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Machinima Night III program part 2

MTV GENERATION

I cannot touch on the topic of Machinima without mentioning the music videos. It's a storytelling format which the MTV-generation understands so well and they're able to use their literacy of music videos to create their own. It's a wonderful way to be a fan of both the games and the music. I have a soft spot for the music Machinima that doesn't have a glossy feel - but rather amateur love.

I showed two very old music Machinima films. The first one is from a very well known machinima artist, who I'm sure wishes that I showed some of his newer stuff. B. Kiddo has been creating machinima for years and his artful skills in The Sims and Second Life are just awesome. But this Machinima film is one of the first I ever saw. I was so touhed by it. Although it isn't smoothly made - it's very emotional. I showed this to a girl friend of mine who thinks I'm totally weird for being interested in this stuff and would rather I focus my attention on finding a man and go shopping - and she welled up. Which of course gave me immense satisfaction!

B. Kiddo - Bitter Sweet (I'm looking into fitting it properly - meanwhile you can watch it here)

The other music Machinima I played is actually Chinese and made Everquest. I stumbled upon it by chance. It is very simple - but the song is just so catchy I can't help but love it! I'm told the song was a number one hit in China about 10 years ago (thanks KML) and I can understand why. I find myself humming the song several times a day and I enjoy simplisity of the Machinima film.

Peter Tan - Look Over Here!

If you ask me it's a beautiful way of being a fan. A true testament to the participatory culture that is evolving on the net. It's therefore such a shame that the music industry is constantly hassling these artists and taking their films, their fan worshipping of sites like YouTube.

Here's another - which just combines the ticklish fun that Little Big Planet's gameplay produces and Daft Punk.

Danteneverdies - Little Daft Punk

And lastly I want to mention the overly dramatic nature of Music Machinima made in The Sims. I have a theory that it's because of the dramatic gestures of the avatars that just makes them so perfect for drama that involves crying and pain. These gestures and The Sims Goth I'm sure are responsible for the massive amounts of The Sims Music Machinima with the music of Evanescence. I cannot tell you how many Machinima films I've seen with this soundtrack! So far, I've spared the audience - but I had decided that this year that I would expose them to some of the torture I go through by finding Machinima films for these evenings. Luckily for them, the video was broken so I couldn't show it - but you can now!

Storytelling

As Machinima advances so do the stories. There's some brilliant storytelling coming out of these games and they're just so beautifully told.

My all time favourite is Among Fables and Men by Dopefish. Someday I will write a paper on this film. The way he's made a three dimensional space take on the the form of paper and 2 dimensions is just gobsmackingly beautiful.

Tobias "Dopefish" Lundmark - Among Fables and Men (best seen in full HD here)

I think this film is the first to take the artform a step further. This is far beyond fan fiction or even participatory art - this is a well told story.

And there's plenty of good stuff coming out from several games. At this point I realised that I was running out of time. So I skipped Shelf Life - although I absolutely adore it. It's just too long for a showing on a night like this event. But it's definitely a sign of how evolved the medium of Machinima is becoming. It's hard to look at Shelf Life and think that it's made in a game. It therefore becomes rather difficult in appreciating the puppet mastery or the communication between artist and artificial intelligence. The focus becomes the story.

PixelEyesProductions - Shelf Life

MACHINIMA MASHUP STORYTELLING?

I'm not sure I can all it this. Mash-up storytelling? Hmm. Anyways - the last segment of the first part of the evening is about combining different games and game - dare I say - narratives.

Clear Skies is one of the best Machinima films I have ever seen. I'm noticing the same thing with this film as with Shelf Life - I forget to appreciate the gameplay mastery. It's hardly there - I get too wrapped up in the story to even think about the work involved behind it. And yet the creator, Ian Chisolm spent about a year just collecting footage of gameplay to this wonderful Machinima film. It's a combination of Half Life and EVE Online. I'm only going to embedd the trailer here - links for downloading the whole thing can be found at Rock Paper Shotgun.

Ian Chisholm - Clear Skies Trailer

And lastly - we have this absolutely brilliant Machinima film which comments on today's tv programs, media culture, game narratives and is just pure fun. Again - I'm forgetting the mastery of game mechanics and just really enjoying the story. Thanks for the "heads-up" Neils!

Lagspike - Top FPS

Conclusion

This is a very rough introduction to what machinima is or what I perceive machinima to be. I tried having "the machine" as a theme throughout - but as you can see, I strayed off topic some. This is just me being a fan. I would love to look more into researching, writing and talking about Machinima. I need to read up on narratology as well. I'm constantly learning new things about this medium and I love learning about it.

Thanks so much to Morten Kvamme, the curator at Landmark who lets me use their space and time to geek out about Machinima. Thank you sooo much!

Machinima Night III program part 1

Phew - took some time, ey?

