considering how admired and respected he was as a filmmaker. That he suffered from a degenerative eye disease explains much, but we will never really know what was in his heart. Jackie mentions "pride" in her speech and I'm sure that is a good part of it, but I wonder if loneliness wasn't a factor as well. Loneliness and a deep feeling that somehow life is just not worth living. I know what that feels like and it is a terrible place. One that not everyone comes back from. I was lucky.

Thank you, Jackie. Thank you for taking the time to tell us about Peter and for sharing your speech at his funeral. I think Peter would have been proud.

"Clockwork" is streaming at Machiniplex: Premiere today at 4PM

2008-03-29T08:48:00.000-07:00

Watching the Clockwork test through our "Love" spectacles.

After a bit of wrangling and thumb-twiddling while waiting for files to encode, transfer,etc., we've finally got our new Machinima Premiere film "Clockwork" up and running at Machiniplex. The flash video looks good, but I think the downloadable wmv version is better. Sorry the size of the download is so large (400mb), but if you have the patience, this is the version to watch.

As a reminder, we will be actually showing the film in Second Life at Hathead's Tower Lounge today (Saturday) at 4PM (Pacific Time). Hathead managed to re-encode the .mov version we sent him and it looks pretty good in-world. This will be the first time we've managed to do what we'd always wanted to do on a Premiere: show the film and then have the discussion afterwards.

Hathead's Tower Bar is here:

http://slurl.com/secondlife/HatHead/85/148/607

Or you can IM either Hathead Rickenbacker or gToon June when you arrive in Second Life. We will teleport you to the bar. We will show the film around 4:30PM (once everyone settles down) and then have a Q&A with Phil Rice (music/acting), myself (sound/acting) and the director, Nefarious Guy.

Nefarious has also created a nice post about "Clockwork" and what he was trying to say/do with the film. You can find the link here:

http://blob.xurst.com/viewtopic.php?t=336&highlight=

My thanks to Hathead for letting us use his island for the Premiere and for helping to get everything set up. Please feel free to donate to Hathead if you feel so inclined. You can right-click on the movie screen and donate any amount directly to Hathead. He's got the pay the rent, too.

See you there!

Machiniplex Premiere: "Clockwork", a crime drama. Sat. March 29th, 4PM (Pacific) @ Second Life

2008-03-23T19:17:00.001-07:00

Machiniplex is very proud to present "Clockwork, a crime drama shot in Garry's Mod and directed by Nefarious Guy (Amorphous Blob Productions). Music is by Phil Rice. We will be premiering the film in Second Life at Hathead's famous Tower Lounge on Saturday, March 29th at 4PM (Pacific Time, or 11PM GMT). After the premiere (the film lasts about 12 minutes) we will meet the director and some of his crew for a question and answer session.

Of course, there will be drinks and dancing after the Q&A, so stay as long as you like!

We have decided to move our Premiere to Second Life after continuing frustrations with Skype. If you have never tried Second Life, but want to attend, now would be a good time to set up an account. It's free and pretty easy to set up. You might want to try out the Second Life orientation before the event, or just show up early and ask for help if you need it. Second Life uses a "slurl" to get from place to place (instant transport). The slurl for Hathead's Tower Lounge is:

http://slurl.com/secondlife/HatHead/85/148/607

We will be using voice chat, so be sure you microphone is working. If you don't have a mic, that's ok since there is a good text chat in Second Life and we will have one going at the event.

If you need a good time converter to figure out what 4PM Pacific Time would be in your timezone, try this link:

(http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/)

I will be posting the film at our Machiniplex site on Thursday night, so you can see it before the Premiere if you like, or wait to see it on Saturday.

My thanks to Hathead for letting us use his remarkable space and for his continued support. Please feel free to tip Hathead via the Second Life interface at any time you like. You can deposit Linden dollars (the Second Life currency) directly into his account.

Frank is about to do something he'll regret.

Clockwork

"Clockwork" is a crime drama about a hit-man who tries to change his life, but finds that the mob won't let him go. Frank is a killer who wakes up to his conscience too late to protect his family and friends. Nefarious Guy wrote the script and shot it in Garry's Mod. I came on as an actor (I play Frank) and as a sound designer back in October of 2007. Phil Rice joined at the same time to play Vinnie and create the superb music for the film. Production covered about 5-6 months.

Down these mean streets a man must walk.

The Don gives his blessing for Frank to join the "organization"

Vinnie likes his work a little too much.

And here's a trailer that Nefarious Guy put together early in the production. It doesn't feature Phil's music (it's a temp track) and the sound is wonky, but it's still a decent representation of what the film is like.

