Mixin' it up at MIT

I just returned from MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) and it was truly a blast. I was the guest of Profs. Beth Coleman and Henry Jenkins - presenting Machinima at several forums within the Comparative Media Studies program. MIT is a terrific place (an obvious statement for those who know MIT, but once you're there and in the thick of it, it's even more impressive), if I had a chance at a "do-over" of my education, it would be my first choice for sure. The great part of my visit was to discuss Machinima with various levels of students - from undergrads to graduates - and faculty as well. I was there for only about 36 hours, but my one full day in Cambridge was a lot of fun - I even got in a screening of "Corpse Bride" in with a couple of cool TAs, Ivan and Jeff.

A good portion of the Q&A session after my presentations revolved around the legal issues of Machinima - specifically, how do Machinima filmmakers sidestep the legal aspects of creating derivative works, that surely still belong to the game developer/publisher. I presented Machinima at the Signal2Noise conference at Harvard earlier this year, which looked at this, and have spent some time at Prof. Beth Noveck's IP Class at New York Law School around the same subject matter. In fact, one of her students, Etienne Dor, has written an excellent paper around the subject matter, which I recently had the chance to review. Clearly, these matters are not going away any time soon. In fact, they're only going to get more focus as Machinima expands. I am optimistic however, that some of the dust will settle with new licensing structures, but it's still a murky outlook.

Deadline Reminder! less than one week to the Machinima Film Festival October 6th deadline!