Machinima for Dummies: Category News

Vimeo inspires creativity by banning gaming videos

Johnnie Ingram — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 11:48:00 +0100

Vimeo, the darling of the current video upload crop, announced a few days ago that they will no longer host gaming videos.

The post on their blog which makes the annoucement cites several reasons for the decision, chief amongst them the stated aim of Vimeo to “inspire creativity”. The Vimeo staff have drawn a hard line in the sand here:

The Vimeo staff does not feel that videos which are direct captures of video game play truly constitute “creative expression”.

It’s a subjective decision (and one which Vimeo, or any other hosting site, is entirely at liberty to make), but is this really the core motivation here? Perhaps the main concern is actually, as the blog post admits, that

such videos may expose Vimeo to liability from the game creator(s), as we have already seen action from popular video game companies against videos such as these.

Either way, the sad facts appear to be that anything uploaded to Vimeo from now on that is deemed to be a “gaming video” will be summarily deleted. Currently-hosted videos that fall into this category will continue to be hosted by Vimeo until September 1st, at which point they too will be removed.

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of this decision from our point of view is that the blog post makes specific mention of machinima videos, and excludes them from the ruling.

We currently do not feel that Machinima films fall under the category of gaming videos described above and, therefore, assuming compliance with our site’s general terms & conditions, we will continue to accept such videos on Vimeo. We are not, at this time, banning films that fall into the Machinima genre.

The problem here (for us as machinima creators, not for Vimeo) is that the definition of machinima is a wide-ranging one. In fact, as we’ve discussed before, it seems that everyone’s definition of machinima is different (and, crucially, everyone is right). The list of videos that will no longer be accepted by Vimeo is given as

game walk-throughs, game strategy videos, depictions of player vs player battles, raids, fraps, or any other video gaming videos that simply depict individuals playing a video game.

I have to admit, this worries me. “PvP battles”? That would probably exclude Thresh vs. Billox made by Phil “Overman” Rice, arguably the greatest machinima director currently working. “Fraps”? Does that mean any footage captured using the FRAPS screen-capture software? Fraps is just a tool, and it’s a tool that’s been used to create many of the most firmly story-centric machinima pieces of the last few years.

Let me reiterate – Vimeo have the right to refuse to host any video they wish, without explanation. We must be careful, though, not to assume that their definition of “machinima” is a canonical one. I also strongly contest the implication that capturing, editing and uploading footage of online gameplay does not “inpire creativity”. It is, self-evidently, a form of creative expression. Just because the resultant video is probably not something that I, or Vimeo, or perhaps even you, would particularly be interested in watching does not invalidate that.

bllius describes the decision as reactionary and contradictory over at Shattered Keyboard

Call for Entries: Cambridge Film Festival

Hugh "Nomad" Hancock — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 12:43:28 +0100

We don’t normally list Calls for Entries here, but the Cambridge Film Festival looks like it’s going to be this year’s main European Machinima fest, so it’s definitely worth a look.

So - the Cambridge Film Festival is looking for Machinima films to be entered into competition. More detail can be found over here. Look forward to seeing lots of entries!

Update on the WoWGlider situation

Hugh "Nomad" Hancock — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 01:14:30 +0100

There are a number of learned legal opinions coming in on the WoWGlider situation:

It’s 1am here, so I’m going to hold off on analysis from a Machinima perspective until tomorrow. However, comments welcomed.

Dumbass legal decisions ride again

Hugh "Nomad" Hancock — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 11:50:52 +0100

Oh, dear. The decision on the WowGlider case is in, and it doesn’t look good.

We’ll have legal commentary on this as soon as we can talk to someone who knows about this law stuff. But it might well be that US Machinimators just became even more limited, at least in theory.

Bioware are at it again

Johnnie Ingram — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 10:05:00 +0100

I don’t know about you, but if I were Head Honcho at Bioware, the thing keeping me up at night would be “Gosh darn it, we simply haven’t hired enough top class machinimators yet”.

Well, they’ve just added Leo ‘Dr Nemesis’ Lucien to their roster.

Leo is the man behind Binary Picture Show, and the creator of seminal machinima pieces such as Beast (which, regular readers may recall, I quite liked).