So the whole point with organising these Machinima evenings is to create a space for people to relax, share a beer and be introduced to what's going on in the world of Machinima. There's people who know what we're on about and there's people who are just fascinated by the medium and of course, those who are interested in New Media. I try to give an overview of what machinima is, but the more I learn about it - the more I realise that I'm just barely scratching the surface. So this year I decided to toss out objectivity and completely focus on what I wanted to focus on. I completely choked up, though. Suddenly I realised I had a microphone in my hand and people were listening to what I had to say - I haven't talked publicly in a long long time! Definitely needed the practice. Luckily I've been giving a few lectures and presentations with work lately - so I'm starting to get it down again. So anyways - I'm going to squeeze in what I meant to say inbetween talking about the program of the evening. If you don't recognise some of it - this is why.

So nuff said!

Machinima stands for machine + cinema + animation. If you think it doesn't add up with the spelling, blame Hugh Hancock who created www.machinima.com. There's also a story about a pub, a few beers and a cocktail napkin. But in essence it's machinima stands for machine + cinema + animation. It was the intention to focus the evening on the "machine"-part. What fascinates me with machinima is how the artists are communicating with a machine or an artificial intelligence to create their own narrative or story. The machine I'm talking about is the computer game where the film is made. If a machinima film is made in World of Warcraft, the artist will have to communicate with the game and understand the game mechanics in order to tell their story.

Defining Machinima

I'm usually very casual with my definition of machinima: "Films made in computer games or virtual worlds." - I feel it works. It's simple and it's so that anyone can understand it. It's a very general definition however so to show the complexities of this - I started off showing the audience the infamous Leeroy Jenkins episode.

At my first ever Machinima event I also started with this little film. I thought it was an entertaining way to show what World of Warcraft actually looks like during gameplay and back then I used it as an example of what wasn't machinima. My intention was to prove that machinima isn't replay films. There's usually a narrative or storyline involved within machinima it's not all about playing the game, it's more about playing the game to tell a story.

But a great thing happened - my audience disagreed with me. They started to question whether this Leeroy Jenkins episode was REALLY just a documentation of an incident that happened in World of Warcraft. The authenticity was questioned and if the film is a reenactment are they not telling us a story, and is it not machinima then?

Perhaps I'm confusing my definition with aesthetics. The next film looks completely different from the first. It can maybe be categorised as a celebration of WoW game aesthetics or as I prefer to think of it - a celebration of the art of machinima. The filming, the modding, the acting and the playing. Let me introduce you to one of my favourite machinima artists:

Baron Soosdon - I'm So Sick

Now the theme of the evening is to look at the way machinima artists are interacting with the game or "machine" in order to create their own stories and narrative. I feel this is an important component to defining what machinima is. Gameplay or communicating with artificial intelligence has a narratological significance in machinima films. Henry Lowood has defined it as puppet mastery. An artist must master the game and the avatars in order to create their own storyline. I feel that one of my favourite machinima films (I'll be writing that a lot in this piece) illustrates this rather eloquently. It's created in The Sims. Keep in mind that there are no magic buttons in The Sims which makes the Sims avatar angry or sad or have nightmares. The emotions are consequences of how you play with them. The Sims have a complex artificial intelligence embedded within them. While watching this film try to think of what the machinima artist has done to the avatar to make her have nightmares. In addition - I just find this film such a great omage of what you can do with avatar creation in The Sims. Hope you enjoy it as much as I do!

One Jovial Sim - Alice

Now - saying that machinima has to have the element of the artist communicating with an artificial intelligence or gameplay reduces the scope of machinima. Or questions it. For example, there's some beautiful films coming out of Second Life but this is a virtual world, there's little gameplaying involved. Do these films then deserve to be a part of the same genre?

My favourite film from Second Life is an illustration of a short story by Sherwood Anderson. I haven't read up on his work and I haven't researched any analysis of this story. But from seeing this cinematic interpretation of the story - I feel it's the best story ever told about writer's block.

Lainy Voom - The Dumb Man

Incidently - One Jovial Sim (Alice) and Lainy Voom often collaborate in each other's creations. Which makes you wonder - if the artists are collaborating, it must fall under the same media, right? Wouldn't that be interesting if it's the community of machinima artists that define what constitutes machinima or not?

Either way - I've concluded that there's more than enough artificial intelligence in virtual worlds like Second Life for us to appreciate the puppet mastery involved in creating films in this space.

Now - there's a new machinima "world" that I still don't understand completely and will have to look deeper into, but I feel I can't question the definition of machinima without mentioning it. The machinima "world" I'm refering to is, Moviestorm. From what I understand, this is a community that uploads environments, avatars, clothes etc. from games and virtual worlds and shares them with other machinima artists. So it seems like a machinima "world", to me. But again, I must stress that I have not fully understood the concept and tool. Most of the contributions to machinima festivals are filmed with Moviestorm and it's definitely a very strong force.

