Paul Marino's random insights into Machinima and its related subjects.
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
Working, working, working
This week's blog entry is more status than news. I'm revising the blog's design and overhauling the backend - which is an uncomfortable switch from Blogger to Wordpress. There are pros/cons to such a shift, but I think Wordpress is a much more flexible system - a number of my fave sites use (Free Pixel, Overman's blog, The Animation Podcast, etc.) and provides a lot of support by way of community development and discussion. It wasn't an easy decision and took a fair amount of testing to make the final call. The one pretty large task is backing up the previous years Blogger posts and whipping them up into something that WordPress could then digest and display. Thankfully, it can be done-but does require some coaxing.
So tech decisions, along with the hitting the design reset button a few times, had slowed the effort quite a bit. However, things are now moving forward and I hope to have the blog relaunch sometime in May, along with some guest bloggers putting in a appearance or two.
Some cool news on the Machinima front. Epic Games has announced their latest Make Something Unreal Contest - an Unreal Tournament 3-fueled follow-up to their 2005 contest of the same (that one was based in Unreal 2 tech). This latest contest, offering $1 million US in cash/prizes, and sponsored by Intel, also includes a Machinima category (in phases 2-4).
The 2005 MSU competition gave us great Machinima works such as Tom Palmer'sbot, Folklore Studio'sScrap & Friedrich Kirschner'sThe Journey.
I highly encourage anyone working in Machinima (or thinking about working in Machinima) to enter. The competition might be tough no doubt, but a fruitful experience as well. More info is available at www.makesomethingunreal.com
It is with a very heavy heart that I write this blog post. About 15 minutes ago, I received word that Peter Rasmussen, director of the award-winning, groundbreaking Machinima work, Stolen Life, has passed on.
I'm not entirely sure what to say or how to say it. Peter and I exchanged mails just a few weeks ago and I promised him that I would show up for his next Machinima meet-up in Second Life. Peter and I tried arranging a similar get-together a LONG time ago in Counterstrike. It wasn't the greatest of successes then but it was fun converting the game into a community space with someone half way around the world.
I'm sure there's more to say here, but I think I just need to sit with this a bit more.
I'm probably one of many who fell in love with the game Portal - it has an insane combination of crazy puzzles, wicked game design, and incredibly cute characters. There are a lot of great machinima pieces out there on the turrets, the companion cube, etc., but the one I included above is strangely reminiscent of the brilliant Red vs. Blue dialog.
Score another one for Garry's Mod and for the machinima creators, the Leet World! Sadly, I have yet to be able to load their site.
Quick blip: N'Gai Croal interviews Will Wright on Spore -- and asks it plain and simple:
Croal: What are the machinima tools like within Spore?
Wright: We have that built in throughout the game where you can capture game footage at any time, photos and stuff. In the Creature Creator--this is another thing we went down the path of, "What would we really want to do with this?"--I can design a creature, have them play all these animations, move them around on either a set backdrop or a black screen which is essentially a green screen, so I can actually mix it in with other footage, and composite it. There's also a one-button upload in that moviemaking feature to YouTube. So I can actually make a movie in the game, and with one click of the button upload it onto YouTube. Again, this is where we wanted it to blend from the game world to the world of Web content so that it felt like this game was another creative tool pouring into some of these sites. Plus you can take pictures, email them to your friends, and all that stuff within the game.
Regular readers of this blog will remember a posting I made last year mentioning the 24-7: DIY Video Summit at USC. Well, we're nearly at that point on the calendar -Feb. 8-10th. I will be presenting a selection of Machinima works, along with several other curators , who will each present works from their respective crafts. The event, will have quite a few great speakers on hand as well, including Prof. Lawrence Lessig, Henry Jenkins and Joichi Ito.
Registration is nearly full for the the academic panels and the workshops. The video screenings are free and open to the public. Please help us spread the word about this event.
24/7: A DIY Video Summit will bring together the many communities that have evolved around do-it-yourself (DIY) video: artists, audiences, technology providers, academics, policy makers and industry executives. The aim is to discover common ground, and to chart the path to a future in which grassroots and mainstream, amateur and professional, artist and audience can all benefit as the medium continues to evolve.
This three-day summit features:
SCREENINGS OF DIY VIDEO On February 8 and 9, there will be screenings of DIY video that are open to the public. These will feature curated programs on design video, activist documentary, youth media, machinima, music video, political remix and video blogging. The video program will culminate in an evening program and reception on February 9 that will draw from all of these video genres.
ACADEMIC PROGRAM Registered attendees will have access to the academic program on February 8 and 9 that features panels on The State of Research, The State of the Art, DIY Media: The Intellectual Property Dilemma and DIY Tools and Platforms. Featured speakers include Yochai Benkler, John Seely Brown, Joi Ito, Henry Jenkins, Lawrence Lessig, and Howard Rheingold.
WORKSHOPS AND BIRDS-OF-A-FEATHER MEETINGS On February 10, the day will be devoted to practical and hands-on workshops for registered attendees on topics such as intellectual property, media creation, distribution and new-media design tools. Attendees will also have the option of organizing their own birds-of- a-feather meetings to connect with other attendees.
As it was mentioned, we would really appreciate spreading the word about the event (and tell 'em Paul sent ya!). Thanks!
WeGame launched just a short while ago, with a tag line of being a "YouTube for gamers". With the recent advances of machinima into areas increasingly closer to mainstream media, I immediately had two questions. Feel free to chime in:
1) For serious machinima, does it make sense to key into an audience of gamers-only? and 2) Are you tempted to switch?
To put things into perspective, you do get some perks with WeGame. The site actually distributes their own recording software, for free. Furthermore, they have streamlined the process of uploading clips - as you shoot videos, they are immediately available in a little dashboard. You can then upload to the WeGame site. The agile software encodes the video for you and uploads it.
Another bonus: I have not seen the usual compression artifacts that you typically see with YouTube.
I'd love to hear other people's experiences with WeGame. The final quality of my test video made me very happy. I'm curious to try uploading some QuickTime or Windows Media machinima and see how it measures up.
This weekend marks the start of an exciting film event in Second Life. The famous 48-Hour Film project that tours the world is reaching a virtual world. On Friday, January 11th, contestants will be given a character, prop, and line of dialog as base for their machinima. Then, the teams have 48 hours to turn around a complete production.
"The competition kicks off Friday, January 11th, at 4:00 p.m. Second Life Time (7:00 p.m. Eastern Standard Time) with a representative from each team meeting in Second Life to receive a genre, a character, a prop, and a line of dialog to be worked into their film.
Teams have until Sunday, January 13th, at 4:30 p.m. Second Life Time (7:30 p.m. Eastern Standard Time) to submit a completed entry.
There should be some cool short movies coming out of this contest, hopefully they will also be posted on youtube so we can all watch (outside of Second Life).
