Monday, April 21, 2008

Voices!

"Voices" premiered both on The Machiniplex and in Second Life at Hathead's fantastic machinima emporium yesterday.

NOTE to future me: check the damn time fool. Also, check that the in-world time matches that posted on teh interwebs!

Voices is a surreal and very hip video created using almost every piece of 3D filmmaking software that currently exists (Moviestorm, iClone, and ZenCub3d) from Pineapple Pictures. If you have not seen it, then check it out on The Machiniplex (I wish I could link to it directly).








Voices panel
The panel discussion was well attended and there was a lot of questions and some great answers from the co-creators, Kate Fosk and Michael Joyce (and the voice of the narrator - Doug Foss).



















List of those using voice chat. Get it! At the Voices premiere!
Unfortunately I may have missed the answer to my question (what is their previous filmmaking experience? - I was under the impression that Michael at least had a long history in the film/TV industry).






The audience is listening
There were numerous questions asked by the audience over the following hour or so, including the 3D software used, time it took to produce (about 3 months), the genesis of the project, the surreal and stylistic use of color, etc. The difficult thing about using voice chat is the lack of a complete transcript (perhaps someone should record these for posterity's sake? - and the voice and text chat would need to be combined somehow). Someone else will probably have some other comments to note.



















Zach is back! I am black!
It was a great event. I stuck around with the stragglers again. Zach showed up, but no catastrophe ensued.










Robots attack!
Then some unobtrusive new people showed up and pointed out the discrepancy in the time posted in-world for the event and the time posted on the blog (I had also made a mistake so I blame nobody).

The tail end of this party is always interesting. At the last one that I attended, for Clockwork, the creator of The Monad (Sam Goldwater) showed up and sent us a link to that just released film, which turned out to be a fairly interesting piece of filmmaking.

Which just goes to show you, don't be afraid of strangers bearing virtual celluloid.

5 comments:

Ricky Lee Grove said...

So sorry about the time discrepancies. I'll be sure to double check everything in the future. We are working on some kind of recording or document of the discussion, but I haven't been able to get enough support yet. In the past when we were using Skype, we'd post the text chat, so I'm hoping that we'll be able to provide some way for those who couldn't attend to read/listen to the discussion.

Yes, Michael R. Joyce has a long history in TV/Film and Kate has been making films for several years.

We are also working on a way to link directly to the film. It's a matter of programming, which I'm not very knowledgeable in. Ingrid is trying to get that done asap.
For now, if you go directly to Machiniplex.com, "Voices" is the first film in the list. You can stream it there or download a high-quality wmv version.

I wish I could have hung around a bit because (as you note) the post discussion can be very interesting. BTW, Sam's film "Monad" will have it's own Premiere next month.

Thanks for coming by and blogging about the event. We'll try to iron out the wrinkles for future events.

-Ricky

bllius said...

The time issue was more amusing than anything.

I take it this is him:

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0003070/

Unfortunately I will miss next week's show.

Anonymous said...

bllius,
My credits are easiest seen at IMDB under Michael R. Joyce (to separate me from the other Mike Joyce). Or my favorite assessment of my previous career is in an old issue of Premiere magazine (the one with Tom Hanks in Bonfire of the Vanities on the cover) where producer Joel Silver called me "a f**king slimball". I got a lot of emplyment offers after that.
Thank you for the kind words on Voices and the event. It was a blast.

Ricky Lee Grove said...

Yes, that is Michael's resume. Funny, he doesn't have that smarmy overbearing personality that so many Hollywood producers have. He's smart and amusing. And very supportive of machinima.

Ah, damn, sorry you can't make it. We will miss you.

-Ricky

bllius said...

Lol at the last two comments.

Hopefully I will make the next one.