We've been a bit dark and serious in our film selection so far - so I thought I'd pick a film made with Moviestorm that made me laugh.

Phil Rice - Blast Supper

This is actually made for the Mefunk Akira competition. There was a list of things that had to be said in the film, like "That's not a chicken, that's my wife". Excellent idea! And the film is just hillarious. But is it machinima?

I don't know. Hugh Hancock, who created the whole term "machinima" says: "Of course it is!" - and for now, I'm willing to trust his expertise.

For more on the "definition"-discussion read Tracy Harwood's contribution to The Fallopian.

Machinima Night III

I've promised to do a write-up of MachinimaNight III to all who attended - share the links to the films and artists. I'm going to do this back to front and start off at the last part. Mostly this is for Scott and Jill who had to leave early. I appreciate your interest and support! Thanks!

So in the course of the night I had introduced the audience to different genres and types of machinima, mostly concentrating on form and not about the creative communities within machinima making communities.

This is the ingredient of machinima that fascinates me the most and there's one group that I've been paying attention to and just downright adore. So first - let me introduce you to Olibith.

Olibith is what we might call a machinima superstar. He was initially created on a WoW role-playing server, but has become so famous that he cannot roleplay anymore - he has become a machinima superstar and his sole purpose in his little avatar life is to create machinima. It is far from a lonely life.

Olibith is a member of a machinima artist gang. I usually call them the Never Stay Tuned gang - or NST gang. But upon reflection I find the word "gang" stupid and will have to come up with a cooler name. They're a network of machinima artists who help each other out with skills and inspiration. Let me introduce you to some of them (I did not have time to show all these on Machinima Night III - but taking the freeedom to do so now):

Baron Soosdon

The avatar, Little Nikita was made in collaboration with Pink Hair. I've only seen here in a few of Baron Soosdon's machinima - he tends to vary with the use of avatars - or shall we say modelled avatars. He's much more focused on giving the audience an aestheticly impressive atmosphere than telling a story from beginning to end. I still think there's a lot of narrative in his machinima films - but my definition of narrative is rather wide at the moment.

Olibith and Baron Soosdon meet in Warcraft Movies after having created machinima by themselves.

PinkHair

Maybe you recognise someone in this machinima film? It was made in collaboration with Baron Soosdon with a little help from some others, like Olibith - see where I'm going with this?

Dopefish

Dopefish has made one of the best machinima pieces I've ever seen. He's an excellent storyteller. I'm asking for permission to upload Among Fables and Men onto YouTube so I can share it with you here. I've often wanted to do a longer review of it, but felt that my gaming skills were inadequate to give it a proper analysis. I've always thought it expressed the way that World of Warcraft is "just" a game. That underneath all the beautiful 3Dishness - there's a story and there's gamescript - but I'll get back to that another time.

Dopefish created a machinima IRC channel at Quakenet, which has been a resource for the collaborative nature of the machinima that these artists are creating.

Here's an absolute favourite of mine:

(YouTube's very frequent in taking stopping machinima on YouTube (music copyright) - so you can download it here if the embedded video doesn't work.)

This is a collection of seperate shorts by several machinima artists and I feel that it clearly exemplifies the way that each artist has their own style and expression. The style of Never Stay Tuned is also a mockery (and appreciation) of other media entertainment, which works so well in machinima. The way that avatars in a gaming world are imitating the 'real world' media - just works so well! And this group of machinima artists are smart in their creative storytelling.

It's also evident that they keep helping each other and you see that by their uniqueness in style and technique. The most obvious is Olibith, who keeps making guest appearances. He's easy to spot. Have a look at the film again and see if you can spot him in pictures on the wall, in the background a.s.o. The technique and aesthetic footprint of Baron Soosdon is very evident in his music video or does his musical taste give him away? Would I be able to recognise it as his work and not Pinkhair's if it weren't for the darkness, editing and futuristic aesthetics? And then inbetween all the hillariousness comes Dopefish's beautiful recreation of the Sony colour balls commercial, which just takes my breathe away.

Together, this group of machinima artists are creating a collective narrative. And we'll get more into that another time when I figure it out myself - hehe! I really should be reading, writing and researching this full time, huh?! I promise to get back to it soon but real life is knocking on my door.

While I work on that enjoy the latest Never Stay Tuned which also has contributions from AFK pl@yers, Ian Beckman (he was also in nr. 3) and Goldskin.

Part 1:

Part 2:

Machinima Night III

Ehm...let's ignore the misspelling of my name, ey?!

Happy Birthday, sis!

It's my sister's birthday today and I just wanted to give her a little public shout and hug!

Christin blogs about her WoWing and a whole lot of other great stuff - at Misc.

