How to make money with Machinima.

Sorry for the catchy title and sure this is no post on how to get rich with making machinima movies. I just want to write about an idea I had a while ago and which came back into my mind through the start of the Flattr service. Flattr is a social micropayment platform that lets you show love for the things you like. One of the main restriction we have with Machinima is that we are not allowed to use it commercially since most of the time we use games or content that doesn't allow that. We are happy that at least we can publish our movies, but earning any income from them is tough. Most of the time we don't care about that because we make movies because we love it and earn our money elsewhere. But wouldn't it be nice to be able to pay some bills with money income based on your creative work we like that much and maybe some day make a living just by by creating machinima movies?
So how does it work? The basic idea goes back to an interesting talk on Linux and Open Source development at a conference years ago. It draws a close connection to Open Source and 'Gift economy'.
"A gift economy (or gift culture) is a society where valuable goods and services are regularly given without any explicit agreement for immediate or future rewards". Of course I don't want to see the society as a whole to change, nor do I want to replace money (maybe it might need some changes how money is used in our society). The main point about a gift that is important is that what we receive (the gift) is in no direct connection to what we create (the movies). And we are already part of kinda gift econony, since all our movies, blog posts etc. are already gifts to the society. So we only need to extablish a way that others are able to send us gifts (money prefered) as well to support us. It's different from asking for money (support) for a next movie project or in exchange to any benefit like access to bonus, HQ version , etc. It has to be a pure gift and as the said above 'without any explicit agreement for immediate or future rewards'. Only that way any commercial relation to the movies is removed. That way we can create our movies using any game/tool we like and still have the opportunity to pay our bills.
The main problem is still how to rise the awarness about this new way to support our work. A platform like Flattr might help, but maybe we find other ways to establish different, more creative way for others to make them aware that we are accepting gifts as well. This will not solve any problem with machinima, we are still bound to IP based problems when we want to send the to some festivals or even show on or sell it to TV. And of course there are some things I don't like about the Flattr platform, but I see it as a start and I hope more services like this will arise that will help us making some money with machinima.

Edit: I actually managed to get part of Flattr beta. If you like you can now Flattr me below. Thank you for your support. Let me know if you need an invite to test this platform as well.

Machiniplex Forum on “Experimental Machinima”

This weekend another interessting and inspiring Machiniplex Forum will take place in Second Life.
From the Machiniplex Blog:

"Next Sunday, May 31st @9AM (Pacific Time), Machiniplex will host its May forum on “Experimental Machinima”. Our special guest will be Tom Jantol, an award-winning Machinima filmmaker. Tom has been making poetic and experimental machinima for many years and putting the finishing touches on his most recent film “Dear Fairy”. We hope to show “Dear Fairy” as a work in progress at the forum on Sunday. ...
Claus-Dieter Schulz (Liberty City, 9), along with Lainy Voom (Push, The Dumb Man), will also be on hand to discuss their own experimental work. Both directors have focused on the experimental in their work, but in very different ways than Tom Jantol. So it will be a lively conversation."

I look forward to meet you there.

Machinima@FMX 2010

FMX 2010 will take place next week from May 04-07 in Stuttgart, Germany. FMX is the leading conference on Animation, Effects, Games and Interactive Media in Europe and has grown to become one of the most important international conferences in the industry during the past few years. I'm invited to present a 1h Machinima screening as part of the ECHTZEIT Lounge and Symposium. The screening will be on May 7th 15:00-16:00. If you plan to attend FMX please let me know. Thank's a lot to all of you who helped and supported me preparing that event. I wish I had more time to screen all the excellent machinima movies that were released since last year.

Here is the final list of films that will be screened at FMX 2010:

Push by Lainy Voom
The Remake by Tom Jantol
Shelf Life: Chapter One by James Spencer and Jon Sortland
Sweet Nothingness by Phil Rice
Clockwork by Iain Friar
The Orchard by Dan Ross
Mo&Ma (Making of) by Thorsten Strack (L4-Kreation)

If time permits, I've planed to screen my movies "9" and "the Graveyard" as well.

In addition next week we'll have here the The Stuttgart Festival of Animated Film (May 4.-9. 2010). It was founded in 1982 and is one of the biggest and most important festivals of animation film worldwide. Although they have not yet a machinima category or screening it's great to see that Friedrich Kirscher will run two machinima workshops there.

Chromatose Anymation Festival starts tomorrow

The first Chromatose Anymation Festival – taking place in St. John's from April 30 to May 2 - a fusion of animation, performance art and live music, featuring experimental, D.I.Y., C.G.I. and cross-platform animations from innovative minds around the world.





















