Machinima for Dummies

It’s amazing how far you can get simply by just asking nicely. People will volunteer their time and skills, give you lots of free publicity – even send you money sometimes. BloodSpell, for example, would not have been possible without the insanely-enthusiastic fan community that built up around the film, who did some can’t-put-a-price-on-it grassroots publicity as well as some can’t-quite-believe-it fan remixes and artwork.

We’ve said all along that, when it comes to casting your movie, if you have a specific actor in mind for a role, it’s always worth asking them to do it. Even if they’re, y’know … famous. You never know.

We’ve been proven right several times over. Machinima pieces featuring some very famous names have started appearing recently. Bathtub Production’s The Chronicles Of Humanity features internet superstar Felicia Day in a minor role, and we hear rumours that The Aventures Of Luke And Joe will soon see an appearance by a very well-known actor.

For Strange Company’s current project, Death Knight Love Story, Hugh has taken the “just ask nicely, you never know” approach to the extreme. The cast list includes Anna Chancellor (Four Weddings And A Funeral, St Trinian’s), Brian Blessed (I Claudius, The Phantom Menace[1]), Jack Davenport (Pirates Of The Carribbean, Flash Forward) and Joanna Lumley (Absolutely Fabulous, The New Avengers).

Machinima (and anymation) has always been inovative, but it’s only in the comparitively recent past that the external perception of machinima (and knowledge of its existence!) has become sufficiently strong to attract actors this serious. Fame doesn’t automatically imply talent of course, any more than lack of fame implies lack of talent, but the wider world is now starting to realise what we’ve known all along: Machinima can produce movies that hold their own against any other type of film-making.

It just goes to show: you never know who’ll say “yes” until you ask.

Disclosure of bias: I’m a creative consultant on Death Knight Love Story, and Hugh is the writer/director. We’re as biased as can be, and we’re not pretending otherwise!

¹ Oh alright. Flash Gordon, too.

We received word of a Machinima festival with seven hours (!) of screenings happening in Second Life next weekend - here are the details:

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MMIF 2010 MaMachinima International Festival Saturday Feb. 20th , 2010 MMIF sims (SL) + Planetart, Amsterdam (NL)

‘MMIF 2010’ is the second edition of an annual film festival in 3D cyberspace with a screening in physical space (‘RL’). A seven hour movie marathon with a two hour afterparty. MMIF 2010 can also be followed on the web via live stream broadcasts.

The MMIF is a celebration of ‘Machinima’: a new cinematic art form, created with virtual worlds and video games. On 3D Internet platforms like Second Life, any kind of movie sets can be build for very low costs. The MMIF aims to bring machinima to a wider audience, online – and offline. Machinima artists from all over the world are present in real time at the virtual MMIF Theatre. They present over 50 short films and have talks with other machinimatographers and an international audience.

Audience in Amsterdam can follow the MMIF event projected live on a big screen at the Planetart Medialab Artspace. They can bring their own laptop computers to interact with the show on the big screen. Free wireless Internet and electricity is provided. No entrance fee at Planetart, however tickets are required - reservations must be made via email. Details at http://MMIF.org

The MMIF is a volunteer-run non-profit collaboration of MaMachinima with Planetart, UrbanResort, Meta.Live.Nu, Pop Art Lab, VMax, Ystreams.TV, Metaworld Broadcasting, MetaMeets, Gallery Fermate, and many volunteers. MMIF 2010 is financed by donations and gifts. Virtual land sponsored by Linden Lab. The MMIF was initiated by the Dutch Film maker Chantal Harvey.

MMIF 2010 info, promo video, full programme, live streams, contact and latest updates and changes at http://MMIF.org

MMIF 2010 ARTISTS:

Gala Charron - Ogogoro - Lainy Voom - Draxtor Despres - Bryn Oh - Rohan Fermi - Toxic Menges - Tara Yeats - Phaylen Fairchild - Pooky Amsterdam & Russell (Rosco) Boyd - Poid Mahovlich - CodeWarrior Carling - Evie Fairchild - Graham Miami - Kronos Kirkorian - Osprey Therian - Chaffro Schoonmaker - SaveMe Oh - Dulci Parx - Chatnoir Studios - Paisley Beebe - Rysan Fall - Sol Bartz (phil Rice) - Rocksea Renegade - Cisko Vandeverre – Nitwacket (Pyewacket Bellman) - Chantal Harvey - Lowe Runo - Pia Klaar - Al Peretz - Halden Beaumont - Kolor Fall - Binary Quandry - spyVspy Aeon - Animatechnica - Miles Eleventhauer - Lizsolo Mathilde - Delgado Cinquetti - L1aura Loire - Iono Allen - Pyewacket Kazyanenko - Fort Knight - Luca Lisci - Larkworthy Antfarm - Beans Canning - Gtoon Jun - Tutsy Navarathna - Hadji Ling - Colemarie Soleil - Xineohp Guisse - Lorin Tone - Ian Friar - Suzy Yue - Claus Uriza / Emily Hifeng – Meta Lord, and others.