In fact -my sister has managed to create one of those healthy gaming family settings that you always wish you heard more about.

Christin is also involved somehow with The Slash 2 Podcast.

I adore my sister. Smart as hell and lustful for life!

Happy 29th birthday, sis!

MachinimUP or MachiniMIX

I'm trying to figure out a really catchy great name for the upcoming Machinima Night at Landmark 22. October. This is what I've come up with - MachinimUP or MachiniMIX - but to be perfectly honest - I feel that's just a foolish way of hyping it all up. Why not continue to be perfectly honest, frank and to the point with Machinima Night III?



I'm officially on vacation and I'm unofficially trying to get my head focused on upcoming projects and dreams this fall so I can dive straight into them when I come home. My day job will be requiring quite a lot of attention - so I must have a few things straight soon.

This blog has helped me gain perspective so many times before - I think it's only reasonable that I should continue brainstorming here. So to whomever is interested - this is where my mind is at when it comes to this years Machinima Night.

Earlier vs now
Previous Machinima Nights have been about describing what machinima is and trying to categorise the art into genres.

I'm not sure I want to do that this year.

I think I want to start off by describing machinima by using a series of clips from machinima. I've recently bought Adobe Premiere (better be worth the frakkin money!)- which I'm hoping to get my head around as soon as possible - so editing will be a sinch.

I want to talk about these sequences and what is actually going on. I want to describe the machine part in machinima - as this is the part that often gets misunderstood in my presentations.

So first half hour will be focusing on "what's the "machine" about in machinima?"

The industry of Machinima
Then I'd really like to get into where Machinima is today. It would be perfect if I could get an overview of how many competitions there are in a year - how many movies get published - how many fans create machinima - how many submit machinima to the competitions.

I have to admit that I'm not too optimistic of managing to gather all this information in time - but it would be lovely. So any help will be greatly appreciated.

I'll write a few e-mails and do a little snooping. Of course the subject will have to start with a little history of what Machinima really is - why it's here - and why it's so popular.

I think half an hour - unless I get some really interesting information that is worth a good run through.

Copyright issues
I don't know if I want to touch on this subject. I still want this to be a topic that desserves a full night's discussion - not a little byline in an evening that's mostly about the amusing qualities of machinima.

An interesting case study could maybe be - "Why Rooster Teeth can sell Red vs. Blue DVDs". At the moment I don't know - may be a short answer - may be an interesting "Lessig got involved"- answer. Will of course be researching that as soon as possible - remember - I'm just brainstorming here.



What I enjoy most about this case study is that it gives me an opportunity to show a Red vs. Blue - clip - which is always a source of laughter and happiness in the crowd. I don't often use Rooster Teeth in my presentations because most people associate machinima with them - and I want to share with the audience that machinima is so much more. So they quite often get left out - which I'm starting to feel is rather unfair - since it is Rooster Teeth that first introduced me to machinima. So two flies in one smack, as we say in Norwegian.

But I'm not certain the subject belongs here. If I'm really good - I can do a short and understandable and thought provoking insightful little 20 min speech on the subject and then maybe a break so people can discuss it among themselves for a bit? But I'm not sure that my presentation techniques have the confidence to do that. I'm afraid that I'll more than likely just barf out the complexities of the legality issues and leave the audience confused an uninterested in what I'm saying.

I don't know. I think if I'm to bring up Copyright issues - I need to feel confident that I can express the issues clearly, to the point and with question. As American as I can get - I think.

Collaborative art
I think this will be the heart and soul of the show reel. I think I've decided to focus on the Never Stay Tuned series.

Never Stay Tuned 4 (international) from Olibith Kirin Tor on Vimeo.

How many people are involved - why did they start - who is what a.s.o. I find their machinima films so unique because of the characters they've created and the way they represent mash-up culture at it's best. Only if they're willing to collaborate with me of course. But I do love the way that they constantly contribute in each other's films and seem my like a unit at times. The true art of collaborative art can be found in this group of WoW'ers - and I would like to tell the Bergensers about it.

And as a special treat - I know a guy - a nice guy - who's made machinima. And I want him to tell us about the experience. But I don't think I've convinced him completely yet - so I'll leave him alone (till he says "yes" of course) for now.

Media
As for media - I thought I'd go all out on this one. Create posters a few weeks in advance - send press invitations and everything. If there's one thing I've learned in the last couple of years is that media attention is a good currency to have. And since I'm in the process of writing a PhD proposal with an average grade behind me - I need all the currency I can get! The more gravitas I can get behind my proposal - the closer I will be to living the life of my dreams. And it needs to be worth trying, at least. I can't let this go into my "regrets" box in life.

So what do you think?

Do you think this would be an enjoyable night? What are you missing and why?

If you don't want to leave a comment - let me know by e-mail: linnsovig gmail.com

I would love some feedback and advice! ;)