Disclosure/Recusal

Since I play a part as an actor in "Clockwork" and designed the sound, I recused (removed) myself from the usual process of deciding whether a film is premiered at Machiniplex. I gave no assurances to the director or indicated to anyone how I felt about "Clockwork" as a film. Nefarious Guy, the director, sent a copy of the finished film to Ingrid and Jason, who separately approved the film for a Premiere. I made no effort to persuade or convince them to do so.

Since Machiniplex chooses only films that the three of us consider to be of a high quality, I feel that this statement is necessary in order to prevent any appearance of favoritism.

-Ricky

On the Death of Peter Rasmussen

2008-03-19T22:09:00.001-07:00

Peter Rasmussen in a screen cap from the doc "Artery: Machinima"

Peter is gone.

Out of the blue (or so it appears to me) a sad announcement at the Machinima for Dummies site that Peter Rasmussen has died; no cause of death, no details, no reason. It sickens me. It's perverse that a man as talented and as smart as Peter could be whisked away into oblivion just like that. A man who had just released one of the best Machinima films ever made (Stolen Life), won practically every award at the recent 2006 European Machinima Festival, had set up a monthly meeting (along with Phil Rice) of Machinima filmmakers and was starting research for his next film. A man who gave to a largely insular community his time, his care and his wisdom, in order to make Machinima better.

Not to mention whatever web of friendship and love he had in his own personal life. Though I was only a casual friend, I got a vibe from Peter that he was a decent, thoughtful man. I can only imagine how painful his death must be for those who knew and loved him. What a tragedy.

I had just responded to him a month ago answering a question about IClone. He was looking for a new engine to use for his next film. He wouldn't tell me anything about it, but his enthusiasm and excitement was obvious even in an email. Peter came to several of the Machiniplex Premieres and asked smart questions that kept the conversation with the director grounded and focused on practicalities. I was trying to figure out how to get Peter on Machiniplex, or at least feature an interview where I could learn more about his life. But...

Peter is gone.

One of things I hate about death is that aside from the fact that it's inevitable for all of us, it often creates regret in those are still alive. Perhaps this is mostly my own issue (my brother died when I was 6), but I regret not searching Peter out and learning about him. I feel like a selfish fool for not reading through his Nanoflix blog until after he has died. And for not seeking Peter out as a collaborator. Now it will never happen because Peter is gone.

Peter and Jackie Turnure interviewed by Australian Gamer

Since the announcement of Peter's death, several blogs and tributes have been been posted on the net. Phil Rice's tribute addresses Peter directly and is hard to read it is so sad. Of course, the Machinima for Dummies site has the notice along with some heart-felt comments by the Machinima community. Some other site with comments include Leo's Dr of Machinima, Shattered Keyboard (with a good list of blog posts), Sidney ACM Siggraph, Eyes Wired Open (with a clip from Stolen Life), Johnnie Ingrams' I Hate Sheep has a bittersweet post on Peter, AFTRS Lamp, and Frank's Flinging Thoughts blog is an honest expression of the loss that all of us feel.

Phil's Overcast podcast #17 has an interview with wonderful interview with Peter. It's hard to listen to, but stick with it because you'll find more info about him than any other source. The links for the show are all excellent and informative.

Peter's Nanoflix blog is a good place to learn more about his films (there's a nice high-res download of Killer Robot). The last entry was (typically) praise for Bloodspell. IGN Australia has an good interview with Peter about Stolen Life. Peter appears briefly in the Machinima documentary "Artery: Machinima" ( one wishes now that the film featured more of him). Just Adventure, in addition to reviewing Stolen Life has an excellent "Making of Stolen Life" article by Peter. This is the definitive commentary on how the film was developed and created. The Australian Gamer has a nice interview with Peter and Jackie along with photos (some of which are featured here). Jackie Turnure's journal "Rockpool" has insightful comments about machinima and the media in general. It hasn't been updated in a while, so there's no mention of Peter's death. I'm sure it must have hit her hard. My heart goes out to her. I hope she posts about it at some point.

A still from Peter's "Stolen Life"

Peter's main site, Nanoflix Productions, features his Machinima work (Stolen Life, Killer Robot, Rendezvous, Joy), a live-action short (The Picture Woman) , a science-fiction story (Mars by
Stealth) and a Machinina study for building living quarters on Mars using robots (Red Igloo).

Stolen Life won Best Picture, Best Visual Design and Best Direction at the European Machinima Festival in late 2007. Phillip Johnston's music for Stolen Life won the 2006 Machinima Film Festival. The film was nominated for 5 other categories including Best Picture, Best Visual Design, Best Voice Acting Performance, Best Virtual Performance and Best Technical Achievement. Peter's earlier film, Killer Robot, was an official selection of the 2005 Machinima Film Festival. And his film, Rendezvous, was nominated for Best Picture, Best Writing, Best Acting and Best Independent Film at the 2002 Machinima Film Festival.