MMIF 2010 TIMES: Saturday 20th of February 19:00 CET (= SL 10 am PST) - DOORS OPEN 20:00 CET (= SL 11 am PST) - Opening ceremony + Machinima film screenings 03:00 CET (= SL 6 pm PST) - THE END + After party online in SL

PHYSICAL LOCATION: Planetart Medialab Artspace Wibautstraat 150 1091 GR Amsterdam (NL)

VIRTUAL LOCATION: MMIF 1, 2, 3, 4 Second Life Teleport links via http://MMIF.org

Runescape’s the 500lb gorilla in the MMO field right now, boasting arguably more players than World of Warcraft. As such, it’s very exciting to hear that the Runescape developers are adding a Machinima tool, the “Orb of Oculus”, to the game - looking forward to seeing what it can do!

UPDATE - the forum thread on this is up to 29 pages already. This could spawn quite a lot of new Machinima…

And the big news at the end of the year keeps on coming:

Pixel Eyes Productions have been trying to get an answer out of Valve Entertainment forever on the subject on Machinima, and finally, they’ve got this:

“”We are not interested in licensing our technology or IP for machinima. This includes providing copyright approvals.”

(Emphasis mine)

Wow. That’s kinda big news. The creators of arguably the best engine out there for high-quality Machinima has no interest in letting it extend beyond YouTube.

Having said that, it’s not new. I’ve had similar conversations with iD Software in the past - the summary being “We’re a games company, not a film company.”

Pixel Eyes have some interesting analysis on their blog. I haven’t really thought through this news yet, so - what do you think?

I’ve just noticed that Moviestorm have announced content rental options for their content packs, for subscribers. In short, rather than buying a content pack outright and being able to use it forever, you’re able to rent it for a day or a month to make your movie, for significantly less money.

That’s a very interesting idea. Most Moviestorm movies won’t take years to make. Being able to rent props for a day or a month, particularly if you’re planning your film well, will significantly reduce your outlay on any given movie.

Obviously, though, again it will result in movies sitting on your hard drive that you can’t play the 3D assets back from. But how much of a problem is that? I’m uncertain - I know I’ve not looked at the 3D assets for BloodSpell since I completed the film, for example.

It’s also interesting I haven’t heard much noise about this feature, and that it’s being dropped in just before Christmas. This is a pretty significant new option, we’ve never seen it before in a Machinima tool, and it represents another modification to the MS biz plan. But there’s not a lot of shouting going on, either from within or outside the MS camp.

What do you think?

OK, this falls into the “very big news” category - Epic have just announced that the Unreal Engine is now free to use for indie developers - presumably including Machinima creators. That’s very big indeed, since it’s been used for commercial Machinima already.

Anyone know how much modding the engine requires before it’s Machinima-ready, if any?

Very interesting news from the guys at Pixel Eyes Productions - they’ve been trying to enable revenue sharing through ads on YouTube, and they’ve found the following:

• YouTube won’t let them revenue share until they can prove rights to the video (not too surprising)
• Valve won’t even respond to emails from them (slightly more surprising, but we’ve seen this before from several games companies - Microsoft being the big exception.)
• Machinima.com DOES have revenue sharing enabled.

I’d be really interested to hear more on this topic from someone at the Machinima.com team - anyone?

Also, has anyone had more luck talking to Valve?

We’re always interested - nay, fascinated - to hear about new Machinima-capable engines here.

So:

• Baron Soosden’s been experimenting with Aion Machinima and has posted a piece about his work so far.
• We hear from Murray of BloodSpell fame that Uncharted 2 has a Machinima mode, which looks quite complete, although still no word on whether it’s possible to render movies out…

Just in case you’re not thoroughly sick of the sound of our voices by now, machinima blogger and creator Iceaxe (creator of Clockwork and Cloud Angel) interviewed both Johnnie and Hugh at this year’s Cambridge Film Festival. You can listen for free online:

• Johnnie talks about Moviestorm, machinima.com and the dozens of movies he’s never finished making.
• Hugh talks about machinima, molecular gastronomy and why all-over bodysuits are the way of the future.

Keep an eye on Iceaxe’s blog for more interviews, from machinima luminaries such as Roger Burlong-Strange and Dave Lloyd.

Dopefish links to this fantastic video of direct facial tracking in the Half-Life 2 engine:

Looks to me a lot like proper facial capture using nothing more than a webcam, which admittedly we’ve seen before - but we’ve not seen it in real-time. VERY interesting.