Taken from 1up.com
'Xfire and Blizzard are putting on a contest for aspiring film-makers who dabble in the art of machinima, which is really just a fancy word for gameplay footage that's polished up with dialogue, maybe some sound effects, and slicked up with editing. Sponsors joining Blizzard and Xfire include AMD, Hypernia, Creative Labs, XFX, D-Link, Corsair, ZBoard and Time Games.'
To enter, contestants have to produce a movie in the World of Warcraft game engine for one of three categories - Dance, Comedy, or Drama. Six prizes will be awarded per category.
There are also prizes for other categories, such as Best Music, Best Dialog, Best Action Scene, Best Pun or Line, and Best Editing and Special Effects. But hurry! Entries must be submitted by January, 21st 2006.
For more, visit the official website at http://www.xfire.com/xf/wowcontest.php Good luck!
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CfP: The Machinima Reader
Edited by Henry Lowood and Michael Nitsche
The Machinima Reader will assemble the first collection of essays to critically review the phenomenon of Machinima from a wide variety of perspectives.
Machinima is on the verge of stepping beyond its chaotic mix of artistic, ludic and technical conceptions into established traditions and vocabularies of contemporary media. As machinima invents itself, the flexibility of its form poses an interesting challenge to academics as well as artists and critics. We want to offer an inaugural reader for the further development and critical discussion of Machinima, one that charts its growth from several angles and also provides a foundation for critical studies in the future.
The rapid development of Machinima is closely connected to the culture of computer and video games. In a repetition of early cinema’s history, many of Machinima’s milestones are formulated as mixtures of artistic expression and technical achievements. In our organization of The Machinima Reader, we will recognize that the creators of Machinima have been at times just as concerned with demonstrating mastery of technology and gameplay as in artistic expression or narrative performance. At the same time we acknowledge an artistic maturing process that has led to more professional production methods and results of higher quality. Consequently, we are looking for essays that address a range of topics. These include (but are not limited to):
• Culture: History of Machinima – definitions, technology, and context; performance practices; evolving and new presentation platforms, theory
• Technology: Promise and impact of real-time engines for animation; future developments in hard- and software; technical relationship and dependencies among games, technology and machinima
• Communities and Contexts: Machinima as community-based practice and performance; legal issues; use in classroom; relationship to other media; machinima as guerilla film making; Machinima and modding; players as performers; machinima in MMOs
• Art: Aesthetics and poetics of Machinima; Machinima and new media; from game to Machinima – what translates what does not?
Please submit a 500 abstract via email as RTF document to michael.nitsche@lcc.gatech.edu and lowood@stanford.edu by 3 April 2006.
We expect that final essays will not exceed 5000-7000 words and will be due July 2006.
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The First Machinima Podcast, entitled "Machinima LIVE!" is now available. Hosted by Digital Phil & Dr. Nemesis, the show covers some details of Machinima creation and it's evolution.
http://www.chaotic-realms.com/
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Make a short holiday movie and win an Xbox360
In GGL’s 1st Annual
“You’ll Shoot Your Eye Out”
Holiday Movie Contest!
We’re looking for funny, strange, absurd holiday movie clips to keep us all entertained through the New Year. Use any format you want to make your movie - live action video, Flash Animation, Machinima, etc. Just make a movie, the more ridiculous the better, and submit it to us for your chance to win an Xbox360!
Be sure to check the contest page throughout the month to vote, comment, and watch all the movies!
http://www.ggl.com/christmas.php
Happy Holidays and remember…
“You’ll shoot your eye out, kid. Ho Ho Ho”
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| Posted 18:32:53 13th Dec 2005 by
MuNansen |
It's out and ready for download.
High Quality WMV
http://www.muproductionsonline.com/JustAGame_wmv_High.zip
Medium Quality WMV
http://www.muproductionsonline.com/JustAGame_wmv_med_720.zip
Medium Quality QT
http://www.muproductionsonline.com/JustAGame_QT_med.zip
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| Posted 14:31:26 13th Dec 2005 by
Macabre |
Lionhead have released the first patch for "The Movies", bringing the current release up to version 1.1. Take note that the patch is said not to be compatible with some of the mods out there!
http://movies.lionhead.com/news.html?story=231
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| Posted 05:18:58 13th Dec 2005 by
fiezi |
Machinimag Issue Seven is finally out.
