How to Screencast Live

You have plans to run your own Live Machinima workshops or tutorials, or want to Live review Machinima movies? There are many applications for Live Screencasts. My favourite Starcraft Live caster Sean "Day[9]" Plott just released this wonderful article on pcworld.com with video tutorials about setting up your own Live Screencast.
Screencast Live: How To Make Your Own Web TV Show

Atopic Machinima Festival Update

The contest page on Dailymotion for the audience prize is online awaiting your votes at: Atopic Festival Prix Machinima

The prizes evening will take place in la Géode, Paris, December the 20th at 8:30pm (CET)
You can also come to the festival. 17th and 18th at Hotel Scribe (1, rue Scribe Paris-Opéra), Paris, France. Free entrance.
Conference on MAchinima : 18th from 2pm to 4pm (CET)
More informations and Conference Steaming on Atopia TV on the
Atopic website

New Movie: Saltlight

A while ago I did this short experimental animation. Not Machinima at all this time, but hopefully you find it interesting as well. It's inspired mostly by work from Stan Brakhage and Man Ray. If there is interest I'll write a bit more about how this movie was made. Right now I'm looking for your feedback without you knowing too much about the production process.

ATOPIC, Machinima Film Festival - official selection by the Jury

Atopic Machinima Film Festival just published their official list of machimima movies selected by their Jury. I'm happy to see two of my productions ('the Graveyard' and 'Order in Chaos') selected.

"The international dimension was in the richness of the final selection. This selection shows that Machinima has matured in the use of the tool and was able to develop a narrative and aesthetic quality. "

23 films were selected :

55 Sounds To The Sky // Christine Webster et Balthazar Truffaut
A change of art // Luxaeternam
Clear Skies 2 // Ian Chisholm
Ctrl,Alt,Del // Trace Sanderson
Dagon // Trace Sanderson
Fears - [ The Story of Susa Bubble - An Installation by Rose Borchovski ] // Iono Allen
Gcity // Marco Manray
GTAlphaville // Mutatis Mutandis
Incubus // Kate Lee & Sherwin Liu
La Crise // Panda
La fuite de l'empire Aryen // Yälrok
Lovely Family TV // The Lovely Team
mAdvertising // Pooky Amsterdam
Order in chaos // Rohan Fermi
Over Data // Marco Manray
Panic Radio // François Pallin
Stop, Rewind // Harrison Heller
Terra // Rod Pulsar
The Graveyard // Rohan Fermi
The Trashmaster // Mathieu Weschler
Unheimliche // Delbos, Gaudillere, Le Roy, Mutton, Van Lissum
WB Yeats - An Irish Airman Foresees His Death // Russell Boyd
What a night ! // TGO GMBH

The 13 members of the Jury:

Julien Aubert, Transmedia/ARG Executive Producer, Bigger Than Fiction
Thierry Falcoz, Video Games News Director of Nolife TV
Caroline Piras, Director
Laurence Herszberg, Manager of Forum des Images
Catherine Lottier, Journalist
Vincent Ravalec, writer, director and screenwriter
Stéphane Natkin, Manager of ENJMIN School in Angoulème
Benoit Labourdette, Pocket Film Festival
Geraldine Gomez, Hors Pistes Festival, Centre Pompidou
Isabelle Arvers, New media Curator
Jean Menu, Video Games Representative, Universciences
Moira Marguin, In charge of Animation Department, Ecole des Gobelins
Margherita Balzerani, Curator and Art Critic

The criteria on which the jury deliberated were : the originality of the script, staging, quality of the soundtrack and editing, the technical and aesthetic qualities linked with the diversion of the game. The choice was difficult, the debate alive. The diversity of films and the skills of the members contributed to the interest and the uniqueness of this selection.

Festival News and more

For reasons of schedule and availability of rooms, the Atopic Festival has been put back until December 2010. Soon they'll publish the new dates of the festival.The contest is still open for submissions until November, 10th. For more informations contact: machinima@atopicfestival.com

MachinimUWA II: Art of the Artists challenge transcript of the announcements & full winner's list is now online available at this UWA-Blog post . I've had my newest movie "Order in Chaos" submitted but it didn't find any recognition there.

Bitfilm Festival has just announced the winners of the Bitfilm Awards 2010. 1. Prize winner is "The Y-Files" by Alexander Gellner & Flix (Germany). You can still watch all nominated films. As far as I have seen there were no machinima movies nominated. I have no information if any machinima has even been submitted this year.

Thanks to Curator: Lara Sánchez Coterón from Proyecto Amarika, Madrid, Spain a selection of Machinima (music videoclips and experimental animations) will be screened 21st OCTOBER 2010 at this years PLAYFUL & PLAYABLE FALL MEETINGS: A knowledge exchanging platform, about the game as a cultural process. I'm proud to see my movie "Liberty City" being screened alongside work from Paul Marino, Friedrich Kirschner, Zach Scott and others.

For the first time this years EXPO 2010 (Shanghai China) has screened machinima movies. Curator Cristina García-Lasuén owner of the OPEN THIS END SL group and also known as Aino Baar in Second Life, approached Spanish officials for the World Expo with the purpose of bringing machinima to the attention of a greater audience. She was successful as they granted her several hours per week to display machinima simultaneously over five four metre wide HD screens which are attached to a structure called the "Air Tree" built specifically for the Expo at the Madrid Pavilion. I was really flattered to see 3 of my movies (Desassossego, Liberty City, the Graveyard) have been selected to be in the World Expo 2010.

Last but not Machinima Expo 2010 the worlds largest Machinima Festival will start in about 5 weeks from now (20-21th November). 200 films have been submitted and now some preselected 15 films are to be viewed by an impressive 5-person jury to choose the very best films for the Expo awards.

An Unreal Space Opera (singing aliens and all)

Just got notice of an amazing machinima movie project. Composer Richard deCosta and his team have started to create a Machinima space opera called "K'ai, Death of Dreams".
They plan to use Unreal 3 for main character and indoor real-time renderer, CryEngine 3 for main exterior real-time renderer and Processing.org for 2D displays/various 2D elements.
Curious that since a while ago I have in mind to bring opera and machinima together as well. Since I'm not able to write my own opera like they've done, I've had planned to use some well known opera and staging them with machinima. My favourites so far would be a German language opera either from Wagner or Mozart. And like them I had planned to put it in either a Sci-Fi 'Space' setting or a more minimalistic staging like the performances at Amato Opera.

They are now doing a fundraiser at KickStarter for it. The initial round will get the financial ball rolling and get their production crew operating full-time. I hope they'll find enough support and wish them good luck with this very interesting opera project

New Movie: Order in Chaos

Just finished a new Abstract Machinima Movie, which I made for the MachinimUWA II: Art of the Artists challenge in Second Life.
Machinima makers in SL were asked to create a Machinima of between 2 and 5 minutes in length that featured some of the winning artworks from the UWA 3D Art & Design Challenge. They had more than 35 artworks spread across 4 floors, from which to choose.

This movie is featuring December 2009 Winner of the UWA 3D Art & Design Challenge: CHAOS IN ORDER by Igor Ballyhoo
Filmed and edited by Rohan Fermi
Music by Kirsty Hawkshaw
Creative Commons by-nc-sa v1.0
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike