End of Year
Thoughts - Machinima 2012, Part II
Her holiday video is one of the little girl's favorites, and this amazingly often unorthodox filmmaker has just completed another episode. Her series is made short and sweet, approximately 90 seconds intentionally. It holds the attention of the child and conveys a short message. The holiday one is a bit nostalgic for parents/grandparents as well as for those of pre-machinima days. I would say that in this regard, machinima's audience might be thought as much broader than we realize (pending one's goals and aspirations) and not necessarily defined to hard-core guy game players. It is all how we approach the technology.
Timeless messages are not limited to
technology. As noted in my last blog, Celestial
Elf's version of "The Night Before Christmas" is inspired by legend and tradition. In her own way, Hypatia Pickens' "Wulf and Eadwacer" (see Part I) retold the mysteries of the ancients in a language presumed
dead. It was screened as a top film at the Machinima Expo 2012. This machinima seductress, a
renowned Medieval scholar and artist, challenges her technology.
Ideas never die - they become contextualized,
reimagined and remain connected to the human spirit. Technology is not core to the soul, and
should not be the goal of any filmmaker/storyteller. Machinima brings something unique to the
equation - it is accessible overall to many, and allows many more of us to be
filmmakers. It is more than recreating Hollywood,
Bollywood and a way to create cheap animation - it is a window into our
increasingly cyber personas projected
through a camera lens. Captured. Archived.
Remixed. Reimagined. Reinvented.
It is not the camera, but the person
behind that camera that matters. It is
not post production; it is the
posthumous message that one leaves as human legacy, fragmented or whole. One day, historians will review amateur and
semi-professional machinima to understand this time in which we live - one of
constant change and manipulation of image.
Truth is found somewhere between the frames. It gives voice to those not yet heard in
the larger film community, and to a generation who has shared its most precious
hours with technology. It is not the
bells and whistles, nor impressing us with your fancy equipment and expensive
programs. Wizards and magicians need
not apply. Move beyond painting with
machinima for the sake of pretty colors - and merely adding music as a filler
or soundtrack is a band-aid approach, although fun of course for those flightly
moments of fancy. "Killing
time" via "learning one's craft" becomes indeed a constructive
way to advance the field. Experimentation
is good for anyone's artistic soul. Alas
know that reliance on expertise with tools may construct artificial boundaries
to the message. Forget that some
filmmakers know more than you. Forget
that some say "machinima is dead;" ignore those who mock virtual
worlds as passing fads. They set limitations based on what they see
now. 
Why so many rules for machinima? Tell the story the best way possible - if
that is machinima on whatever platform, so be it. If you add a few spices via post, that's okay
too. Second Life and future worlds to come offer
accessible sites for cinematic experimentation, not necessarily exclusivity to
any tool or genre - exploration as
creators to new film frontiers bring forth vision yet as makers our ideas should
be steeped in understanding humanity via history and cinematic projection. It's not about keeping up with
technology. A good story will find its
audience. It might be a page of a diary
or a few lines scribbled on a paper. You
can bet it will be transformed in various ways through time. It will be remade over and over, and
sometimes for better or not.
This holiday focus on life, not on
technology. And the story will find
you. All I want for Christmas is a good story to
share with you all! - and for Hanukkah
(December 8-16th), I hope you received an idea for an eight-part webisode. Of course, I am still holding out for a new
computer from Santa, but it would be wasted without good ideas. Not to say, I don't like to just play. Play is a power means to creativity. If you spend as much time in your game
platform as I do in mine, surely your surroundings will inform you. Machinima is simply a means toward sharing
those stories that spring up as you experience life in a game, a virtual environment,
and/or what's around you daily.
Consider anything you do as life experience. There is no pause button in life. If you
spend time in the virtual, it is real time. You cannot push a button, and get an
idea. If you do, it will be based on
something that you have learned from that action. Game time is real time. Watching a movie or
machinima, as well as making one, is time spent.
I have to laugh when I remember Bill
Murray in the movie Scrooged (1988). Watch it if you haven't already. The art of good storytelling is not dead, neither is machinima a technology of a
by-gone era. It is a choice. It is available to many of us, who will never
visit Hollywood, let alone work there or any other major animation studio. Create your own path, your own production
company, or just make your three-year old daughter or cousin the audience or
the producer. When did machinima get
so confined, confounded and complicated?
It doesn't have to be created for a contest or public exhibition. It might be a way to connect a community. Some
of the best productions are accidental - ideas birthed from people having a
good time together across the world online.
A good mentor will lead you to your dream, not to his or hers. I am
also pleased to see people across the film community coming together - Chantal
Harvey and Tony Dyson have launched Scissores Productions; they have so many
ideas and projects that will definitely come to fruition. Watch out for them. And of course, Pooky Amsterdam was instrumental
in the success of Machinima Expo, and her company continues to make huge
strides in the machinima community, and beyond. Many machinimatographers are noteworthy of
mention, and I wish I could name them all.
Go ahead and play this holiday. Give yourself the gift of machinima, and
watch it with your family, best friend, or lap dog. Be a fan of your own fiction. Because it is possible!