You can download Stolen Life at ZipWorld ($9.49). I'm not sure if the DVD is still available, but it's well-produced. Killer Robot is available for free and on DVD via Machinima.com. His other Machinima works are free at the Nanoflix.net website.

The earliest credits I can find for Peter are as a writer for the live action films Mad Bomber in Love (1992), The Picture Woman (1998 - He also directed this film) and In the Winter Dark (1998). If anyone has additional information, please add it in the comments section.

The Stolen Life trailer is here. There is a wealth of interviews, commentary, etc, that can be accessed through the Nanofilx website.

A still from Peter's Killer Robot

I'd like to leave you with the full text of Peter's essay on Machinima titled "Why Machinima is Different". Something that sticks with me are the lines:

"It’s not just the speed of production. It’s very much about the attitude people making machinima bring to what they do. Machinima is propelled by the same sense of hands on discovery that drives the video game modding community."

Peter walked the walk. He did what he talked about. His attitude as an artist and as an increasingly important presence in the Machinima community made Machinima better. Now we will never see what remarkable works he would have created. And we will never know what insights and craft we could have learned from him.

It is a tragedy that Peter is gone. But we can learn from what he has left us; his films, his comments and interviews, his writings. Let us all take the time to think about what he has shown us Machinima can be. Let's think about what he sees as the future for our nascent art form. I think this is the way to honor his life and his achievements. Because even though he is gone in a literal sense, he will remain alive in our desire to learn from him.

Why Machinima is Different

Posted by Peter Rasmussen on April 29, 2007

"To understand the potential of machinima we need to understand what has gone before.

Ancient history:

Even at the “independent” end the film industry has systematically been reduced in it’s scope. Like a “mini me” of the studios it has become intensely corporate in its workings if not in the actual budgets. There was a time when there was more balance. Big budget films employed a lot of people and payed for the infrastructure of the industry while independents kept the fresh ideas coming. Even big studios would occasionally put out films that could draw some critical acclaim. Now it has become much more homogenous.

At the moment the making of films has become so strictly regimented. Everyone has gone to the same “how to make a movie” seminars to learn that you have to have two clips to hold the script together not three. There is no room for descent. The result being that they cost so much and that they’re all the same movie.

Maintaining and expanding a profile in the industry has become such an art that there is a sense of reward that comes from being good at that alone. This contributes to a kind of decadents. It has become more about working the room and less about making the film.

Hal Hartley once said
“If I’m serious about film making I have to get out of the industry.”

The emphasis has been on impressing the industry with your value to get its support to make your projects possible. Now there is the potential to get that support directly from the audience you are making the film for.

Now we have digital video. Anyone can afford cameras and editing software that is capable of producing a film that at least has image and sound quality acceptable for commercial release. Now we have the Internet. Anyone can self distribute. Anyone can show their film to anyone who can find it.

Machinima is not a branch of an earlier kind of film making like video from celluloid. Machinima is a completely independent eruption. It is not just a new image recording medium. What used to be a video game add on is now a new approach to story telling that has it’s own community and culture. It’s a movement that is currently free of most of the intrinsic encumbrances of conventional filmmaking.

The greater population of machinima makers come from outside conventional filmmaking. Machinima was born out of the chaos of the warfare of first person shooters and the anarchy of excited gamers and hackers who were not restricted by filmmaking conventions or industry etiquette.

A great deal of machinima so far was made in existing games with no regard to copyright. This may actually have contributed to its growth. Not having to make the locations and characters made the process much more quick and fun at that early stage. Without copyright clearance the only way this work could be seen was for free. So the popularity grew. And other sources of revenue were explored. Like talking about how it is done at seminars like books on machinima like merchandising.

The feedback loop between trying something out and seeing the result is so much shorter. This is true of the day to day production and of the turnaround on entire projects. Techniques like real time puppeteering fuel spontaneity. The immediacy of machinima is a very powerful substance.

The best way to learn filmmaking is to do it. The budgets for conventional films these days have become so bloated filmmakers just don’t get the same amount of practice. Starting out in the black and white era Alfred Hitchcock Made fifty films in his career. The ones he is most famous for are the ones in his later years.

With less time taken up by development and the raising of production money the turnaround for machinima is much faster. There is much less of a gap between having an idea and seeing how it actually looks on the screen. And straight away you can see if it works for the audience.

“Do what you like.
And If the audience doesn’t like it get off”

– Noel Coward

It’s not just the speed of production. It’s very much about the attitude people making machinima bring to what they do. Machinima is propelled by the same sense of hands on discovery that drives the video game modding community.

