Machinima spew

Wow, had to dig in hard there for a while. We had a deadline for today to get our (proposed) blocked cutscenes done for ME so it was a bit of crunch time. Then outside of work I've been (trying) to work on my HL2 film but I've been procrastinating like mad. Not sure why but I'm thinking it may be because I'm not totally sold on the story. So I've taken steps to re-write the script. Make it a little tighter.

I'm really finding a pace to filmmaking, or creative development for that matter, right now. Best described in the metaphor 'layers of a cake'. As example, when I do a cutscene, we will think it out as a group then one of us will do the scene pretty much as discussed, but with enough creative room to explore it a little. Once done, we will all gather and critique it. Then we'll go back and revise. Then critique again, then revise. After a little while you have a cool little tight scene. Now the cool thing is if you do a few more scenes then go back to an older one, you see further areas for making it tighter. Eventually your original vision is a deep rooted part of this whole other scene, but there is pride in knowing what was done and the journey taken to get this fine diamond of a scene.

So when I wrote my script for my personal HL2 project, it took a few revisions, each a little detailed and bigger than the last until I had the final story. But once it was done I felt like I wasn't doing it justice by saying its 'done' on the first writing, even though I got good feedback. This is why I feel it necessary (and may be why I'm procrastinating on storyboarding) to go back and re-write it (as much as I DO NOT WANT TO nor feel I have THE TIME FOR, but I really believe the final story will be better for it). The few changes I've already noted to do I think will make a big difference to the narrative of the story.

Related to methods of neofilmmaking, there was an interesting blog post over at USS Quad Damage discussing this topic. I've left my own comments there but this is definitely an area worth discussing. I wish there was more introspect within machinima enthusiasts which could challenge and question some of these very basic notions but to an audience beyond the everyday travellers of machinima. Its easy to write a blog post to our peers but when was the last time there was a published (on or offline, not machinima site related) article that had to do with machinima that wasn't a 'how to' or 'what is'. There is a fundamental paradigm shift happening here, but most are sitting back and watching or taking side notes. There is very little challenging our methods, and this basically means there is no one is taking us seriously (or there would be a lot more serious questions as publicly). Then again, we are filmmakers and not necessarily writers, so I'm guessing many are waiting for this to come out in our films, but we can all pat each other on our backs, or question each other, but until this comes from people who know nothing about machinima, its quite subjective. This is one reason why I so highly support extracurricular medias such as machinimag and machinimaLIVE in taking the topic and context beyond personal thought and making it tangible for a larger audience. Getting it out there is another thing.

Speaking of getting it out there (aka public relations), if I ever get to a point where I do an underground film with any kind of budget, I'll be hitting up Hugh Hancock as my chief guerrilla marketing publicist mastermind. Regardless of any level of success Bloodspell gets, his demonstration of getting the word to the people has been the biggest and most aggressive in machinima production history - even if his machinima film being the same is arguable. ;) This is one of the key things Hugh did well with Machinima.com, especially in the earlier days. Giving other filmmakers a place to store their stuff, a place to run their websites, a place to read about other filmmakers techniques, their challenges in doing their films, or just getting to know them better.

On the topic of machinima.com. Coyote Republic has been furiously collecting data to help bring community back into the focus of the site. She has a new survey up and I encourage anyone who wants to help support our community resources to give the survey a quick going over. This one is different from the one I've posted previously.

What else, what else.... Ahhh, yeah, Overman has posted the blog article '10 Reasons The Sims 2 Rocks for Machinima'. If your just considering delving into machinima filmmaking then this is worth the read (along with learning some of the reasons why it has such a strong user/film base).

Along the lines of making real-time 3d films without the game engine, Media Machines has decided to put the Flux 3D platform under an open source license. The details are in the press release here.

Ahh crap, there are a couple other things I was thinking of writing about here but this is long enough - all these words could have been part of my script re-write! ;P But I feel desperately behind in spewing the riches of this machinimacal world that is ever so more engrossing day by day. More to come as per usual.