Online Machinima Film Festival Winners Announced

Say that five times fast.

The OMFF 2009 winners have been announced. Peruse the list for some fantastic machinima pieces. Some expected results, some surprises. Any discussion?

Online Machinima Film Festival

I finished examining all the finalists for the OMFF 2009. Winners should be announced soon. There were some great films to choose from and in some cases I simply flipped a coin to make my choice (just kidding).

Unfortunately it does not look like there will be a virtual awards ceremony this year. Perhaps some generous soul would offer up some SL space to host them?

Liveblogging The Online Machinima Film Festival

Update*

Slideshow



Simply because I can

The theatre is filling up.

Best Technical Achievment.

Gold = Martin Falch = Tales of the Past III
Silver = Tom Jantol = The Cuckoo Clock
Bronze = Tobias Lundmark = Among Fables and Men








Ze Audience!















Ironman likes his popcorn!

Best Original Sound Design

Gold = Lit Fuse Films = Ignus Solus
Silver = Frank Fox = Morning Run Amok
Bronze = Wingmen Productions = Faith, Hope, and Charity














One Jovial Sim accepting for Alice.

Best Custom Content

Gold = Tom Jantol = The Cuckoo Clock
Silver = Wingmen Productions = Faith, Hope, and Charity
Bronze = Tom Jantol = The Bridge

Best Music Video

Gold = Baron Soodon = I'm So Sick
Silver = Overman = Only
Bronze = C.-D. Schulz = Ausgedacht









Joe (Wingman) Accepting One of Many Awards for "Faith, Hope, and Charity"

Hugh's pretty damn funny. Audio keeps cutting out though.

Best First Film

Gold = Tobias Lundmark = Among Fables and Men
Silver = Wingmen Productions = Faith, Hope, and Charity
Bronze = Kenion = Black Rose

Best Comedy

Gold = Frank Fox = Morning Run Amok
Silver = Hathead = Die Greenie Die
Bronze = Damien Valentine = The Death of Jar Jar

Special Award?!

Most viewed machinima ever = Overman = Male Restroom Etiquette = 4.5 Million Views

Golden Brush Award!?

Overman = "I came out of the closet about machinima and shared it with them in Octoboer of 2006, shortly before I was off to New York for the Machinima Film Festival there" = about his family not understanding his machinima obsession. Lol = and the world is a better place for that obsession and Phil thanks all of us. Awesome speech!











Sol (Overman) Accepting One Of His Many Awards!














Accept That Award Snoopy!








The Audience Is Listening!











Cartman (He Didn't Do It)




















A Jurassic Acceptance Speech!




















Stormy! Organizer Supreme!

Best Drama

Gold = Leo Lucian-Bay = Beast
Silver = Wingmen Productions = Faith, Hope, and Charity
Bronze = One Jovial Sim = Alice

I will have pics later.

Best Series

Gold = CJ Ambrosia = PEDS
Silver = Ross Scott = Civil Protection
Bronze = Martin Falch = Tales of the Past Series

Best Film

Gold = Wingmen Productions = Faith, Hope, and Charity
Silver = Martin Falch = Tales of the Past III
Bronze = Tom Jantol = The Cuckoo Clock

The stand in acceptor is bloody hilarious.

Congratulations to all of the winners!








Always Networking!

One more (doh = I forgot). Outstanding Machinima Award.

Paul Marino!

Grats!

Oh yah I AM IRONMAN!















Dance At The Afterparty!

Machinima News - Bad And Good

Some news.

The bad first.

I was very shocked to hear the news of Peter Rasmussen's passing. I did not know him, but others in the machinima community did.

More information on these pages:

Machinima for Dummies
AFTRS Lamp
IHateSheep
EyesWiredOpen
Sydney SIGGRAPH
Dr. of Machinima

Now some good news.









The After After Party

The OMFF Second Life pre-awards cocktail party was yesterday. Unfortunately I missed most of it and have only 2 pics to show (plus what Frank took). But he's already posted them so take a look:

FlingFilms








The After After Party

Thx again to HatHead and Stormy. Remember, the awards are May 10. I am not wearing a pirate costume.

More news.

Machiniplex will be showcasing "Folie a Duex" in just a few hours.

Overcast contest.