Skills and practices drawn from conventional filmmaking can be applied but this must be done with care. With Main stream filmmaking you get development hell. There are so many people you have to convince that what you are doing will be successful. This environment rarely produces things that have not been seen before. Machinima seems to be in a position where it can avoid much of this at least for a while.

With conventional film making there can be a strange gap between the filmmakers and the audience, the “demographic” as they are sometimes called. With machinima it is much more fluid. There can be a conversation between the audience and the filmmakers even during production via blogs and forums. This doesn’t mean that the work has been modified for the lowest common denominator it’s more like an overture before the main event.

Fans of machinima are not looking for photorealism. The spectrum of kinds of machinima being made is quite broad. From popular entertainment to extremely conceptual art pieces. So broad that a vigorous debate continues to attempt to define machinima.

The 2006 Machinima Film Festival in New York ran for two days. The quality of entries had grown since previous years. Most entries ran for less than ten minutes. Two had a running time of more than an hour. Short titles rule at the moment. The most successful films at a festival of mostly short films are gag driven. A single clever concept well delivered with a strong punch line.

It’s like Machinima is in the first few microseconds after its big bang. The particles are basic but very powerful. I expect that over the next few years we will see more long form productions as serious machinima makers settle in for the long haul.

There is an opportunity to, refine is the wrong word, to bring this new medium to a state where it can be produced for a return of revenue that allows the machinima makers to continue to deliver to there audience something fresh and original in a sustainable way without outside interference in the creative process."
Download the pdf here

Machiniplex Premiere: "Folie a Duex", This Sunday, 1PM on Skype

2008-03-13T09:04:00.000-07:00

(Note: I had written a long post on Peter Rasmussen, but it was lost somehow in the Blogger software. I'll attempt to re-construct and post as soon as I can. Peter's recent death has saddened us all. My condolences to his relatives and friends)

Machiniplex.com is hosting a Premiere for the film "Folie a Duex", an Antics Machinima directed by Tony Bannan. The film is currently showing at his website, Ammo Previz, and will be posted on the Machiniplex site on Saturday. On Sunday, March 16th at 1PM (Pacific Time) we will host a Q&A with the director on Skype. If you don't have me listed as a contact, search for "rickygrove" and I'll send you my contact details. The Q&A session will be a voice chat, but we'll also have a text chat going at the same time.

Bloodspell DVD + Supplements Coming Out Next Week

2008-03-04T11:12:00.000-08:00

From director Hugh Hancock's "Bloodspell Development Updates" blog today:

OK, we've finally heard back from Bioware and EA.

Good news: we'll be releasing something you can burn as a DVD, next week.

Bad news: We won't be able to release a physical DVD.

EA have gotten back to us and refused our request to distribute via DVD. Obviously, this is one of the major problems with producing a Machinima film using someone else's Intellectual "Property", in today's rather screwed up legal system. I'll have some more detail on what our plans were and what happened next week.

But we have the ISOs (disk images) ready to go, so here's what we're going to do:

1) We'll upload both the ISOs, hopefully to both the Internet Archive and a Bittorrent server. You can burn these in a standard DVD writer as a DVD you can watch on television. We'll also upload disk and inlay artwork for you.
2) We'll also produce a DivX version of both DVDs, for those of you who want to listen to the commentaries but don't want to download 5 Gb of ISO.
3) Finally, we'll upload all the documentaries we produced to Blip.tv, for your streaming viewing pleasure. They'll also be on both the ISO and the DivX, but there's a lot less downloading involved in watching them on Blip.

So, it's coming, at last - the final chapter in the BloodSpell saga.

Bloodspell, if you don't already know, is a wonderful feature length film (adapted from the original 14 part series released in 2006), which premiered here at Machiniplex back in the Fall of 2007. Since then, Hugh and other members of Strange Company have been working hard to release a DVD of the film itself and a second DVD of supplemental material (four hours of documentaries, etc). In addition to all of the work involved in simply producing a high quality DVD (and believe me it's a lot of work), Hugh had his fingers crossed that Bioware and EA games would ok the release of the DVD under creative commons. Bioware, it seems, was very much for the idea, but EA Games (who recently acquired Bioware) apparently decided that they did not want Strange Company to release a physical DVD of Bloodspell (and the supplements disc).

Hugh's simple (and gracious) announcement probably hides enormous frustration with EA. I fail to understand their caution in not allowing an actual physical DVD. I don't have much empathy for giant corporate paranoia. EA has a pretty poor history as a company (claims of labor abuse, hostile takeovers, scorched earth acquisitions of smaller game companies, etc and etc) and their recent efforts re-make their corporate image (while gobbling up smaller companies) has had mixed success.