Congratulations Leo – it’s about time your talents and abilities started netting you some actual green stuff¹. Just don’t let this stop you making great machinima!

¹ Adjust colour for Canadian money as appropriate. It could be bright pink for all I know.

That EU Legislation

Hugh "Nomad" Hancock — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 12:26:00 +0100

We kinda won. Certainly, there’s a good chance the legislation will be de-fanged.

See http://stealth.strangecompany.org for more info.

In the EU? Then read this. NOW.

Hugh "Nomad" Hancock — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 11:02:00 +0100

We interrupt your normal Machinima for some really, really bad news.

You remember that proposal to remove internet access for filesharers after three infringements? The one that was blatantly excessive and bloody worrying?

Well, someone at the EU looks to be planning to stealth it through on MONDAY!

Professor Lillian Edwards of the University of Southhampton has an article on the subject. It’s tough going, but you need to read this - she’s one of the UK’s foremost experts on Internet law, and she lays out just what’s so very, very bad about this whole thing.

In short: This is a stealth attempt to impose a law that would remove all internet access from anyone convicted - by their ISP - of three violations of copyright. It doesn’t matter if those were accidental or deliberate. It doesn’t matter if someone else was using your wifi connection.

It doesn’t matter that denying people friendships, contact with family, and potentially their means of making a living for trading a couple of songs is vastly excessive.

If you’re in the UK, use WriteToThem to contact your MEP and ask them to vote against this proposal.

(Anyone know how non-UK people can find their MEPs?)

Also, please spread the word of this anywhere you can.

Seriously, this looks to be bad. If you don’t want to risk your internet access being cut off for good because your ISP rightly or wrongly thinks you’ve been filesharing, or because you’ve not set your router up correctly and someone’s been using it, or just because you think permanently disconnecting someone from the predominant communication medum of the age is a bit harsh for sharing a couple of songs,

PLEASE contact your MEP this weekend.

Before it’s too late.

A potentially astonishing new machinima tool for World of Warcraft

Johnnie Ingram — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 17:27:00 +0100

If you make machinima using World of Warcraft, or even if you’ve ever thought about doing so, this post is for you. Your life just got a whole lot easier.

Over at WowInsider, moo Money posts about a new WoW machinima tool from Mads ‘Malu05’ Lund. This is the most feature-rich WoW machinima tool in existence, to the best of my knowledge, and it’s going to blow your mind. It’s not yet clear whether this tool requires you to run a private World of Warcraft server or whether it operates client-side only on the official WoW servers.

moo describes it as

The tool that will change WoW machinima forever

and I think she might be right. The tool allows multiple cameras (through clever use of saved viewpoint positions), speeding up of the WoW day/night cycle, bullet time (yes, really), automatic smooth camera panning, automatic tracking of player avatars and even resizing of avatars. You can trigger almost any animation, in realtime, by simply picking your animation of choice from a drop-down list. You can even detach the camera from the player model and wander all over the map if you like – we would have committed almost any act to get hold of that functionality when we were making BloodSpell.

At the time of writing, the tool is still in a closed beta state, but Malu05, the insane genius who knocked this baby together, is openly inviting participation from other coders. He’s released a lengthy demonstration video, showing the tool in action. If he can deliver on his promises in the video, then it’s going to be hard to see Malu05’s tool as anything less than the Holy Grail for WoW machinimators.

Thanks to moo Money for giving us an early tip-off here.

Shadows in Second Life!

Hugh "Nomad" Hancock — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 18:35:11 +0100

As many people may know, I’m not a huge fan of Second Life’s graphical capabilities, despite its advantages for Machinima creators. However, slowly, slowly its faults are getting fixed, and today another one has (sort of) fallen - shadows.

Normally, nothing in Second Life casts shadows, making it look, well, kinda flat. But apparently, there’s a new ultra-experimental renderer for Second Life which enables dynamic shadows.

It might b0rk your PC, of course. But it might also help you get shadows into your SL films, which are stunningly important for mood. Hurrah!

Machinima Film Festival (North America) date announced!

Hugh "Nomad" Hancock — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 12:41:55 +0100

Yep, it’s coming!

To be precise, it’s coming on the

1st November 2008

At Eyebeam in New York City.

More details as soon as.