Red Alert! Red Alert!!! Submit your Machinima to the Bitfilm Festival!!! One week until deadline!

Ok, ok, turn down the klaxons - no life/death emergencies here. Still, there's only one week to the deadline for Bitfilm, so we're nearly down to the wire. For those of you who haven't heard, next week marks the close of the entry deadline.

Bitfilm is one of Europe's leading next-gen film festivals, showcasing and honoring Machinima for the last couple of years. They are really big supporters of Machinima filmmaking and we would love to flood their offices with Machinima works from around the world. So if you haven't submitted your film yet, do so this week! There's no cost to enter the fest! And damn, if you need more time, let me know and I write the festival organizers myself to see if we can extend the deadline!

Either way, go to the site now and fill out the application!

Still Seeing Breen finds a home on Video Mods

For those of you writing in about the Breen vid gone AWOL, there's a very good reason for it. Tomorrow evening, Friday June 24, MTV2 will premiere its third season of Video Mods, a show that showcases popular tracks, starring characters of current game titles. I'm happy to announce that Still Seeing Breen will be a part of Video Mods season premiere. This marks the first time a Machinima video will be part of the show.

Back in April, MTV approached me (with a little directional nudge by good friend Frank Dellario of the ILL Clan) about airing Still Seeing Breen on their show. Considering the video was a good fit for Video Mods, and that it would give Machinima some great visibility, I said "Sure!" (actually, I think "Hell, yeah!" was my response). Once we agreed to show the piece, I then worked with the show producers on getting the rights to air the Machinima. Knowing the folks at Valve already, I was able to connect the show producers with them and get that conversation started. The show producers continued to work Valve, and also worked with Breaking Benjamin's label (Hollywood Records) to get to the clearances on showing Still Seeing Breen. Without giving the mail-by-mail details (really boring stuff, believe me), we agreed to terms, modified the video a bit for purposes of broadcast and off it went. They also did an on-camera segment with me, describing what Machinima is (though I'm not sure if that made the final edit of the program).

I created Still Seeing Breen in hopes to grab more attention for Machinima, as well as show off (and test) the new tools that helps make Machinima possible. Having MTV show the vid, with the blessing of both Valve and Hollywood Records, goes beyond what I could have hoped for. Needless to say, its all very cool.

Video Mods premieres on MTV2 - Friday, June 24th, 2005 at 8pm EDT/5pm PDT.Check your local cable listings for specific channel information.

Note: once the season premiere of Video Mods rotates out of MTV's schedule, I will post the revised video to this site.

Machinima Panel at Makor: June 9th

So you're in NYC, it's a pleasant June afternoon and you're not sure what to do with your evening. Sure, you could see Episode III for the 4th time, but after screening 3, you're feeling that no matter how many times you force it into your grey matter, it just won't become a better film. No, you'd rather do something far more engaging. You recently came across this interesting medium called Machinima and damn, if there were only some people presenting something about it....if only - I mean, in NYC, the city that offers everything, they at least, should have something about it.

So you pick up a Firefox browser and page through various sites. And wait! What's this??? Holy smokes! It's as if the tech gods had looked down upon you and felt that some balance should be restored to your culturally-deprived life. And lo and behold, a Machinima panel in NYC there is:

The Convergence of Cinema and Video Games
- Date & Time: Thu, Jun 9, 2005, 7:30pm
- Location: Steinhardt Building, 35 West 67th Street Directions
- Price: $15.00

Seriously, this should be a great panel, as it will be moderated by Graham Leggat of the Lincoln Center Film Society and features panelists Katie Salen (who I credit with discovering Machinima) and Tommy Pallotta (director of In the Waiting Line Machinima vid and producer of Waking Life/A Scanner Darkly). I will be on hand as well, spouting things willy-nilly and speaking about myself in the third person (but in the context of Machinima of course).

It should be a lot of fun - I've invited a good portion of the Machinima community here in NYC, and even Friedrich Kirschner, who's visiting from Austria, has threatened to stop by. Seating is limited so get your tickets soon - and hey, let me know if you're going to stop by so I can say hello (in 3rd person of course).

Machinima hardware, pt. II

As my last post waxed on and on about upcoming consoles (which might seriously impact PC gaming as we know it), the here and now says PCs are still leaps and bounds ahead in the gaming arena. One only needs to read the specs of NVIDIA's latest to know that the horsepower will still side with PCs - well, at least for another few moons...

To that, I've been researching the landscape of portable PC gaming hardware. I am a self-professed gadget geek, so its not unique that I stop, stare and drool at hardware specs, but my primary interest here is to replace my "newer than it looks" Compaq x1015. While the x1015 has served me well, its definitely showing its wear, what with chipped paint, scratches on the casing and a nice "pay attention to me!" vertical line running up the middle of the LCD - true battle scars of the hardcore gaming warrior (though that tumble around a McDonalds carousel didnt help much).

Anyway, I believe I settled on my next upgrade which makes the little geek in me do the Mashed Jar-Jar (similar to the old Mashed Potato dance, but updated to the sounds of muffled "Meesa needs air!" I know, I know...that's terrible - hey, you smiled too).

After reviewing all the current laptop offerings for gamers. the Dell XPS Gen 2 won me over.

The XPS 2 features quite a number of things I expect from a gaming laptop - 450 things to be exact - as that's the clock speed of the included NVIDIA GeForce Go 6800 Ultra. This is a 256mb card and is the fastest 3D card available for laptops. In addition to the top-of-the-line graphics, the XPS 2 includes a 533 MHz frontside bus, DDR2 memory sockets, insane sound (how many laptops include a subwoofer?) and a small but effective 17" screen. Yes, its no desktop, but it sure acts as its evil twin, hoping you'll forget you even had the desktop as part of your hardware family. Additionally, the XPS 2 includes the "what gamer could be without this?" accoutrement - colored LEDs located in the front, sides and back of the unit. This is totally an asthetic item, and serves no purpose other than to give Bouncing Betty some disco lights to dance to.

Armed with all the XPS stats and other considerations (for those looking at PC hardware, the invaluable Notebookforums.com offer forum after forum on different makes/models). I also considered the hi-end portable gaming offerings from Gateway, Alienware and VoodooPC and found that each fell a bit short of the XPS 2 (however knowing these vendors, expect their answers shortly).

The lappy has received some exceptional reviews across the board (CNET : HardOCP : Tom's Hardware) and seems to be favored by quite a few. Sure, its a Dell and a bit of a beast (my back is aching already!) but for a great portable Machinima studio, I'll take the hit.