“In the end, Day and her co-producer, Kim Evie … spent eight hours a day emailing bloggers about the show and marketing it through the Buffy and WoW communities.”
From The Guardian’s article on The Guild.
Yeah, my experience tells me that’s the kind of effort you need to put into marketing to be really successful right now. I only spent a couple of days launching Kamikaze Cookery, for example - should have spent more!
And a bunch of other guys.
I’ll copy the press release below, but the short version is that Machinima.com have managed to do what they’ve been aiming at for ages - get some really high-quality Hollywood talent in to produce Machinima programs for the site.
Amongst the list they’ve got former writers on Futurama, The Simpsons (indeed, they’ve got Bill Oakley, one of the later showrunners on the series) , Cheers, Saturday Night Live, and a lot of others.
It still remains to be seen how well the entire thing works out, of course, but the signs are good. Congratulations to Philip DeBevoise and the M.Com team on putting this together! Great news to end the year.
(What engines will they be using? The public wants to know…)
TOP WRITERS FROM THE SIMPSONS, FUTURAMA AND FAMILY GUY JOIN FORCES WITH MACHINIMA.COM TO CREATE THE MACHINIMA COMEDY LAB
Revolutionary Digital Development Deal Creates 15 Original Episodic Pilots
LOS ANGELES – December 18, 2008 – Machinima.com, the premier entertainment network for the gaming generation, today announced the creation of the Machinima Comedy Lab; a collaboration with fifteen leading episodic television writers from popular series—such as The Simpsons, Saturday Night Live and Seinfeld—to develop 15 original episodic comedy pilots for the Machinima.com network.
Revolutionizing the digital content development process, Machinima.com is pioneering a cost effective way to create computer-generated online programming with professional Hollywood talent to incubate series that can migrate from the Internet to traditional platforms like broadcast and cable TV. Machinima–a word derived from the combination of machine and cinema—is the term used to describe the creation of computer-generated video created in real time by leveraging video game engines and environments. Machinima became widely known by the entertainment industry in 2006 when the creators of South Park released the Emmy Award winning episode “Make Love, Not Warcraft,” a large portion of which was created with machinima techniques inside the massively popular online game “World of Warcraft.”
“Machinima.com lets us put our work in front of an audience that already knows and loves our style of writing and is embracing new forms of digital entertainment,” said Bill Oakley, an Emmy-winning writer and past showrunner of The Simpsons. “We get to do what we love the most—write and create fun content while Machinima.com handles all the production, marketing and distribution.”
The series will be distributed on the Machinima.com network, which served more than 38 million video views in November, is among the top five most-viewed channels each month on YouTube, and in less than 14 months, has become the seventh most subscribed YouTube channel of all-time. Machinima.com provides a revolutionary platform for creative talent to develop computer generated content using video games where all game components, including the characters, sets and environments can serve as a “virtual backlot” to quickly and inexpensively generate high-end original content in real time.
The Machinima Comedy Lab pilots will be created by top Hollywood writers, including:
“This is the future of comedy in new media – a fast and low cost way for writers to create shows that attract an existing audience,” said Patric M. Verrone, an Emmy-winning writer and president of WGA West. “We’re thrilled to break ground and forge a relationship that empowers independent production and gives writers both creative freedom and financial participation.”
“As an emerging entertainment network, we’re dedicated to bringing aboard top creative talent,” said Allen DeBevoise, Machinima.com chairman and chief executive officer. “Machinima.com provides these writers with a new, evolving medium in which to reach the highly desired 18 to 34 male audience, showcase creativity and develop episodic pilots for multiple platforms.”
About Machinima.com Machinima.com is the premier entertainment network dedicated to the gaming generation with the best and most extensive original machinima content. Machinima–a word derived from the combination of machine and cinema—is the term used to describe the creation of computer-generated video created in real time by leveraging video game engines and environments. Machinima.com is comprised of highlyengaged gamers and content creators and is the seventh most subscribed YouTube channel and serves more than 38 million videos views per month. Companies from the film, gaming and consumer industries are using Machinima.com as an advertising platform to launch new video games and movies and to reach gaming and film enthusiasts around the world. Current Machinima.com advertisers include: EA, Hewlett- Packard, Intel, Microsoft, NVIDIA, Paramount Pictures, Sega, Universal Studios; Warner Bros. and others. To learn more, visit www.machinima.com or its YouTube channel.
