3D Moviestorm Machinima

As you may know I'm interested in 3D and 3D Machinima since quite a while. Maybe some of you have followed my Blog posts about that topic. As Phil Rice from z-studios postet recently '3D is (Very Nearly) Here'. It's great to see the first stereoscopic 3D machinima made with Moviestorm has been released. This is not yet a build in standard feature of Moviestorm, but we will see this in the future. This movie is a test piece for Moviestorm's new 3D feature. I hope it will not take too long until this new feature will be officially released. Moviestorm will be a great tool to help us experiment with 3D.

The Graveyard 3D

Yes, YouTube has already implemented a feature to share and view stereoscopic 3D movies. With the viewer once can choose over 10 different ways to view the film. And it's easy now to distribute your 3D movie using YouTube:

HOW TO MAKE 3D YOUTUBE VIDEOS - Yuriythebest's Don't Ask Me Again Guide

YouTube 3d feature

Hope to see your first 3D machinima movie soon. Good luck.

Bitfilm 2010: No Machinima?

Bitfilm one of the few international festivals that had a seperate machinima category seems to have dropped this category this year.

From their recent press release:

"Thanks to the Internet, filmmakers from all over the world can work together on one feature film; the Internet audience‘s votes will determine the film‘s content. The Bitfilm Festival 2010 will be more than a festival - it will be a worldwide „crowd production“. Its result will be a full-length feature film on one topic: Money & Me. Filmmakers are asked to share their personal views on financial affairs."

"Via an online vote, the audience will decide which short films will be chosen for the final film in the following categories: documentary, fiction and animation. The most popular film in every category will receive prize money donated by the Cultural Authority of the Federal State of Hamburg. All selected films will receive a share in the film’s profits."

Since this year "it's all about money", it's clear why they had to drop machinima as a seperate category. You need to own all the content rights and since it's for commercial use it's even more difficult to achieve since that excludes to use most of the creative commons content as well to make your movie. The animation category might be a place one could seak in with tools like Moviestorm, iClone and SecondLife. The content final version of the film needs to be in HD resolution (2K). I have no idea if that could be produced by those tools in the quality they expect. Good to know that for the screening copy they accept all standard video formats.

Although an interesting concept to make, finance and distribute a film, I'm very disappointed we lost Bitfilm for machinima as a festival platform. Bitfilm was very supportive and helped a lot to spread the word about machinima worldwide over the last years.
Their topic "Money & Me." is interesting especially shortly after, or maybe still in between, the financial crisis. I'm interested to see what filmmakers around the world come up with.
Looks like 'Money' did win against machinima filmmakers again. Not only it's very hard to impossible to make any money with our creative work. Now 'Money' forces us out of Bitfilm festival. Can we strike back?

If you want to participate: Submission deadline is July 31, 2010

New Movie: the Graveyard. (NIN version)

I still love the original version, but from some comments I got and from my own impression I recognized some flaws. By making the choice to use the song from the original game this imposts a much faster pace to the editing than was good for the film. And since the song is in a not widespread language (Flemish) I had to put subtitles on. At the end it's a bit an information overload. You have to watch, listen and read at the same time. This could kill the mood that could be set by the film. Although I recognized that very soon after releasing the movie it needed one of those miracles to help. By random listening to tracks on my iPod, I came across that Nine Inch Nails song. I didn't remember to have ever heard it before, but did know instantly that this is the right music for that film. It had the right pace, set the right mood and has no text on it's own that puts some kind of interpretation to the film. Since my work on abstract film, I love the idea to let the viewer be part of the story and leave enough room for his/her own interpretation. I hope you like this new version and look forward your reviews, comments, critics.
Enough words. Let the movie speak for itself.

Moby Music Video Contest

Moby is having a competition where mobygratis users can win $5,000 to make a video for his new song 'wait for me'. Looks like an interesting challenge and opportunity for machinima moviemakers.
Bryn Oh has already submitted his SecondLife machinima:
MOBY - WAIT FOR ME by Bryn Oh

KEY DATES

• Open for entries: Feb 22
• Entries close: Apr 5
• 6 Finalists announced: Apr 12
• Winner announced: Apr 19

PRIZES

• Serviced worldwide as the Wait For Me music video
• US$5,000 cash for winner
• US$1,000 each for the 2 best finalists

details are at: http://genero.tv/moby/


Official Music Video:
Wait For Me by Jessica Dimmock

MMIF 2010 Playlist and Pictures

I had a great time at the MMIF2010 Machinima festival. Festival organizer Chantal Harvey and her team put together an amazing machinima festival. It must have been a lot of work expecially with all the technical stuff involved in setting up such a huge event in both SL and RL. I've unfortunaley not had the chance to attend the whole 9 hours of screening, but I was surprised that when I joined in for the last 3 hours, the place was still crowded and even until the last hour where my movie was shown there was a huge and interested audience watching the movies. It was just announced they will run the festival again next year: MMIF 2011: Saturday february 19th!
I'll try to do my best to improve the quality of my movie work to meet the requirements to attend next year as well. For those of you who couldn't attend the festival and/or want to watch some of the movies shown again, they are available via the following playlist:
Chantal Harvey’s MMIF 2010 playlist

A collection of pictures from the festival can be found at Flickr:
http://www.flickr.com/groups/mmif/

Machinima Screening at Gallery Maskinen

Just got informed that Gallery Maskinen will show 3 of my movies at their Machinima screening on 2 March 2010. The screening will take place in HUMlab at the Umeå University in the northern part of Sweden.
Maskinen is an artist-run, non-profit gallery. Their ambition is to run a nontraditional gallery that doesn’t necessarily work inside ”The White Cube” and give place to lesser-exposed trends in the different forms of contemporary art. Established, as well as un-established artists are represented in Maskinen. More info: http://gallerimaskinen.se

MMIF 2010: Avatars starring at global film festival

The build is done, the media is set, 4 sims are prepared for the
MaMachinima International Festival 2010
Saturday Feb. 20 ^th , 2010
MMIF sims (SL™) + PLANETART, Wibautstraat 150 Amsterdam (NL).

Festival organizer Chantal Harvey and her team have done an excellent job creating an amazing venue for the festival, preseting an interesting and inspiring collection of machinima artwork.

From the offical press release:

‘MMIF 2010′ is the second edition of an annual film festival in 3D cyberspace with a screening in physical space (‘RL’). A seven hour movie marathon with a two hour afterparty. MMIF 2010 can also be followed on the web via live stream broadcasts.
The MMIF is a celebration of ‘Machinima’: a new cinematic art form, created with virtual worlds and video games. On 3D Internet platforms like Second Life®, any kind of movie sets can be build for very low costs. The MMIF aims to bring machinima to a wider audience, online – and offline. Machinima artists from all over the world are present in real time at the virtual MMIF Theatre. They present over 50 short films and have talks with other machinimatographers and an international audience

The festivals will show creative work of over 40 artists. For a total of 7 hours the movies are screened in both Second Life and Amsterdam. I'm proud to be part of that event. My recent movie 'the Graveyard' will be screened in the track from 5 pm - 6 pm PST (2 -3 am CET, Sunday) hosted by Phaylen Fairchild. Hope to meet you there.

For more details about the festival and detailed schedule can be found at the festival Website: MMIF 2010
Live media streams and SL Teleport links via http://live.MMIF.org