2005: A Year in Motion
As we wave good-bye to 2005 and usher in 2006, I think we can look back upon this previous year as being a watershed one for Machinima.
January 2005
...damn.
I'm not sure how 2006 will hold up in light of all of the accomplishments of 2005, but if we achieve even half of what was covered in 2005, it will be another whirlwind year. A special thanks to Ken Thain and Jonathan Perry, who sites provided quick research for this review.
There's several blog drafts in the queue (including the sequel to this post - my 2006 predictions!), and hope to have these posted before the end of the week.
A happy and healthy New Year to everyone!
January 2005
- Machinima panel at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival
- Make Something Unreal Contest Winners announced (Machinima finalists include: The Journey, Bot, Sparked Memory and Scrap)
- Machinima presentation: Georgia Tech's Living Games World Symposium honoring Will Wright
- Academy presents the 2005 Festival and Machinimation 2.0 at the GDC
- Heavy.com debuts God of War-based Pimp My Weapon Machinima series
- Machinima presentation: Harvard Law's Signal/Noise Conference
- First Machinima appears in MTV2's Video Mods season premiere (ok, this is a bit of a personal highlight)
- The second Machinima-related publication, Machinima: Making Animated Movies in 3D Virtual Environments, is released
- IFC broadcasts the first commissioned Machinima series for US television (Rooster Teeth Productions' Strangerhood Studios).
- Randall Glass' A Few Good G-Men is released (the first of three viral Machinimas in 2005)
- Machinima site RPGFilms.net is/is not targeted by the RIAA.
- Machinima is featured in the New York Times Magazine, "The X-Box Auteurs"
- Machinima presentation: 2005 Edinburgh Interactive Entertainment Festival
- This Spartan Life is released (2nd viral Machinima)
- Machinima presentation: Ars Electronica (Linz, Austria)
- Machinima presentation: MIT's Comparative Media Studies Lab
- Rooster Teeth debuts P.A.N.I.C.S., Machinima series based on VU game F.E.A.R.
- Machinima presentation: NYLS' State of Play III: Social Revolutions
- Machinima presentation: 2005 Austin Game Conference
- Machinima presentation: Serious Games Summit, Washington, DC.
- Heavy.com announces Machinima series lineup
- 2005 Machinima Film Festival/Machinima Awards (articles include Wired.com, CNET.com, MTV.com and Village Voice [1 & 2], interview on G4's Attack of the Show)
- The ILL Clan debuts their new live Machinima show, Tra5h Talk, at the 2005 MFF.
- Game-cum-Machinima-app, Lionhead Studios' The Movies is released.
- Alex Chan's The French Democracy, arguably the year's most viral Machinima (and a seminal point in the Machinima timeline) is widely covered, with articles appearing in the Washington Post, Associated Press, Business Week (articles 1 & 2), MTV.com as well as numerous blogs.
- Machinima presentation: Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (Fair Game)
- Machinima presentation: Stanford
- First Machinima podcast, Machinima Live!, debuts
- XFire and Blizzard announce major WoW Machinima competition.
...damn.
I'm not sure how 2006 will hold up in light of all of the accomplishments of 2005, but if we achieve even half of what was covered in 2005, it will be another whirlwind year. A special thanks to Ken Thain and Jonathan Perry, who sites provided quick research for this review.
There's several blog drafts in the queue (including the sequel to this post - my 2006 predictions!), and hope to have these posted before the end of the week.
A happy and healthy New Year to everyone!
2 Comments:
Personal Machinima 2005 roundup for me:
I started a big film project, called "The Secretary." The script is a 90-pager, so it's no small amount of work! I was still doing set development when I had to go on hiatus, because we need to wind up production on our current game title, at work. So far, the sets are looking quite nice. My assets are all carefully backed up on my external drive, because my laptop drive is getting slowly corrupt. :(
I also picked up "The Movies," and started playing with it. I'll probably be releasing a short within two weeks, if I don't get fed up with the audio track, and re-record it for the umpteenth time.
All-in-all, I'm pretty happy with the rapid growth in the scene this year, and the amount of exposure that it's getting. I think we're going to see a huge influx of new blood in the new year, and one of our challenges is going to be dealing with the cultural fallout from this.
Our little village is going to become increasingly large and metropolitan. There will be many new cliques emerging, around various programs and genres. "The Sims," "Second Life," and "World of Warcraft" already have machinima communities growing around them, and
I think "The Movies" community may branch into several sub-communities, as people differentiate themselves by genre, skill level, and modding capabilities. Increasing the likelihood of this fracturing is Lionhead's failure to provide modding tools, and their policy of disallowing modding discussions on the official forums. So, I think you're really going to see island communities form around the fansites, as they race to reverse-engineer the game assets, and find new ways to mod the program. (They haven't even cracked the model format yet, so there's a hell of a lot to uncover yet. I'm a bit unhappy with Lionhead, because I feel that they really misled their community, with respect to modding capability. Bad show!)
My radical/whacky prediction for 2006: We'll see at least one group establish an online machinima equivalent of a TV network, with a lineup of multiple machinima series (and possibly a news magazine type program) all under one umbrella.
noice one mate
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