What strengths and weaknesses does Machinima have right now? Well, we can learn a lot by attempting to copy other media.
I ran across this parody of the Neon Genesis Evangelion intro sequence yesterday, via WoWInsider, and found it absolutely fascinating. Let me start by linking both the parody and the original:
So - how do the two compare, and why, and what can that show us?
Firstly - the Machinima version looks great. If I saw that as an intro sequence to a Machinima piece, I’d be intrigued and psyched. I’d be expecting a very high-quality production. And that tells us some interesting stuff about how much sophistication it’s possible to get out of a Machinima piece - that by pastiching the work of another medium it’s possible to produce such a good piece, better than 95% of the title sequence efforts out there.
(It also heavily implies that we should be looking to Anime for clues on how best to use Machinima. I’d have to say a big “yes” to that. Machinima bears a lot of resemblance to limited-animation styles like most Anime, and they’ve got a whole lot of tricks over there.)
Secondly - whilst it looks good, there are large parts of the Machinima version that just don’t work. And the reasons why they don’t work are really good indicators of the problems that Machinima’s having right now, and potentially the ways it can get to the next level, and what we should be looking for from tool developers.
Firstly - the various face shots don’t really work, at least for me. In particular, the first shot, of the lead character (I assume), works really well in the original, but not at all in the parody. That’s purely down to the artwork - the lead character’s image in the original tells us a lot about his character, and the subtle animation helps to bring him to life. But more than that - the character looks involved, vulnerable, readable. We can empathise with him and feel for him. By contrast, the WoW character has the same blank, dead-eyed stare that all WoW characters have, and is clearly a generic WoW male - it doesn’t suggest anything, it doesn’t imply an inner life, and that stops the shot from working.
Even worse is the silhouette shot that overlays on that, and this really zeroes in on one of the fundemental points of Machinima right now. The Evangelion character’s image strongly suggests character. He’s a small guy, his stance, with the cocked head and the weight on one foot, suggests that he’s unsure of himself, but curious. By contrast, the WoW character - is just a WoW character. There’s no information there at all. No pose, no emotion, no accessibility.
By contrast, the shot that works is a few moments later - the female seated silhouette. It’s strong, it looks relaxed, alert, curious, and sexy. (And well done for that! It’s long been my feeling that “sexy” is something Machinima could do with a lot more of - but that’s a different blog post.) Interestingly, the message of the shot is completely different to that of the equivalent shot in the original title sequence, but it still works.
And so on. I could go through the rest of the parody, but the point is the same. I’m not criticising the Annoying Quest guys - this is a great piece - but using it to point at some problems common to most Machinima right now.
It’s very hard to get Machinima characters to suggest anything right now just from their appearance. Never having watched Evangelion, I already have ideas about the characters as people just from the Evangelion title sequence. It’s something that Machinima is sorely missing.
What Machinima is lacking right now, beyond whiz-bang effects, beyond terrain and realistic rendering and enormous banks of assets, is the ability to make character expressions and particularly body language and silhouettes - two of the key instruments for the traditional animator - emotional. It’s a hard problem.
I can see two solutions that would be practical to non-multimillion productions. Firstly, motion capture of face and body will solve a lot of these problems. Better rigging will be enormously helpful for facial animation anyway - look at Lit Fuze’s fantastic work with the Half-Life 2 engine to see the results of a talented crew combined with great facial rigging, and Moviestorm’s getting there too - but for body animation, motion capture is probably the most practical solution, and it’s set to get very cheap.
Failing that, the kind of “emotional animation” work that people like Ken Perlin and the NaturalMotion guys are doing might well help. No-one’s yet unveiled any kind of animation control system that will allow characters to suggest emotion through their movements, but if it comes, it’ll be a huge leap for Machinima.