My question is this: when will a game company step up and set an example/precedent in supporting Machinima filmmakers like Hugh and his crew at Strange Company? I mean, come on, Hugh has a stellar reputation both as a filmmaker and a Machinima promoter. I'm hard-pressed to think of an a person and a company that would play fair with EA in any business dealings. What a missed opportunity for EA to promote their attempts to rehabilitate their business image. Certainly Hugh and Strange Company are going to abide by any legal contract that EA would create, why not seize the opportunity and negotiate something that would allow for a release of an actual physical DVD that would benefit both sides? It's disappointing that they would hold back on making a significant effort to support Hugh's efforts (and the Machinima community in turn).

If EA wants to shed their image as an indifferent and machiavellian company, now is certainly the time. By fully supporting filmmakers like Hugh Hancock and establishing a legal precedent for Machinima DVD distribution, EA could have gotten the corporate herd moving in the right direction. I think the community would applaud such an effort.

My congratulations to Hugh and Strange Company for all of their hard work in creating the DVDs and for sticking with it to release them to the Machinima community and the general public. Bravo!

Quick notes: I have one last article still in the can for our Bloodspell premiere at Machiniplex. I created a "Scene Breakdown" for one of the climactic scenes near the end of the film just before Jared confronts the Master for the last time. I hope to put the finishing touches on that article and release it in time for the DVD image release next week. Should be of interest as it features excellent directorial commentary by Hugh and Paul (who plays the Master) along with a comparison of the animatic for the scene.

Also, I'd like to recommend a free image burning software for use when you have the Bloodspell ISO and want to burn it to a DVD. I've been using Img Burn for several years and it's a stable program that works very well.

Note: This blog post was revised slightly from it's original version due to a misunderstanding about some of the facts surrounding the dvd release. Thanks to Hugh for setting me straight.

Stage6 Shutting Down on February 28

2008-02-26T08:16:00.000-08:00

Usually when you move out of your apartment or quit your job you give a months notice. The idea being that you give the people you are affecting, time to make the necessary adjustments to your absence. The people who run Stage6, a popular site for indie film/machinima, don't seem to share this idea of being considerate.

Here's the email I received from "Tom" at Stage6 informing me that the site will shut down permanently on February 28. The email is dated February 25; that's 3 days advance notice. I suppose 3 days is better than just shutting down the site without telling anyone.

I'm Tom (aka Spinner), a Stage6 user and an employee of DivX, Inc., the company behind the service. I'm writing this message today to inform you that we plan to shut down Stage6 on February 28, 2008. Upload functionality has already been turned off, and you'll be able to view and download videos until Thursday.

I know this news will come as a shock and disappointment to many Stage6 users, and I'd like to take a few moments to explain the reasons behind our decision.

We created Stage6 with the mission of empowering content creators and viewers to discover a new kind of video experience. Stage6 began as an experiment, and we always knew there was a chance that it might not succeed.

In many ways, though, the service did succeed, beyond even our own initial expectations. Stage6 became very popular very quickly. We helped gain exposure for some talented filmmakers who brought great videos to the attention of an engaged community. We helped prove that it's possible to distribute true high definition video on the Internet. And we helped broaden the Internet video experience by offering content that is compatible with DVD players, mobile devices and other products beyond the PC.

So why are we shutting the service down? Well, the short answer is that the continued operation of Stage6 is a very expensive enterprise that requires an enormous amount of attention and resources that we are not in a position to continue to provide. There are a lot of other details involved, but at the end of the day it's really as simple as that.

Now, why didn't we think of that before we decided to create Stage6 in the first place, you may ask? That's a good question. When we first created Stage6, there was a clear need for a service that would offer a true high-quality video experience online because other video destinations on the Internet simply weren't providing that to users. A gap existed, and Stage6 arrived to fill it.

As Stage6 grew quickly and dramatically (accompanied by an explosion of other sites delivering high-quality video), it became clear that operating the service as a part of the larger DivX business no longer made sense. We couldn't continue to run Stage6 and focus on our broader strategy to make it possible for anyone to enjoy high-quality video on any device. So, in July of last year we announced that we were kicking off an effort to explore strategic alternatives for Stage6, which is a fancy way of saying we decided we would either have to sell it, spin it out into a private company or shut it down.

I won't (and can't, really) go into too much detail on those first two options other than to say that we tried really hard to find a way to keep Stage6 alive, either as its own private entity or by selling it to another company. Ultimately neither of those two scenarios was possible, and we made the hard decision to turn the lights off and cease operation of the service.

So that's where we are today. After February 28, Stage6 will cease to exist as an online destination. But the larger DivX universe will continue to thrive. Every day new DivX Certified devices arrive on the market making it easy to move video beyond the PC. Products powered by DivX Connected, our new initiative that lets users stream video, photos, music and Internet services from the PC to the TV, are hitting retail outlets. We remain committed to empowering content creators to deliver high-quality video to a wide audience, and we'll continue to offer services that will make it easy to find videos online in the DivX format.

