This is the worst news I’ve ever reported in a blog post.
Peter Rasmussen, director of “Rendevous”, “Killer Robot” and “Stolen Life”, has died.
I held Peter in great regard both as a friend, a colleague and an extraordinarily talented filmmaker. Everyone involved in Machinima is lessened by this loss.
And it’s another Second Life post. Damn you people, stop creating clever stuff!
One of the huge downsides of Second Life for a while has been the lack of lipsynching - there’s a fake you can do by playing a video on the face, but that’s about it.
However, MM Alder has recently released a new tool which offers limited 3D “lip flap” - no phoneme recognition (voice recognition-based lipsynch) or even Half Life-style volume-controlled lipsynch, but at least it does give simple 3D mouth movement when a character is talking.
There’s a very detailed and interesting post over on the Second Life wiki talking about the approach behind this lipsynch tool, some tweaks that Machinima creators can use to create better lipsynch, and the limitations of the current techniques. Sadly, once again this tool is limited by access to source code - the SL Voice code is apparently not open right now, and so it’s not possible to make the lipsynch more accurate.
We’ll add it to the list of things that will suddenly get better as and when bits of SL become Open-Source…
Even so, this is a great tool, and should be a lot of use for SL Machinima creators.
Thanks to Frank Fox for the tip.
I’m not doing a very good job of taking some quiet time, am I? Still, this one definitely deserves a post. It’s sad news, but it seems to be true: Stage 6 is shutting down.
Stage 6 is one of the premier choices for top-quality (divx) video hosting. It’s popular throughout the machinima world, but World Of Warcraft machinimators in particular are absolutely in love with it. The loss of this site is going to be a major blow. The site will close its virtual doors in just a few days time, on February 28th 2008. All hosted videos (and everything else besides) will be lost.
The official announcement on the Stage 6 site gives the reason for the shutdown as basically financial:
“So why are we shutting the service down? Well, the short answer is that the continued operation of Stage6 is a very expensive enterprise that requires an enormous amount of attention and resources that we are not in a position to continue to provide. There are a lot of other details involved, but at the end of the day it’s really as simple as that.”
There’s not a lot of time to make alternative arrangements, so if you currently host on Stage 6, you need to stop what you’re doing right now and investigate some alternatives. Thankfully, there are several available.
Yet again, we thank moo Money for this one. She gives good suggestions for alternative hosting in her original post on WoW Insider.
I know Hugh said we’d be going quiet for a wee while, but I had to make a quick post when I saw this: the Havoc physics engine (which is the physics engine behind all the games that tout realistic physics as one of their selling points) will be released for free in May.
Now, this is not the quantum-shift for the machinima world that you might at first think. Make no mistake – Havoc is a stunningly complex beast. It’s effectively a code library on which to build game engines. It’s unlikely to see much use in the machinima world, even from the hardest of hardcore hackers. Nonetheless, you never know. The community has surprised us before, and it’ll do so again. Maybe a dazzlingly clever use of this free physics toolkit will be the next way they do so. So, I’m doing my civic duty and posting about the imminent release of the code, just in case somebody far clever than me is reading and gets inspired. Fingers crossed.
Via kotaku – thanks to Chris Ollis for bringing this to our attention in the first place.
You may have noticed we’ve gone a bit quiet. This isn’t because the Machinima world has suddenly stopped, or we’ve dropped dead, or decided to stop writing. Far from it.
We’re just taking a short break. Johnnie’s working like a mad thing over at Moviestorm, whilst I’m taking some time off after four and a half (!) years of BloodSpell. But we’ll be back soon.
See you then.
Gamerz Theatre has a great little article on putting live-filmed pilots in Machinima aircraft.
This is an excellent idea - particularly for close-ups, which they only just touch on. You could extend this to Eve Online Machinima, various racing games, and even Medieval Total War - a good way to combine the strengths of Machinima with the strengths of DV.
If you’re doing this, make SURE you get a clean green-screen (easy enough to do with some green fabric and some bright halogen work lights, which cost about $15 each), and pay attention to matching your lighting. Lighting will make or break your composite.
I’m really interested to see more of this work.
UPDATE - there must be something in the air today. WoWInsider is showcasing this marvellous video mixing WoW characters with real-life footage, rather than the other way around - very sweet, and I highly recommend it.
And a few days ago, Free Pixel was talking about using Augmented Reality to film real people next to Second Life characters in real-time - very cool indeed.
A fairly mundane post on the official Second Life blog yesterday kicked off a discussion about the merits and practicalities of open-sourcing Second Life (a prospect which we’ve discussed on this blog previously). Unusually, a Linden Lab official chimed in to explain that open-sourcing Second Life is something that they’d still “dearly like” to do, but a number of practical security considerations have to be overcome first.