Phil is having a contest to promote the Overcast podcast. Entries are due April 27, 2008.

Michael Nitsche has an article about machinima. I have not seen much discussion about it.

New video releases.

Tom Jantol just released another video called "Wizard of OS: The Fish Incident" that is bizarrely based on an experiment by Nikolai Tesla and some lab notes he left behind. Very strange as you might expect.

A fair use documentary (approx. 10 min.) made with The Movies (how does that work?).

Same As It Ever Was. Critics of video games recycle their arguments (what was this made in?).

Ross Scott released the third episode of Freeman's Mind.

Apparently students at the University of Utah were using Half Life to create some machinima clips and released them on YouTube.

PoorComputerScienceStudent
The Lumberjack Song
Secret Hillary/McCain Love Affair
The last one is especially well done.

Never played Half Life before? You can get the gist of the story from HL in 60 Seconds.

Not your cup of tea? How about Half Life: Full Life Conseqeuences #1 or #2. Machinima made from fan fiction created by a nine year old. Of course, it makes no sense. Or is it the work of a genius beyond our understanding?

LitFuseFilms released Melons 3.

Other news.

NIN film festival.

Some of you may have heard of Trent Reznor's (Nine Inch Nails) recent release of Ghosts, a set of instrumental tracks. You can get some tracks for free, the full set for a limited amount, or the special super deluxe mega version. Word is they already made $1.5 million after one week release. They are having a fan-submitted visuals contest to accompany the instrumental tracks. More information on this You Tube video.

Adobe is having a "See What's Possible" contest. Some very nice prizes. Check out the submissions.

The oldest animation ever found is very cool.

The Machinarium also has some fascinating visuals.

So does The World of Goo.

And Crayon Physics Deluxe. You Tube vid.

And Audiosurf (surf your music).

And Love.

Maxis has integrated YouTube into Spore, so that you can post to YT directly from the game. Talk about embedded gaming.

This is how to use You Tube to audition. A very attractive young woman doing 21 different accents. Judging by her resume she is very talented.

Impressive fan made art for Bioshock gets noticed by 2K Games.

Excel: The next generation 3D modeling software? YouTube.

The 20 minute dcumentary The Story of Stuff.

Goobees. What happens in a vending machine.

Line Rider vs. Pivot. Amusing.

Daily Monster. A new monster every day.

Strange Animation from Marcel Kaars - keukendingen.

OMFF

OMFF finalists are up, and as I happen to be one of the judges, I will become intimately familiar with all of the films and people in the nine categories.

So, to recap the process.

1. Nominations accepted from the community at large. Nine categories. Nominations finalized.
2. Short lists derived from #1 accepted from the community at large. Short lists finalized (3 in each category).
3. Judges decide order (1, 2, 3) for each category. All six judges contribute to final order (less finalists than the total # of judges means hopefully no ties).
4. Winners announced.

We're in phase #3 right now. Winners announced in May. There will be an awards ceremony in SL on May 10th.

Best of luck to all the nominees and finalists.

Note: There will be a lot of watching to do. Hours and hours. I hope you all appreciate my sacrifice.

Machinima Talk - Feb 22

I attended my first (but the fourth) machinima talk. The first time it was held in Second Life.
Machinima talk audience.










It appears to have been well received as there was a lot of attendees: some used the audio chat, and some the text chat. I don't have the full list of people attending (nor their RL identities) but you can see from this shot most of the audience.
Myself (Scout), zsgamemaster, and Hathead (left to right).











Discussions ranged from HL machinima, to How Cold is it in Edmonton? to Antics machinima. There was a lot of discussion on production and techniques.
Zach (Lit Fuse Films) straight out of an Aphex Twin video (and in one of his less revealing outfits).


















Moo Money after too much pixel juice (the first step is admitting you have a problem).












Coming soon to a TV near you (in the upcoming second part of the CSI NY episode) as worn by Martholomew (ILLectric Sheep).
















There was also a lot of discussion on paying gigs. Many of the attendees were working full time or in contract gigs on machinima.
Domestic bliss, or just another SL moment?

















I think it went well, and according to some, it was much smoother than previous Skype conference calls. This bodes well for further discussions in SL (Machinima talk, the upcoming OMFF, etc.).