I’ve been playing the new console game Mirror’s Edge recently, and the closing cinematic there (near the end, warning - spoilers) is a brilliant example of what could revolutionise Machinima if it was available to normal users. It’s very simple, really - after a horrible event, one character puts her arm around her sister, and they both look out over a city. But the silhouettes, the emotion that’s conveyed by the protective stance of the one and the huddled stance of the other - that’s storytelling. And that’s done in Machinima. It’s doable - we just need to bring it down to the level where non-multimillion productions can access it.
Whilst it’s not even really intended as a Machinima piece so much as a game trailer, the Black Mesa trailer for the upcoming Half-Life 2 -> Half Life 1 mod really shows off just how good Machinima can look these days.
Just stunning. And, if you’re a fan of the original Half-Life, very, very evocative too.
Rather than the traditional Guess what? I’m not dead! type of blog post, I’m going to break our recent hiatus by giving you a short list of exciting machinima-related happenings of recent times. If you subscribe to the indispensable Machinifeed, a lot of this will be old news, but I’m aware that not everyone does1.
Sorry for the quiet time at the moment. Hugh and I are both as busy as bees who’ve discovered that the entire hive is off sick and they have to do two-hundredweight of pollen by the end of the day and the pollen-sorting machine is on the blink again so they have to do the whole thing by hand and it’s their wedding anniversary and they forgot to buy flowers for Mrs Bee and she’s a bee so she really likes flowers and oh my god is that the time? In other words, we’ve both very little free time at the moment, and that’s got nothing to do with the recent release of the World of Warcraft Wrath Of The Lich King expansion3.
1 You’d better have a darned good excuse.
2 Big love to Zach – we feel your pain, man.
3 Okay, maybe a little. How great are the Howling Fjord questlines?
Just a quick note- a friend of mine posted a brief and interesting piece on how she’s branding her ebook fiction - basically, attempting to develop a consistent theme and style for her work so that readers who are looking for a certain type of fiction will automatically come to her.
It’s a good idea, particularly if you’re producing a large volume of fiction - carve yourself out a “position”, to use marketing terminology. And it’s an interesting reversal of the knee-jerk that a lot of people, including me, have - which is to feel that you have to have variety in your work and not pigeon-hole yourself.
What do you think? Do your films have a “brand”?
Looks like the 3D camera-based technologies are starting to hit. Mgestyk are showing off their new 3D gesture recognition system, which apparently recognises hand movements and gestures and translates them into computer control.
That’s nice, of course, but what’s really interesting is that this technology could presumably also be used to recognise gestures as… gestures. Cheap home mocap, here we come.
One to watch. Apparently the system will be “the price of a high-end webcam”.
A quick tip: If you’re creating a Machinima piece and you’re not a good enough musician to compose your own work, you should definitely check out music generation programs like Sony’s Acid or Apple’s Garageband.
In many ways, programs like this offer a very “Machinima” approach to music creation - using pre-recorded loops, you can build up a surprisingly sophisticated and varied selection of instrumental music, very quickly.
I’ve been using them on Kamikaze Cookery to great effect - this trailer’s music took about an hour, for example. It’s not the same quality as getting an original score written specifically for your piece, but it’ll build and hold a mood, and that’s often what you need.
I don’t know too much about the differences between the packages. I must admit, I’ve found Garageband a bit wanting for more classical music, but it’s great for rock stuff.
Anyone used these packages on their Machinima? If so, what did you think?
Expect a drop in posting frequency around here for the next few months, I’m afraid.
I’m launching a new non-machinima series (a cooking show, as a matter of fact) right now, so I’m going to be focussing pretty hard on that. Johnnie will still be holding down the fort here, but Moviestorm’s also stepping up, so he’s likely to be pretty busy too.
Don’t worry, though - we will be back.
We’ve just heard the bad news that the Machinima Expo – organised as part of Festival Arcadia by Phil Rice, Ricky Grove, Ingrid Moon and Damien Valentine – has been cancelled, at least in its originally proposed form.
You can read the full sad story at the Expo blog. After the time, effort and expense that the four organisers have poured into it, this is a real shame. The Expo was shaping up to be a superb event for machinimators.
All is far from lost, though. The Expo will still go on, but is now being moved to a virtual event within Second Life. In many ways, this is even better. If you weren’t going to be able to attend in person, now you have no excuse!
Stay tuned to the Expo blog or the twitter feed for updates, and we’ll see you in-world.