Whilst I might take issue with the assumption that open-source = untrusted, this is still very encouraging news, especially after the shock did-he-fall-or-was-he-pushed departure of Cory Ondrejka last year.
Thanks to Tari Akpodiete for flagging up this comment thread for us!
If you haven’t seen ”The Dumb Man”, stop what you’re doing right now and go watch it.
It’s a surrealist piece with a strong Victorian feel, made in Second Life, and it’s just fantastic. The mood and feel are awesome, the imagery is marvellous, the story’s rather good, and it represents a fantastic use of SL for Machinima creation.
The character design, in particular, shows off the increasing strength of Second Life in creating great-looking characters (at least when they’re static), the lighting’s wonderfully done (it’s by Lainy Voom, creator of “Tale from Midnight City” last year), and generally it represents some fantastic Machinima work.
There’s also an interview with Lainy on the project over at New World Notes. Worth a read. Apparently there’s virtually no post-production in the entire thing!
We’ve seen some great Machinima in 2007. So yr hmbl crrspndnts decided to assemble a short list. If you ain’t seen these, you ought to. If you made ‘em, nice one. And if you’re looking for Machinima inspiration, these are, in our almost entirely far from humble opinions, your first stop.
Johnnie
I love machinima like this - I just love it. Unashamedly stylised, beautifully composed and painstakingly constructed. I can confidently predict that this short but rather wonderful piece will be imitated many times over the next couple of years. The Warcraft movie community is undergoing a quiet revolution at the moment, and Tobias “Dopefish” Lundmark is one the idealistic young students waving a red flag in the streets.
Moviestorm has been making me bounce up and down with excitement ever since I first got my hands on one of the early Beta releases. I’ve been waiting since then for the first Moviestorm movie that really makes me sit up and take notice. When I saw Zuckerman’s “very, very rough and nowhere near finished” movie, I knew I’d found it. The piece deserves kudos just for the effort involved in its creation (Zuckerman has managed to lip-sync an entire a cappella choir in four-part harmony), but beyond that it’s a genuinely effective narrative piece. Moviestorm gets better every day, and so do the movies that are being produced with it. If we write a “best of the year” section like this one in a year’s time, you can expect some truly astonishing Moviestorm content to be featured.
So, that’s why people are so gushingly enthusiastic about Second Life! I’ll be the first to admit that Second Life has never really got its claws into me, but this video made me want to brush up on my LSL, beg my SL friends for some Lindens and make something cool. Robbie Dingo has hit two major accomplishments here. The first is the creation of this incredible set in the first place. The second is the Watch The Worlds video, which acts as both a documentary of the project’s creation, and a permanent archive of its existence (everything in the video was built on a temporary sim, and has long-since been destroyed). Amazing and inspiring.
Ooh, so pretty! Lit Fuse were definitely the team to watch in 2007. This is my personal favourite of their films. It has a good, but not great, narrative, but where the film really succeeds is in its cinematography. It’s beautifully constructed, and an excellent example of how good camerawork can enhance the emotive quality of a piece. Look closely, and you’ll see The Ballad Of Black Mesa playing on the TV in the background.
Dr Nemesis is (and has been for some time) one of the most committed, talented and creative machinimators currently working. Beast is the best thing he’s ever done by a country mile. An awesomely powerful and deeply disturbing short, which (in the traditions of the best machinima) makes the limitations of the medium into the strengths of the movie. Harsh, angular lines and stark lighting complement a great script full of intelligent and uncompromising storytelling. If Binary Picture Show don’t go home with handfuls of awards at the forthcoming Online Machinima Film Festival, there’s something wrong with the world.
Hugh
For me, this year has been quite exciting for new Machinima, with artists like Baron Soosden and Lit Fuze/Mighty Crane appearing out of the blue. Here are some of my favourites from the year:
Unlimited Escapism Volume 0: SYS by Baron Soosdon.
Along with half the WoW world, I’m a big fan of the Baron, who appeared this year and rapidly made his name with technically incredible, plotless pieces of compositing and video-editing genius like this one. Oddly, his work’s arguably Outside-In, at least in that you don’t have to be a WoW player to appreciate it, but he’s definitely a part of the WoW community rather than any overall Machinima group. Regardless, he’s the king of the “how the (&($$!!! did he do that?” techno Machinima music video.
What I Love About XMas by Phil “Overman” Rice.
Possibly the blackest humour he’s produced, this is a great, innovative Moviestorm vid by the king of mixed-media Machinima comedy. Like Zero Punctuation? Or Henry Rollins? Or just funny, angry rants? Then you’ll love this.
Hard Like Heroic by Nhym.
