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.

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.

Liveblogging The Machiniplex Premiere!

This is fun. The Machiniplex premiere is on right now, showcasing Fling Films new clip, Morning Run Amok (Fling Films). As I write this there are thirteen people in the chatroom, twelve of them grilling the filmmaker, Frank Fox (FLeef), about his new Moviestorm-created clip. Unfortunately, the voice chat was not working, so we resorted to typing.

In the chat we have Ingrid Moon (Coyote Republic), Ricky Grove (gToon), Phil Rice (Overman) Jason Choi, Dr. Nemesis, moo Money, and a few names I don't recognize (sorry if I don't know everyone's real name or their avatar/alias).

Some highlights:

The film is shot in Moviestorm and composited with real world locations like a grocery store and a VA hospital (some funny stuff happened when capturing this) using Vegas 6.

The idea came from a few jokes FLeef had floating around, so he built the film around that idea, all neatly tied together by a jogger. Very funny.

The voice recordings were captured in various places, including Coyote's car. Apparently Phil's Yiddish impersonation just did not work for the film. ;)

Phil scored the film and even bought some kazoo's during music production.

Sound design and production by gToon?

About Machiniplex:

Designed to showcase high quality films and be analogous to a 'machinima museum'. It's nice to see us take notice of this now, because unlike film, machinima, for the most part, can be endlessly copied across platforms, meaning preservation for our grandchildren should be an easy task. The films will be chosen by Jason, Ingrid, and Ricky. There was some discussion of a nomination process but nothing was decided.

There will also be special content and workshops presented. This part could be really interesting.

There won't be a comments or forum section (there are other sites for that).

High quality downloads will be available for all.

Awesome work, and looks like a great site for machinima content.