It's been a wild ride, and none of it would have been possible without the support of our users. Thank you for making Stage6 everything that it was.

--Tom

Ok, the site is closing because they couldn't afford it anymore. They tried to sell it, but didn't find a buyer so they are closing. Immediately. Forever. In three days. So get your stuff and get out.

Why is it that I don't really believe that "Tom" is telling the whole story? Could copyright issues have been a factor? And why the immediate closure? Would the stampede of people pulling out of the site have adversely affected their "bottom line" in some fashion? Like all the add money they would lose if traffic at the site were to bottom out? Unless we have someone from the inside who decides to spill the beans, we'll probably never know why Stage6 decided to leave such a bad impression by closing so quickly.

Stage6 was, in my opinion, the real quality site for machinima and indie animation. Youtube has a larger audience, but the quality of the actual film is low. Stage6 was created to show off the DivX codec and it certainly did that. Some of the most high quality video on the net could be seen there. And the way Stage6 was integrated into the DivX encoder/player itself was very well done.

It's a shame that such a great outlet for machinima films is closing so suddenly. I think the community of filmmakers who have used and supported the site regularly deserve better than a 3 day closing notice written in the jargon of a community relations officer.

I guess it's on to Vimeo.

Machinima Meeting in Second Life

2008-02-25T08:40:00.000-08:00

I've been attending the monthly machinima meetings hosted by Phil Rice (Overman) and every one has been informative and enjoyable. Since I don't spend any time at forums anymore, this is an excellent way to hook up with folks in the community and chat about machinima, games and just about anything in-between. This last Friday, Frank (Fleef) hosted the get together. This time instead of using Skype voice chat, we all got together in Second Life and tried out the fairly new voice chat system. It worked very well, even with around ten of us talking. Much, much better in quality than Skype.

Nice little beach house in SL designed by Frank

Frank was the MC for the event and he did a nice job of keeping us on track. As in previous machinima meetings, the topics were free-wheeling and fun (all centered around machinima, of course). Michelle, CJ, MooMoney, Hathead, myself, Matt, and about nine other people sat on the balcony overlooking a wide expanse of second life ocean. Naturally, the subject of Second Life came up often and Matt (who is on staff at the Electric Sheep Company) had a lot to say about the tech behind SL machinima and at one point even offered us rides on his cool camera (you had to be there).

All we needed was an urn with fire in the center.

There was also talk of the Witcher (a new role playing PC game). CJ and I mulled over the advantages of using Antics for machinima. Half Life 2 and Gary's Mod were topics of discussion, along with a good deal of tech talk.

Hathead, Michelle and CJ listen attentively.

The award for "coolest avatar" went to Orfeo Miles, a musician turned machinimator, who was
a delightful conversationalist. I hope he'll attend more of the machinima meetings.

Orfeo of the cool tie. Looks like Keith Richards to me.

Oh, by the way, Matt appeared at one point in an avatar used for the CSI: New York TV bit that he helped design in Second Life. He reminded us that the complete episode will show this Wed night (Feb 27) on CBS.

Matt in his CSI avatar. Something about a gladiator...

The machinima meetings are usually held once a month and are managed by Phil Rice and Peter Rasmussen. I think they are a lot of fun in addition to being informative. I hope that the meetings will continue to be held in Second Life as the voice communication is much better and it's just more fun.

"The Dumb Man" Premiere with Lainy Voom

2008-01-29T09:46:00.000-08:00

"The Dumb Man" premiere was held this last Sunday (Jan 27th) on Skype chat. The director, Lainy Voom, was present along with her friend (and machinima filmmaker), artcgrrl, and Surrealia Anatine (prefect Second Life name, IMO), who "acted" for her during the shooting of the film in Second Life. Lainy answered some very good questions for almost 2 hours before she had to hit the sack (it was 11pm in Enland). Also present was bllius, Ingrid Moon, Johnnie Ingram, Zuckerman77, Damian (Darth Angelus) and the mysterious, mute, biggstrek. While this was a smaller turnout than the last Premiere for "Among Fables and Men", it allowed for a more intimate session which led to some very good threads on the film and how it was made. My thanks to all who took the time to come and ask questions. I hope you enjoyed yourselves.

A beautiful art still created by Lainy from koinup.com

The premiere was also more successful due to the fact that we abandoned the voice chat, which was such a disaster in the last premiere, and stuck with Skype text chat. There are several advantages to using text chat in that it allows the director and attendees to consider their questions and answers a bit more carefully than with voice. You can also have a separate chats with members of the group as the larger, general text chat progresses. I used a private text chat to let Lainy know what was coming up in the premiere and to check with her to see if she needed anything. I'm still amazed at being able to hold two or three conversations at once in text chat. At first you think you can't follow the conversation, but then you just start paying attention and it's a lot of fun. I do like audio chat and we are looking into finding a reliable (and free) voice chat service (since Skype does so poorly with large groups), but to date we've had no luck as every service that looks promising either has poor quality, limited group size or costs too much money.

