Posted by Johnnie
Congratulations to all the nominees and winners of this year’s Online Machinima Film Festival. I’m really annoyed that I couldn’t be at the ceremony this year, but my run-by-idiots ISP didn’t switch my new ADSL line on until a few hours ago. Anyway, gratz to everyone, and congratulations to the OMFF team on a job well done.
Posted by Johnnie
A little while ago, I was asked to make a short comedic music video for Moviestorm to demonstrate some ideas we were trying out with the future technical implementation of the software. The result was the now-infamous Clubland Will Never Die, which features Yours Truly exploring his feminine side.
I seem to have started a trend. That renowned director, Alan Smithee, released a parody video today featuring non other than our illustrious CEO, David Bailey.
Watch this, and fear.
In all seriousness, it’s great to work for a company that’s brave (and forward-thinking) enough to allow us to do things like this.
Posted by Johnnie
Peter Rasmussen was one of the cornerstones of the Machinima community. He died earlier today.
Hugh and I have already put up a short tribute to Peter on the Machinima For Dummies blog, but I want to take a few lines to add my personal thoughts as well. I Hate Sheep is my personal blog, covering whatever subjects I happen to be interested in at the time and containing no opinions but my own. This particular post is as personal as it gets.
First of all, a little about the man himself for those who didn’t know him. Peter was a very independent guy, a loner in many ways. I got the impression that he couldn’t help but furrow his own unique path through life – he was one of those people who simply couldn’t have done it any other way. I wouldn’t want to leave you with the impression that Peter was unsociable or uncommunicative, though. Far from it: he was immensely likeable and always eager to help others, and to share his considerable experience and expertise. Like many Machinima heroes, he did all of this willingly and with no expectation of any sort of payment or reward.
He was also a superb – simply superb – director. He possessed an inate feel for camerawork and way of simplifying characterisation down to the pure minimum. You can see his skill in pieces such as Killer Robot or Stolen Life. Stolen Life, in particular, is a flagship piece, and easily amongst the best machinima ever created. It was a deserving winner of the Best Picture award at the 2007 European Machinima Festival. To my eternal chagrin, I still haven’t got around to buying a copy of the DVD.
I didn’t know Peter very well, if I’m being honest. I have no doubt, though, that he’d be staggered by the amount of people who held him in the highest possible regard. I have an email thread in my in-box between Peter and myself, and a note on my to-do list reading “Contact Pete R to finish conversation”. I’ll never be able to tick that box now, and I have no doubt I’ve missed out on a fascinating and worth-while conversation.
He will be deeply missed.
Posted by Johnnie
Now, look. I’m on your side. You know that. I’m all for encouraging creativity and new talent. But, please, I’m begging you …
Stop making machinima movies with Carmina Burana as the soundtrack!
O Fortuna is a great piece of music. I’m not saying it’s not. Very evocative, very dramatic. I can see why, when you dragged that mp3 into your video editor, it seemed like a good idea. It’s bound to make your halfass movie feel like proper Dramatic Stuff.
Don’t make that mistake, please. O Fortuna is so over-used, it’s not even funny. It was already a cliche after The Omen. By this stage, it’s even a cliche as a machinima soundtrack. There are plenty of other great pieces of classical music. Why not look at Wagner, or Elgar, or one of the really great choral composers like Bach or Handel?
Come on, people. Put some effort in, please.
Posted by Johnnie
My book has just been published. Let the reserved and repressed white middle-class celebrations begin! Hurrah!
The title of this post will make no sense to anybody outside of the UK, by the way, so don’t even try.
Apologies to anyone reading this via the Machinifeed, who must by now be thoroughly sick of hearing that Machinima For Dummies has been published. Between us, Hugh and I have announced it on darn near every Machinima site on the net.
Posted by johnnie
I have to talk about The Overcast. Episode 14 (which, purely incidentally, was released on the 1st of April) consisted of an interview between Overman and digital-phil, the host of the now dead and lamented Machinima Live podcast. We all know that there were tensions between the two Phils whilst the podcast was still in production, and nobody was sure exactly how they’d left things. Now we know.
The interview was a brilliantly spoofed argument between the two of them, which gradually descended into name-calling and personal grudge-bearing, culminating in Overman demanding an explanation as to why digital-phil chose to eat pancakes rather than interview cairmen and myself.
The whole thing worked so well because it was based on truth. We did record an episode of Machinima Live, which was never broadcast (the infamous “lost episode”) because of a problem on digital-phil’s PC which corrupted the audio file beyond all repair. I happen to know that a lot of the other supposed irritations that the two Phils threw at each other during the course of the podcast were also, as they say in Hollywood, “inspired by true events”.
I actually emailed Overman shortly after the episode was released, asking if it was a spoof or not. I didn’t post on any of the machinima forums expressing my opinion one way or another, because I was too cowardly to risk being exposed as a victim of the gag.
I feel too guilty about that, now, so I’m going to say this publicly: you got me. Totally and utterly. I did realise that the whole thing was probably an April Fool’s joke, but only after listening to it for a third time, and even then I wasn’t totally sure.
Here (after the cut) is the complete, unedited email that I sent to Overman. Can you feel me covering all my bases?
Read more...Posted by johnnie
Three days later. 10,000 views and counting.
This is going quite well.
Posted by johnnie
Over at Strange Company, we’ve just officially launched our Fair Game project – a series of promotional ads for Fair Trade made using machinima. Go watch them all at the Fair Game website – and if you like it, digg us.
Posted by johnnie
I haven’t blogged about machinima for a while. Sorry about that. It’s because I’m mainly blogging my machinima stuff over at www.bloodspell.com, or www.machinimafordummies.com. It’s also because I’m crazy busy at the moment, so I haven’t had the time to watch much machinima recently.
Anyway, I’ve just seen a superb machinima music video. Now, you know how I feel about machinima music videos in general. I think they’re a curse on humankind which should be stopped at all costs. Every so often, though, I come across a music video that’s actually good. This is one. Great geek song, very funny video. Frank Delario and the rest of the ILL Clan team have achieved a minor miracle here – they’ve made The Movies look good. There’s some pretty clever stuff going on here – much of the video uses the dull and derivative Movies default scenes, but the addition of a bipedal chimp (just watch the damn movie) changes it all around.
I love this movie. It’s made it onto my list of “Machinima Movies that I show anybody who asks me what machinima is”. It’s also on my list of “things to email to all my geeky friends”.
Posted by johnnie
How cool is that? Irritatingly, Amazon Canada has the book listed too, but with some really horribly out-of-date information. Memo to self: fix that, before somebody makes me write a book about Half-Life 2.
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