FEATURING ANIMATIONS FROM:
Tom Jantol (Croatia/UK), Liz Solo (NF), Osprey Therian (UK), Phaylen Fairchild (USA), DTR/Crash Jones (NF), The Third Faction (International), Jeremy Rice (NF), Claus-Dieter Schulz (UK), Robbie Dingo (UK), Aram Kouyoumdjian/Down With the Butterfly (Nova Scotia), Alasdair Brotherson/Jock Mooney/Tom Fun Family Orchestra (Nova Scotia), Company House (Nova Scotia), Pyewacket Kanyanenko (Australia), Trace Sanderson/Lainy Voom (UK), The Second Front (International), Drew Lightfoot/In Flight Safety (Canada) and more.

I'm proud they accepted and will screen my most recent movies "9" and "the Graveyard" at this new festival.

Chromatose Anymation Festival

The Chromatose Anymation Festival will take place in St. John's, Newfoundland from April 30 to May 2, 2010. This festival celebrates the work of independent artists pioneering new approaches to animation. The term "anymation" was coined by Croatian animation artist Tom Jantol (see Tom Jantol's Anymation Manifesto)
The festival organized by the Black Bag Media Collective will be a fusion of new animation, performance art and live music events. They are still accepting submissions and are looking for handmade, DIY, cross platform and/or experimental machinima and animation from independent artists.
To propose a screening of your work send a link to your animation in an email to theblackbags@yahoo.ca with the heading CHROMATOSE ANYMATION FESTIVAL.
Deadline to send animations is April 15, 2010.

Machinima Makers wanted for Bitfilm 2010

Bitfilm festival just send out a 'Call for Ideas' to Machinima makers to contribute for their 'Money & Me' movie project:

"We are looking for ideas for the frame story of our feature film Money & Me. This full-length film about Money will be created from various short films, united by a single frame narrative, and produced by us with the help of the international Machinima community. This frame story, which takes place in the financial scenes of Singapore and London, will make up about 20% of the whole film."

For more informations please have a look at the PDF you find at this project page. It's great machinima again will play an important role at this year's Bitfilm event. As I've mentioned in a recent post, from the partly commercial concept behind 'Money & Me' this excludes all game based machinima. The machinima production doesn't allow any IP strings attached. As Aaron Koenig from Bitfilm told me they plan to shoot the film in Twinity (a German based virtual world like SL) or maybe using the Crytek game engine. I'm not sure if other machinima platforms are an option as well. Right now they are looking for interesting story ideas. In cooperation with the creators of the selected ideas they will develop a script and shoot the film.

3D or not 3D

There has been an interesting discussion following a blog post by Phil Rice: 3D is (Very Nearly) Here
It had an interesting comment by our respected anymation artist Tom Jantol who is still very sceptic about the current 3D evolution.
"But really, I don't get it. This 3D path. If someone is willing to explain, I am ready to listen. I mean, this is not new element of film grammar, new way of telling stories, even new tool of author's visualization toolbox.... "
Guess I'll have to add my 5c here now. I have to commit I'm a bit biased when it comes to (stereoscopic) 3D. Many years ago I worked a lot with 3D (mainly work on Virtual Reality, although mostly the audio part) and my first steps into 'Machinima' was indeed a S3D project (fully immersive with those uncomfortable head mounted displays). And as a reply to one of Tom's comments:
"But wait, in next scene a hero's leg is so real that I can smell it? But I can't, and it feels real because of the reason why it is in front of the camera, not because of third dimension".
In that particular project we indeed had added 'smell'. When the bed of roses was approched by the viewer he actually could smell them. That was in 2000. Guess it will need some time for me to get that 'immersive' with Machinima again.

Judging the value of S3D at it's current state is not easy, besides the hype and the technology get's pushed a lot by companies to sell new products. If I remeber right there just have been
2 movies (Coraline and Avatar) who have been produced for 3D from the beginning. I have to commit that Avatar was a huge disappointment to me, not only when it comes to 3D. I had some expectations about what Cameron was to come up with. I have learned a lot from him and his films. But the 3D in Avatar didn't catch me at all. I hadn't the chance to watch it on IMAX, that could change my view a bit, but mostly he seemed to got more wrong on 3D than I had expected. Nevertheless I believe in the added value of 3D. I was impressed by a lot of the 3D IMAX films I've seen. And some scenes in other 3D films including Coraline and Avatar give me the impression that in the right hands it could lead to some new breathtaking experiences.
I fully agree with Phil "What most interests me about 3D is what someone like YOU (Tom) or m dot Strange could do with it, because you'd not be the least bit concerned about how it's "supposed to be" used, you'd use it in some way people weren't expecting, in such a way that it WOULD serve as a powerful adjective to your film language rather that just an amusement park gimmick."
The best comparison about the switch from 2D to 3D is the switch from black and white film to colored film. Not the whole film language had to be revised and it could be debated as well on what color could add to a story and the movie itself. But now many years after that transition has made, it is clear to us that indeed color added something to the films we watch every day. And in the right hands it indeed makes a difference. More difference than just by making it look to more realistic.
I don't believe right now that in the near future we will have almost all movies in 3D with some 2D exceptions (like with b/w movies today), but for me it is an interesting area to research and explore. And I already know it will take a decent amount of time and a lot of hard work until I will release my first 3D movie.