This is the epitome of inside-out Machinima - most of the jokes won’t make that much sense if you’re not a WoW player, although Hard Like Heroic is probably his most accessible piece - and Nhym’s the epitome of the inside-out Machinima creator, turning out video after video of amusing parodies of popular hip-hop about World of Warcraft. He’s got a huge following, despite the sometimes-dubious rapping, proving that you still don’t need to be slick to be popular - or great - on the Web. This one’s moderately funny if you don’t like WoW, and, well, prepare the ROFLcopter for takeoff if you do.
Summer in City 17 by Mighty Crane.
Lit Fuze/Mighty Crane have been making Half-Life 2 videos since 2006, but they only came to my attention in 2007 with this great, chilled-out, semi-abstract music video. Some wonderful imagery and great camerawork combine to make this one of my favourite Machinima music videos ever.
Watch the World by Robbie Dingo.
Yes, it’s a Second Life piece. Try not to die of shock, please, SL people. This is a brilliant use of Second Life to show the development of a 3D version of Van Gogh’s Starry Night. I’d never expected a view of a 3D development environment to be quite this touching. As a Second Life piece, it shows the advantages (content creation) of the platform to superb effect, whilst avoiding most of the problems of SL Machinima. Very much worth a watch.
Combine Nation by Lit Fuze.
Hot damn, but that looks good. Like, really good. Like, better-than-TV-quality good. This is the single best advert for the Source engine as a Machinima platform so far - yes, even better than “Breen” in that regard (although that’s still amazing too). It doesn’t hurt that it’s also very sharp, funny, fast-moving comedy that manages to pull itself out of the gamer ghetto - you don’t need to play or even to have heard of Half-Life to get this.
Stolen Life by Nanoflix
Not a lot of people have seen this one, but if you’re a serious Machinima creator and haven’t bought a copy yet, stop reading right now and go buy one. From the absolute master of Machinima writing, the plot’s brilliant, the acting is superb, the animation (the entire thing, if you didn’t know, is about robots) and visual design are unique, and I mean that in a good way. And the dialogue - there is no-one in Machinima, and I include myself in this, who can touch Peter Rasmussen on his dialogue writing. The first ten minutes or so are a bit slow, but despite that it’s an absolute gem, and in my opinion probably the best Machinima film right now to show to a non-Machinima person to explain what it is you do and why.
Other honourable mentions should go to Frame of Mind (the astonishing winner of the Machinima.com Ataris contest) and Morning Run Amok (a great comedy short in Moviestorm by Fling Films).
Nice work, everyone. It’s been a fine year to be a Machinima viewer.
What were your favourites in 2007?
And welcome to part 2 of my round-up of last year’s developments and issues in Machinima! In part 1, yesterday, I talked about community breakdown and feature films. Today, I’m discussing how the legal landscape has changed, and how the hirings of Machinima creators by games companies is altering the Machinima world.
The Rise and Rise of Legal Machinima
I’ve been doing Machinima for a decade now. And let me tell you, it has frequently been a pretty wild and lawless land out here.
The last few years have seen Machinima creators get steadily sicker of being unsure of their legal status, unhappy about being unable to make money, and generally sick as the proverbial parrot of legal arguments, confusion, and uncertainty.
And one of the biggest changes of the last year has been the massive advance in options for Machinima where you definitely, absolutely won’t get sued - and might even be able to make money.
Of course, one of the big stories of the year in Machinima has been Microsoft’s history-making move to provide a clear license for Machinima creation. They did it at the right time, they did it in the right way, and they even listened to the people they were licensing to. Halo Machinima creators are now in the clear for an enormous variety of Machinima creation, and that will extend to other Microsoft engines.
And Blizzard Entertainment jumped on the licensing bandwagon shortly afterward, with a license that’s better in some ways (notably the sponsorship provisions) and worse in rather a lot of others (notably the just-plain-incomprehensible film festival permissions, the harsh content restrictions, and the deeply unclear exemptions for download fees.). Still, again, WoW Machinima artists are now, mostly, in the clear.
You can’t use either of those engines to make money without contacting the developers (although Microsoft, in particular, seem very open to that idea, and Blizzard have presumably licensed Nhym’s recent appearance on The Escapist - more below). But, handily, 2007 has also been interesting with regard to cash-making Machinima.
One of the other big stories in Machinima, in September, was the aquisition of Molotov Alva’s “My Second Life” by HBO, for an undisclosed “six-figure sum”. Whilst the hyperbole about this being the first big money in Machinima is clearly rubbish (for example, Strange Company was involved in a six-figure Machinima project back in 2001), it’s great proof of the theory that Machinima is a potential incubator for new film ideas - and that companies will actually buy them! And, of course, this couldn’t have happened without Second Life’s status as the first virtual world where commercial work was allowed and encouraged.