But back to the premiere: the conversation with Lainy covered some of her background as a filmmaker and the tech behind her film. Lainy started out in Sims2 (as tracechops) with the highly regarded "Annika" and a very well-done music video for "The Hives" (I'm also partial to her "Mothra" because I'm a nut for Japanese Monster movies), but gradually migrated to Second Life because of the freedom of the toolset and the ability to own her own work. Her "Images of Black Swan" took Second Life machinima to the next level. There was quite a buzz when that film came out. I hope to archive it at some point at machiniplex. You can see some of her work at her YouTube site and Truveo. There's a nice interview with her on the Second Life site New World Notes. She is a talented artist and a promising machinima filmmaker.

Another wonderful creation by Lainy from koinup.com

During the Q&A, Lainy in responding to the question of how she got the idea for "The Dumb Man" mentioned that the first image that came to her as she was listening to Alex Wilson's passionate reading of the Sherwood Anderson story (the story which is the basis of the film), was the woman leaning against the wall upstairs. She branched out from there and prepared a script in Oct/Nov. But coming back to the film after the holidays, she found that she wanted "The Dumb Man" to have a more dreamlike, surreal quality and so began to shoot the film that way. Frankly, I'm very glad she did this, not only because I'm always in favor of a more imaginative, experimental approach to machinima films (there are so few of them), but also because it fit perfectly the subject and style of the writing. Hard to believe this is the same Sherwood Anderson of "Winesburg, Ohio", one of the great American novels of realism.

Ingrid and I were very impressed with "The Dumb Man" as was everyone who attended the Premiere. The almost perfect blending of story, performance, animation, sound and style creates the film spell that all good movies do. And despite the surreal imagery, there is a definite feeling and attitude developed for each character. Of course, the film is backed (or fronted, as the case may be) by a passionate and nuanced performance of the story by Alex Wilson. I hope more machinima filmmakers will be inspired by Lainy's film to adapt existing literature or to seek out newer writers to bring their stories to machinima. I think many filmmakers could benefit from this approach while they develop their writing skills more. BTW, Alex's site "Telltale Weekly" is a great site for discovering other authors and listening to them via audio. Perhaps someone out there will use another of Alex's readings for a film? He seems to be very pleased with Lainy's film.

My thanks to Lainy and, again, to all of those who came to the Premiere. I enjoyed it immensely.

Here is the transcript of the Skype Q&A chat with Lainy Voom. You can scroll through the document here in this post, or download it for viewing on your computer. If you choose to read the document here there is a magnifying icon at the top of the screen that allows you to enlarge the text. Thanks to Scribd for the ability to embed this document.

New Machiniplex Film Premiere on Jan 27th, 1pm @ Skype

2008-01-20T20:05:00.000-08:00

We will be featuring a new Second Life machinima, "The Dumb Man", directed by Lainy Voom on Sunday, January 27th @ 1pm (Pacific Time). A slightly revised version of the film will appear at Machiniplex.com on the day before (Saturday, Jan 26th), so be sure to drop by and see the new version before you come to the Q&A text-chat with the Lainy, myself and Ingrid.

We will be conducting the Q&A session using Skype text chat, as this is much simpler for us considering how awkward the last premiere was when we used voice chat. This is also something that the director prefers. So, look up rickygrove on Skype at 1pm (or earlier) next Sunday and you can participate in a live discussion with Lainy Voom.

Still frame from "A Dumb Man"

A still frame from "A Dumb Man"

I'm very impressed with Lainy's work on this film. The text is from a Sherwood Anderson short story which is read aloud (in a fine performance) by Alex Wilson. Music from magnatune.com and additional sound effects from freesound.net. Phil Rice posted some excellent comments about the film last week (along with an embedded Vimeo version of the film).

Her visual style is imaginative and poetic. We are very proud to host her film and would like to thank Lainy for making herself available for questions and comments.

Public Domain 2008

2008-01-06T10:27:00.000-08:00

clip from M. Ophul's brilliant film "Madame De.."

I've picked up a nasty flu bug recently (thank you, Christmas bookstore shoppers) so I've basically been in bed for the last few days. Of course, I can still surf the web in between coughing fits. Came across this interesting post on works that are coming into public domain in 2008. There are some amazing names on this list. Artists like illustrator Kay Nielsen, children's author Jean de Brunhoff, muralist Diego Rivera, British novelist Joyce Cary, German filmmaker Max Ophuls, fantasy author Lord Dunsany, and American psychologist Wilhelm Reich.