My
Personal Special Thanks for 2012
Special thanks personally for a
wonderful year from the machinima community.
So many things happened this year
for me and Lowe Runo Productions.
Retropolitan Magazines's launch of our series The Steampunk Adventures of Bel & Soni that began in February 2012 will continue to run in the coming year. The ultimate goal is a book-length project that could serve as a Web series as well. Even if nothing comes of it, it is a blast to work with virtual imagery and SL characters (especially when they are not alts). The story begins with the Steampunk lasses as youth, and this year brings them to adulthood as explorers, inventors, and transcendentalists, you might say. A quick book teaser via machinima was created to promote the magazine series. Increasingly, we are seeing books being promoted in similar ways. So why not magazine features, we say? Thanks to Belinda Barnes-Fitzroy and Lowe Runo Productions for their assistance on this on-going project. Thanks Retropolitan's Phideaux Mayo and Echo Underwood for supporting our work in your online and inworld magazine!
Our book release in March of Machinima: The Art & Practice of Virtual Filmmaking, along with our presentation at the Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education (VWBPE) conference that same month was nonetheless extremely exciting for Lowe Runo Productions. We wanted a book to introduce would-be virtual filmmakers to machinima, as well as to help others improve upon their skills. It was the ultimate way to mentor those wanting to know more about the art and practice of machinima. You cannot imagine how many questions Lowe has fielded through the years, and this seemed one solution, aside from creating the Machinima Artist Guild (founded in 2008, now boasting over 700 members and a talented team of staff and reviewers that offer guidance on a daily basis).
Our "Machinima" book and MAG was designed to be friendly to the many "women" voices now present in machinima production. Moreover, women have a lead role at Lowe Runo Productions. Our goal was to affirm a larger community of media makers, including those working with machinima as an option outside of game capture.
The May book party at Asil Ares' NeoVictoria SkyClub, with Gabrielle Riel as DJ, was pleasantly memorable. Ms. Riel interviewed us during the book party, and it is archived here. I would like to thank all the contributors of our book project, those answering our open call to share thoughts. Of course, no book can possibly mention all of the great filmmakers. None before us, and none after us. All we can do is try to be representative of the community. My apologies if you felt left out, or one of your favorite producers was not included in our book. It pangs me when I hear about another person that might have been added to the mix. My publisher was growing weary already of our additions.
It's been a wonderful Second Life - that
is my base of operation. I am pleased
to be part of the machinima community as an educator, author and journalist -
and semi-professional machinimist. Once
again, this Spring I am teaching my Virtual Worlds semester class inside Second
Life at Lowe Runo Productions. Students
will be introduced to a variety of artistic ventures inworld. This summer, my Machinima course co-taught
with Lowe, was a success, and the students were allowed to use any
platform. Here's some of their work. The YT site is called Magnum Machinima.
One of those enrolled had started a
student MAG chapter on my campus, and wants to connect in January to students
interested in machinima across the world.
If you are interested in involving a campus, or know of some students
that would like to work with us, let us now.
At our university, machinima is part of the larger gaming society, but it
seems to get lost there. The challenge
is to see if student chapters will connect a new generation of filmmakers across
the world.
I can hardly wait to see what's head. New toys and wizardry to come in 2013
for virtual life and some of that will impact the virtual filmmaker. Much success to all - and to all a good
night! And Mr. Runo and Belinda, and all
of MAG & Machinima Expo - thanks for a great year and an amazing future around the corner!
And thanks to Celestial for the Happy Dance to close the year! See you here in February 2013. - Season Greetings, Soni!
Interview. w/Gabrielle Riel. Internet Archive. Accessed, http://archive.org/details/Machinima-TheArtAndPracticeOfVirtualFilmmaking-RadioRielInterview
Interview. w/Ricky Grove & Kate Fosk. Podcast, August 5, 2012. Accessed, http://soundcloud.com/rgrove-1/machinima-expocast-7-special
Machinima Expo Programming. Available at Livestream.com. Accessed, http://www.livestream.com/themachinimaexpo/video?clipId=flv_802b522e-fb47-46d3-9c59-8360cc1e4fbb&utm_source=lslibrary&utm_medium=ui-thumb
Navarathna, Tutsy. (2011, April 28). Journey into the Metaverse. Pondicherry, India: Navarathna Productions. Accessed November 20, 2012, http://vimeo.com/23139995
Sound & Music Panel. Machinima Expo V. Available at Livestream.com. Accessed,
http://www.livestream.com/themachinimaexpo/video?clipId=pla_65f13e20-9680-4375-9dff-99c2bc9052cc&utm_source=lslibrary&utm_medium=ui-thumb
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The Professional Machinima Artist Guild and Lowe Runo Productions graciously host Magnum: The Machinima Review. Sonicity Fitzroy, author of Second Life, Media and the Other Society (Peter Lang, 2010) and Machinima: The Art and Practice of Virtual Filmmaking (with Lowe Runo, McFarland, 2012). Amazon.com. See, author's page: http://www.amazon.com/Phylis-Johnson/e/B001HOW4U2/ref=sr_tc_2_0?qid=1354606175&sr=1-2-ent
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