2007 was also the year of Moviestorm’s launch. Moviestorm is, of course, the free, commercially-licensed Machinima platform from longtime developers Short Fuze, which has attracted a lot of funding and currently employs one of the authors of this blog. (Not me - Johnnie Ingram, my co-author). Already we’re seeing the first good films coming from Moviestorm users, notably Fling Films’ Morning Run Amok and Phil “Overman” Rice’s Ad Absurdem and What I Love About XMas. Moviestorm is still very much in development, but for serious and commercial Machinima creation it offers massive potential.
Three years or so ago, Machinima was basically uncharted waters, legally speaking. 2007 has very much been the year where we’ve finally been able to, mostly, stop worrying about being sued.
Will this trend continue? Probably. A lot depends on how successful Halo and WoW moviemaking continue to be - but currently, as I mentioned above, they’re two of the most obviously strong communities out there. Many people are looking for EA to follow suit - whether or not it’ll happen I’m not sure, but probably not until they release a new, Machinima-friendly game.
Money Comes Calling
Where did the old school go in 2007? Mostly into (presumably) high-paying games company jobs.
Paul Marino, Michelle Petit-Mee, Jason Choi, Red Sky Foundry, Terran Gregory, Tristan Pope - over the last two years, the games industry has really started to hoover up Machinima talent for its cutscene teams. Meanwhile, there have been other companies hiring too. Notably, in February Electric Sheep grabbed the Ill Clan, whilst Short Fuze/Moviestorm now houses several ex-StrangeCo people.
Before I start, I should say that of course this is fantastic news for the people involved, and I’m not in any way saying that they should continue to starve in garages for their art. I can’t say that strongly enough.
Being hired by a games company is threatening to become the default “exit strategy” for a Machinima team., though, and that does pose some problems for the Machinima community.
Rather than a successful filmmaker suddenly breaking through into making very big, successful films, offering a role model for those below them, we seem to have a situation where very successful filmmakers disappear into games companies doing not-very-high-profile jobs (speaking in terms of public visibility), have to massively diminish their involvement with the Machinima community thanks to time issues, and certainly are unlikely to be able to make their own movies any more.
(The situation with the Ill Clan is obviously better (excepting Electric Sheep’s recent downsizing, which I hope didn’t affect them too badly), but, again, they’re many less indie videos these days.)
Quite what that means for filmmaking in Machinima is uncertain. I think there’s a risk that Machinima faces that, each year, most of the top people will eventually be hired away, just as they reach a stage in their careers where they have the audience and expertise to make Machinima films that could go truly mainstream. That’s happened over the last couple of years, I think, and has possibly accelerated the decay of the Machinima community I wrote about yesterday, as well as making it very likely that we’re not going to see a truly breakout film from any of the hirees - the people most likely to have the talent to create a breakout Machinima film - any time soon.
But it’s not all doom and gloom. For starters, maybe the people involved didn’t want to create huge movies that would break Machinima out and make them the next Spielburg, etc, etc. I know I have a nasty tendancy to view any talented Machinima creator as the Next Big Hope for the industry, whether or not they’re insane enough to want to make films full-time. That’s unfair and it’s a lot of pressure to put on people.
And there are more signs of opportunities existing for Machinima creators that do allow them to create their own work, or at least work that’s close to what they want to do. The Ill Clan’s partnership with Electric Sheep allowed them to make The Grid Review, a darned interesting show of which they’re justifiably proud. Friedrich Kirschner has been an official Artist-In-Residence in Stuttgart for the last year. Obviously, Strange Company is still creating indie Machinima full time. Nanoflix’s Stolen Life was funded and quite high-profile. As I previously mentioned, HBO aquired “My Second Life”. And most recently, WoW filmmaker Nhym was hired (presumably for cash, although we don’t know for sure) by the Warcry network to create a series for them - which is a tremendously positive development, given that they appear to have, rather than wanting Nhym just for his technical skills, wanted to pay him for the indie work he’s already doing. That’s what should be happening, and what will enable Machinima to grow: companies recognising and wanting to pay for the creativity and storytelling in the Machinima works that come out.
(Unfortunately, in a stunning example of mis-marketing, the Escapist Magazine, Warcry’s sister publication, then offered Nhym’s first piece, a very WoW-centric rap parody video, in place of the incredibly popular and totally dissimilar Zero Punctuation, over Christmas. The ensuing flamewar resulted in Nhym backing out of the deal - a very wise move on his part - and the entire thing subsequently being removed from the Escapist’s front page. Still, the fact that he was hired in the first place shows that there are more and more opportunities out there.)
We can hope that more direct filmmaking opportunities start to arise as licensing issues diminish, into 2008 and beyond. I hope they do - if only because, from a selfish point of view, I’d like to keep seeing films from our top filmmakers.
