This is not the Subject line

I just listened to EP6 of the Overcast. I actually find my self sitting back and listening to the episodes to give them my full attention so I don't miss anything. They are always a cool mix of shtuff. Two things I related to this episode. One is Overman's discussion on the Half Life 2 Source engine. I'm just into the last part of my script for my next machinima film (writing is such a love/hate relationship) which I'll be doing in the Source engine. I've been poking around in the engine to help guide my story limitations (which I know I've blown way over... Oh god this is going to be a painful film to make...) and I'm not quite yet feeling the machinima lovin' for the engine. Garry's Mod is a hair away from being the ultimate machinima tool, but a fat hair, and the documents I've read on the engine does not seem to show a straight forward camera control tool ala Unreal Matinee, but as I get more involved I'll get it figured out. I'm partially hoping by the time I'm in production someone will either release a very useful Half-Life 2 machinima tool or some of the new functionality to be coming in Episode 2 will do the trick.

...and oh yeah, the second point on the overcast is having a shaved head. Since I've shaved my head, getting ready in the morning has reached a new state of ease I never thought possible. Gel-b-gone.

I also listened to a podcast over at the Second Life blog site Machinimoo by Community Manager for Alt-Zoom Studios, moo Money. Although I am not an active participant, I'm always an arm's length from Second Life news and clips. Both in machinima and 'virtual reality' this world is like watching a new form of life develop. ...And beside, a virtual world with a real economy for virtual items, will always have opportunity for filmmakers.

Finally, over at Paul Marino's blog, who did some machinima evanglisation in Second Life recently (compare his RL and SL visual identities here), did an blog entry on "The Dave's Shit Tip". I left a comment on this and as I typed it, it almost like I had fallen to the dark side. I was siding, for the first time publicly, with the developer. It felt so odd because here I am now working for a game developer and I'm saying machinima artists have no rights to the content they make with the engine. But the truth is, I came to that realization long ago during a discussion on the machinima.com forums (which I really kind of miss). Another user argued with me over my machinima rant that the developer shouldn't have control of our ingame made content, but the user ('chip' or something) argued the points enough for me to see it from another perspective. So after leaving the comment over at Paul's blog I figured I'm in a position where I can ask from the inside about the perceived rights of the machinima filmmaker using a game engine, but after some thought I came to realize that I do not understand what the question is. What is the issue? Should someone who makes a machinima film have full rights to that film if created with game assets. Obviously not. Should a filmmaker who creates a machinima film with pure custom content have full rights to that film? Quite possibly, but if full ownership is a sticky point, then you have to resolve this from the beginning, in pre-production. I did not do my 'Rebel vs. Thug' video in the Unreal Engine because Epic couldn't say if they would give the time or resources to provide those rights, so I wrote it off as a possibility right there and it became another reason for me to use the open sourced Quake2 Engine. So what would the question be that needs answering? What's the issue? I think from the perspective of Paul who runs a film festival based on such 'legally touchy' content, having proper rights for public performance may be more the question... and that's probably not a whole lot to ask from a publisher/developer.

Then again, based on the last comment on the thread reference above, there may be a new solution on the horizon, "That's why we have an agreement with Garage Games for the toolsets we're creating in Torque." HHmmm. Toolset... Sounds yummy. ;)

Finally, looks like the Bloodspell project has been placed into permenant Gaia memory.