After lots of delays and trouble, the latest Issue of machinimag finally made it to the web.
Issue Seven is the biggest Issue so far, spanning over 50 pages of machinima related articles and a huge section of pictures of the 2005 Machinima Filmfestival.
Go head over to http://machinimag.com to download your PDF now.
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Episode 2 of the new series, 'Bouncers' has been released, avaialable in high and low quality
versions. The good guys aren't pulling their weight, and need an extra hand at
the club.
http://www.binarypictureshow.com
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| Posted 17:23:07 5th Dec 2005 by
gToon |
Maestro Marino will be appearing on G4 TV's "Attack of the Show" this Wednesday, Dec 7th at 4pm pst, 7 p.m EST. He'll be showing clips of some of the Mach Festival winners and talking about the Festival.
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But just before I go...
If you're near Stamford, check out the ILL Clan doing a live performance and discussion tomorrow, 4th December.
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I'm off on holiday for the next week - however, Johnnie and Ben will still be around and still be posting, so you shouldn't see any significant slowdown!
See you all in a week.
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You can download the video of Paul's talk at State of Play over here. Cool stuff.
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'The French Democracy' is getting a lot of attention from the blogsphere and the wider media, with the Washington Post writing about it (complete with quotes from the filmmaker, Peter Molyneux, and yours truly), and the blogsphere picking up on it with a variety of interesting comments, most of the focussing on the potential for Activision to squelch freedom of speech using the game.
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| Posted 22:15:21 1st Dec 2005 by
gToon |
Shacknews has announced that the F.E.A.R. sdk has been released. http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/39662
The game is a lot of fun to play and looks wonderful. Some tuts up for making machinima at
http://www.fearmaps.com/
Please, someone make an antidote to PANICS! I'm dyin here...
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This isn't directly Machinima-related, but it *is* related to the wider sense of why and how Machinima is becoming popular.
A short quote from "Ten Rules for Web Startups":
"We're moving into what I call the era of the "Casual Web" (and casual content creation). This is much bigger than the hobbyist web or the professional web."
This is the stuff I've been banging on about when I'm talking about the "Age of Ubiquitous Creativity".
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I've only just found out about this - apparently Blizzard have been running a cinematics contest for Warcraft III! You can check out the final entries over at Warcraft III.net
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This Thanksgiving, the Gmail front page featured a list of "7 things the Gmail Team is thankful for this year" -- including the Sims 2 machinima music video "I Got My Gmail", by Panda Productions, featuring HatHead's song of the same name.
The music video is at:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3911498298767970557&q;=i+got+my+gmail
The original song is at:
http://www.hatheadmusic.com/listen.htm
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Following on from its official selection at the Machinima Film Festival 2005, "Bookstore 2&3" has now been officially selected for this year's ION International Animation and Film Festival. Unlike the Machinima Film Festival, "Bookstore 2&3" will be shown in its entirety thus making ION's screening the U.S. premiere.
Created with The Sims 2, "Bookstore 2&3" combines the two comedy episodes into one film. They can be seen separately at machinima.com
For more information about the ION Film Festival, go to http://www.ionfilmfest.com
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Friederich has put up a video of the Machinima Film Festival awards ceremony over at Machinimag for your viewing pleasure.
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| Posted 17:56:31 13th Nov 2005 by
Matt |
Chairleg Productions is a new(ish) machinima company already with nine (mostly comedy) videos online and ready for your viewing pleasure. These Brits sure do know the meaning of random, but apparently random is good! With all submitted videos passing the test over at halo.bungie.org, these videos can now be found in wmv,wmp9, qt and mp4 format*. You can check out their site at www.chairleg-productions.com and be sure to visit the forum.
The best bit about the site is the designated PSP section, which allows you to see the site and download the latest videos using your psp.
So what are you waiting for? Go visit www.chairleg-productions.com. Then tell all your friends to visit the site, then all the common acquaintances in your life, then perhaps like your doctor or dentist, then maybe your local bar owner..then your parents...possibly.
*Some format types are only found at halo.bungie.org. Search for "Chairleg Productions" to find all news stories and appropriate links.
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