Here's the post I'm referring to (he's got some smart comments on copyright as well):

Copyright Watch

Getting Through the Holidays

2007-12-23T21:02:00.001-08:00

December and it's holidays aren't always my best friends even though I love the festive nature of Christmas and New Years. Memories and dreams can make it hard to get through this month. My partner, Lisa Morton, makes it easier by keeping me grounded in the present. Even so, I often think back to previous Decembers I have lived through; sometime with pleasure and sometimes with sadness.

I was rummaging through some old theater photos I had forgotten about and found three that made me stop and think. I was working at the Snowmass Repertory Theater (just outside of Aspen, Colorado) in the late eighties. We presented Cyrano de Bergerac one Christmas Season (If I remember correctly). I took some photos just outside the theater during a big snowstorm.

Just outside the main theater complex

What was I doing outside in cold like this?

We performed Cyrano at the old Wheeler Opera House in Aspen. They do a lot of comedy shows there now. It's a great 19th century-style theatre with an old fashioned stage, a balcony and box seats on either side of the stage. I was fortunate to have an excellent Cyrano to be a villain to. Casey...ach, I can't remember his last name. We both had a great time. I was also the fight choreographer and had a ball putting together the various swordfights. I remember the production was well-received and I was sorry when we closed.

In costume for my first entrance.

I suppose it's getting older that makes be reminisce. December is a month I do it the most though. At least this memory was a good one.

Jason, Ingrid and I would like to wish you all a pleasant holiday. Have fun and enjoy your life.

The "Among Fables and Men" Premiere: Tobias, Anton & Malu

2007-12-19T20:22:00.000-08:00

The "Among Fables and Men" premiere was this last Sunday and while it was fraught with lots of technical issues with Skype, we still managed to have a decent Q&A with director Tobias Lundmark. And just at the end of the session, both Malu (Tobias's co-director) and Anton (the new sound mixer) showed up and provided a good deal of commentary and laughter. My thanks to you all for taking the time to answer questions and for having the patience to deal with the communication problems that came up.

This is the first time we've tried to conduct an audio Q&A session for the premiere. Suffice to say, it did not go very well. My apologies to all of you who came and had to cope with bad audio and a fumbled session. We won't be doing another audio session until we solve the problems inherent with people from all over the world trying to conduct a live audio session. Eventually, we ended up having just Ingrid, myself and our three guests on the audio part of Skype, while Ingrid busily typed away a transcription of what we were discussing. Thanks to Ingrid for trying to make the session work, but needless to say many of you who attended didn't really get much interaction with Tobias and his co-collaborators.

Fortunately, I managed to cobble together a short interview from a phone conversation I had with Tobias a week or so ago, along with some parts of the Q&A from the premiere that I was able to record. I've cut it down to about 10 minutes, but I think there are some good comments by Tobias on his changes to the film for the Machiniplex premiere and on specific aspects of the film that I had asked questions about. He also offers up some background information on himself and his work. Background music for the interview is by Skin Mechanix and it's from magnatune.com.

Interview with Tobias Lundmark

As Tobias mentions in the first part of the interview, the version of the film presented for the premiere at machiniplex has re-worked sound, some re-rendered sections and a slightly different ending. The re-mixed sound worked beautifully and made the film much better for it. Anton (who showed at the end of the premiere very hung-over, but in reasonably good spirits) did all of it with Cool Edit and Sony Vegas. Very good work, Anton. And thanks for showing up and talking with us. I wish I could have recording you and Malu's comments. Especially Malu's remarks on working with Fusion with the last part of the film. Sigh....

Tobias is a very articulate and thoughtful young director whose work I look forward to. He was talking about filming in the Half Life 2 engine during the Q&A and was praising the tools that Valve makes available. I sure hope he creates a film in HL2 or Gary's Mod.

Again, my thanks to all who came to the "Among Fables and Men" premiere. I'm sorry for the technical problems and promise that we will have them resolved so that the premiere will be a much better experience the next time around. And, of course, thanks to Tobias, Anton and Malu for your patience and good will. I'm amazed at the command of English all three of them possess. I'm not sure many American machinima filmmakers could do as well in a foreign language as you all did for the premiere.

BTW, the download for "Among Fables and Men" is a whopping 330 Mb's of WMV. I know it's a lot to download, but it's a 1240x780 sized Windows Media file that is absolutely gorgeous. It's worth the wait. So start your download before you go to bed and watch it the next day. You won't regret it. "Among Fables and Men" is a beautiful film.

UPDATE: Tobias has provided a link for a version of the film that's around 100Mb's and yet retains high quality. You can download it here:

http://warcraftmovies.com/download.php?id=50425&mirror=4