Blowing Up

My Bazooka Joe Machinima video was featured on the company blog. Viral marketing offers a great way to get your films seen.

Time for the Mackies

Machinima Awards Ceremony to Broadcast in SL
Posted Oct 25th 2006 2:09PM by Akela Talamasca
Filed under: News

This year's Machinima Awards (or 'Mackies', as they're affectionately called) Ceremony will be broadcast simultaneously in SL, on November 4th at 9 PM. It will be held in the Virtual Laguna Beach space, where new episodes of MTV's hit show are broadcast even before the TV version airs.

Machinima has definitely come a long way ... Second Life makes a great space for Machinima creation, where its comparative graphical crudity (alongside more polished worlds such as World of Warcraft) is offset by residents' ability to create any conceivable building, vehicle, or prop the story calls for. Having said that, however, there are only 4 movies from SL nominated for awards:


Better Life by Robbie Dingo (Best Virtual Performance: Custom Animation)
Game Over by Pierce Portocarrero (Best Virtual Performance: Custom Animation; Best Visual Design; Best Technical Achievement)
Machinima Island (Trailer) by Ricard Gras (Best Visual Design)
Silver Bells and Golden Spurs by Eric Call (Best Technical Achievement; Best Commercial Machinima)
Go check 'em out, and root for your favorites in November!

And the Winner Is...

The Academy of Machinima Arts and Sciences has released the nominees for this years "Mackies" machinima awards. An impressive number of the digital films include works by Second Life machinimists, including:

"Game Over" by Pierce Portocarrero nominated for Best Technical Achievement and Best Visual Design
"Silver Bells and Golden Spurs" by Eric Call nominated for Best Technical Achievement and Best Commercial Machinima
"Machinima Island" by Ricard Gras nominated for Best Visual Design
"Better Life" by Rob Wright nominated for Best Virtual Performance: Custom Animation
Good luck to all the nominees. The winners will be announced at the Machinima Festival from November 4-5 at the Museum for the Moving Image in Queens.

Note that I'll be announcing soon other Second Life connections to the festival shortly. So stay tuned...

I came across this at The Click Heard Round the World.

2L Machinima at MIT

I came across this post from the blog Millions of Us. Glad to see machinima getting respect attention and respect at top universities.

Machinima @ MIT
Dean Jansen of Telemusicvision and CyberOne (the non-MoU parts of my life) connected me to Prof. Beth Coleman at MIT. She has a small group of students interested in testing out the machinima waters in Second Life. I spoke to them about some lighting effects, scripting, and avatar creation. I based my introduction around Robbie Dingo’s amazing work, Tao Takashi’s videos, Eric Call’s Silver Bells, some segments of Torely’s first machinima & Pierce P’s 60 to Tank. I also used one of minxeh’s/Annette’s creepy Halloween setups to show the students the tricks of local lighting and allow them to see some of the textures/prim shadows.

Tao Takashi (Christian Scholz) will be filming a tutorial piece tomorrow explaining camera control in SL. I will then deliever it to the group and hopefully answer their questions. I wish Tao were able to participate remotely, but the meeting time for this tutorial is at some insane morning hour in Germany. Nonetheless, I can’t wait to see what the MIT students will create for the next machinima festival!

In case you're wondering why I have anything to do with machinima (seeing how I have never made any), the answer is simple — I think it is an integral part of the future of entertainment. I also think that it is the best way to record SL events. I became very interested in machinima after the Beyond Broadcast conference. Look for an announcement here within the next weeks/month for a white paper this topic.

Grammar Films

Bunk Magazine has some funny machinima based on grammar rules. Click on "Grammar Films." Being a former high school teacher, I found these hilarious. They're (not There of Their) done with "The Movies." Still not sure what I think about that program yet. Let me know what you think.

Submit to IFILM

IFILM Wants your Machinima!
from Machinima.com: Making Movies in Virtual Reality
IFILM, long known for our dedication to short film and popularity with viral videos, wants to host your Films.

Our Video Games Channel [under new management] wants to put an emphasis on Machinima, Mashups, and User Reviews of games. Take a look at some of our collections thus far here-
http://www.ifilm.com/videogames/collection/machinima
http://www.ifilm.com/videogames/collection/mashups

As you can see, they need building. Upload your Machinima Films, your Mashups, and your Game Reviews, then email the link to the Video Game Producer, Jake Sarnowski at jsarnowski@ifilm.com. Machinima and other User Videos will be featured on the Video Game page, and the best of the best will make it to our Homepage for mass consumption.

Machinima Island

Machinima Island will launch October 16. Seems like a way to have machinima ideas produced based on stories submitted in a wiki format generator.

Check out the teaser at the Machinima.com site. LA Interactiva is behind the project and seems interested in emphasizing participation in media. Cheers!

