Troy>San Francisco>Los Angeles

Bouncing between coasts over the next week...

First up: I'll be at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, NY on the evening of Tuesday, November 29th for the EMPAC Fair Game event. This should be a really fun evening as I'll be presenting with friends Friedrich Kirschner (who will be showing off some of the cool work he's doing in UT2004) and The ILL Clan, who will be performing their new live Machinima show Tra5h Ta1k (which they premiered at the festival). Kurt Hentschlager and the Workspace Unlimited team will be on hand as well.

From there, I'll jet out to San Francisco, where I'll chill with some Westie friends for a few days and then slide on down to Stanford on Sunday, Dec. 4th for another evening of Machinima presentations - once again featuring The ILL Clan as well as fellow Machinima Film Fest alumni, Michael Nitsche from Georgia Tech (Michael also leads up the GT Machinima Group).

From SF, a quick jaunt down into LA on December 7th to appear on G4's Attack of the Show, giving hosts Kevin Pereira and the ever beautiful Sarah Lane, the definitive 2005 MFF wrap-up. There's also rumor of a Machinima gathering/dinner/drinks while I'm in town...anyone up for poolside martinis?

Also: stay tuned for a short Q&A with filmmaker Koulamata about his now famous The French Democracy machinima, with links now over at Boing Boing, Media Bistro, Joystiq and Tony Walsh's Clickable Culture (thanks, Tess!). I'm sure there'll be more to come...

Machinima: the eyes of French democracy?

Right before the Thanksgiving holiday, I was tapped on the shoulder from Xavier at Machinima.fr in regards to a new Machinima made about the riots in France, called The French Democracy.

It's a simple yet effective piece - a straight forward recount of the how/why behind the recent civil unrest in that country. The filmmaker, who goes by the screen name Koulamata, is a French citizen who decided to use the recently released game-cum-machinima-app The Movies, to give viewers his/her on-the-ground perspective of the riots and how it is impacting their people. The film itself is almost documentarian in its structure, and we're left with nearly a Gus Van Sant-experience of interpreting the unfolded events.

The director also chooses to run the film's dialogue in subtitles, obviously due to the lack of voice-over resources (note to you voice synth folks). However, the English subs (though broken in a number of places) prove extremely efficacious. In the end, I'm wholly glad the director didn't try to supplement the film with VO that would have ultimately detracted from the work.

Since my becoming aware of the film, others are also tuning into its message. Clive Thompson blogged his thoughts on it, as does Gonzalo Frasco over at Water Cooler Games, with mentions on gaming blog Kotaku and Alice Taylor's W0nderland too.

Blogging has clearly given voice to the numerous masses, but the message behind this film says more than anything I've read about the riots to date. While I'm not sure Machinima can or will propagate political rights activism across borders or cultures, the medium does provide the power to do so. And where else is that more appropriate but in the hands of people who need to have their message seen?

2005 Mackie Winners!

Wowser-what a weekend! The 2005 Machinima Film Fest is over and what an event it was - the largest and subjectively, the best event we've had yet. Thanks to our super sponsors NVIDIA and IFC in helping to make the fest happen.

Below is the list of this year's Mackie winners:

Best Picture
Game On - Ethan Vogt/Furnace Media Group

Best Direction
Whiplash: The Movie - Jake Hughes

Best Virtual Performance
A Few Good G-Men - Randall Glass

The IFC Award for Excellence in Machinima Screenwriting
P.A.N.I.C.S. - Rooster Teeth Productions

Best Visual Design
person2184 - Friedrich Kirschner

Best Technical Achievement
person2184 - Friedrich Kirschner

Best Sound
Only the Strong Survive - Jason Choi/Riot Films

Best Editing
Strangerhood Studios - Rooster Teeth Productions

Best Independent Machinima
Red vs. Blue - Season 3 - Rooster Teeth Productions

Best Commercial/Game Machinima
Game: On - Ethan Vogt/Furnace Media Group

Best Off the Shelf machinima
Return - Terran Gregory & Ezra Ferguson

Best Machinima Series:
This Spartan Life - Chris Burke

Academy Honorary Award
David "crt" Wright - for developing KeyGrip for Quake

We'll have pics of the event to post in the near future, as there were tons of cameras flicking off during the fest. Stay tuned here for more post-fest news to come...

Fest Ads in Print

Picked up this morning's Village Voice, and got to see the first of the Machinima fest print ads in place (pg. 62). Looking pretty snazzy...

The ad creative is similar to the ones we did in 2003, though the copy is a bit different (and we like much more so). Kudos to Asaf Ronen who never fails to impress me with his intellect and wit.

Btw, the Serious Games Summit was a blast yesterday! Mucho kudos to Ben Sawyer and Serious Games folks for putting a top-notch event. Can't blog too deeply about it right now, but hopefully at a later date when I don't have so much on my plate.