2L Action Figure

3-D figurines of Second Life avatars
from Boing Boing by noemail@noemail.org (Mark Frauenfelder)

Now you can have figurines made of your movie stars.

Mark Frauenfelder: Fabjectory makes 3-D figurines of your Second Life avatar. A 7-inch model costs $99.

Picture 1-23Q: How are the figures made?

A: The figures are built on a Z-Corp rapid prototyping machine. One 4000th of an inch at a time, the machine lays down a plaster powder that it covers with a type of colored glue.

Q: How do the colors get applied?

A: Color is applied as the figures are built, this has a couple advantages over paint:

1. Very fine texture details can be reproduced: words, tattoos and subtle things like fingernails and eyebrows all show up great
2. Color actually extends slightly into the figure (like a candy shell), reducing the visibility of small scratches and bumps

Deadline Extended

Miachinima competition; deadline prolongued
from Machinima.com: Making Movies in Virtual Reality
New deadline: 16 October, 24:00 hours

We noticed that some potential candidates were facing problems by making their film in seven days. So we decided to prolong the deadline with ten days.

Here is the final content criterium: �Your machinima must be an interesting reaction to a news event of international, national or local importance that happened no earlier than September 2006 and must clearly refer to it.�

Make a Machinima!
Holland Animation Film Festival, Mediamatic, Virma
29 September � 16 October (24.00 hrs)

Machinima is film made in the real-time 3D environment of a computer game.

Participants to this competition make a short machinima movie between September 29th and October 16th 2006 and upload it to a special page at GoogleVideo:
http://video.google.nl/machinima, before 24:00 hrs October 16th (Dutch time, i.e. GMT + 1 hr).

21 Films will be nominated by the jury and presented at the Holland Animation Film Festival preceding the award ceremony. The award ceremony is on November 2nd 2006 at the Holland Animation Film Festival in Utrecht, the Netherlands.

Prizes!
· A main prize of Euro 4,000 for the winner of the competition.
· Google Video offers a promotion page for one week to the artist with the most views on http://video.google.nl/machinima.
· An encouragement prize of free participation to a Mediamatic machinima workshop and an allowance for travel costs for the most promising filmmaker.

Beside looking at technical aspects the jury searches for good ideas in combination with smart ways of making machinima films.

Organizations:
www.haff.nl
www.mediamatic.net
www.virma.nl

Online communication:
www.machinima.com
www.machinima.org
www.machinimag.com

Tips & Tricks:
http://www.mediamatic.net/article-10526-en.html
www.answers.com/topic/machinima
www.mprem.com
www.strangecompany.org/HK-2005

The machinima competition has been made possible thanks to the support of the Mondriaan Foundation, Thuiskopie Fonds and Google Video.

Slasher Contest

Upcoming Ed Wood Festival
from Machinimoo by flwrbabe@gmail.com (moo Money)

I’d just like to give all the machinimists a heads up about the Take5 Machinima Festival format this month. In honor of October, we’re having an Ed Wood Film Festival. Machinimists will be given a theme roughly 72 hours before Halloween and tasked to make an awesomely bad horror film in that time. It’s not supposed to be a masterpiece, so anyone can participate! I’ll have more details on the time of the party in the coming week.

Who was Ed Wood?

* Ed Wood was a filmmaker who created ultra-low budget B movies. He was posthumously recognized as the “Worst Director of All Time” for films such as Plan 9 From Outer Space and Glen or Glenda. He wrote, directed, and sometimes acted in his films. He also made them fast - filming sometimes as many as 30 scenes in a single day. Find out more from wikipedia.

What is Machinima?

* Machinima is the art of making a movie using a game engine to render the action in real time. While it is not as sophisticated as a tools like 3dMax or Maya, Creating a film in Second Life is free, easy, and fast. For more information, check out Machinima.com.

How do I make it?

* It’s pretty easy - stay tuned to this spot, A really fast and bad tutorial can be found here. I will also answer questions at our forums.

Other stuff

* This festival is put on by fans of Ed Wood and Second Life. No Infringement is intended on either of them. By submitting a entry, you grant Alt-Zoom Studios the right to use your film in promotional material, unless you request otherwise. Films with illegal or broadly offensive elements will not be eligible for screening or prizes.

Noble Goodman

Good looking huh?

Colbert in 2L

Check out Colbert in 2L. Wagner James Au sez, "Taking the Colbert Report's recent green screen challenge to a whole new level, a pair of Second Life machinima creators made Colbert's rightwing wet dream involving Soledad O'Brien, Karl Rove, and a clone army of Democrats a reality. Or at least, a very strange 90 second YouTube video. Link.

Bazooka Dance

I made this machinima dance video for the Bazooka Joe video contest.

Male Restroom Etiquette

Male Restroom Etiquette. This film is done well and gives great advice for using the lavatory.

2L Doc Trailer

Check out the trailer of the Robostudios documentary about 2L.