Second Life Machinima making strides

During last year's State of Play conference, I had the chance to catch up with Linden Lab CEO Philip Rosedale. We spoke a bit about the things we were focused on, and at one point Philip asked a very straight-forward question about Machinima and Second Life - specifically, why isn't more Machinima being made in Second Life? My reply was a bit simplistic, if not blunt; for the beginning machinimator, there wasn't enough incentive. Off-the-shelf games are built from the world up. Thus, a machinimator will have lots of context to start with, and that breeds ideas. On the other hand, Second Life requires the users to bring the world to it, and thus that context requires more effort (as well as the seeds for those ideas).















Since that conversation, Second Life (SL, hereafter) has matured quite a bit and is slowly providing that missing incentive I spoke of (this became much clearer to me during last month's Future Salon: Machinima). I believe this is in part due to SL advancing into extremely active virtual space (previously just an active virtual space) with a bustling economy, which means a machinimator can either buy or build assets for his/her work. Add to this, that Linden Lab allows the end user to retain the IP right of works created with and within SL and the deal is sweetened even more.

Of course, all this talk of Machinima possibilities would fall flat if there weren't great examples to show off what can be done.

My first experience with SL-made Machinima was early last year with Brad Henderson's (aka Pierce Portocarrero) Machinima work. Brad's pieces include Bloody Mary and the soon-to-be-released Machinima/RL documentary, Ideal World. His work has a very professional polish - anyone who has seen the Ideal World trailer and knows a thing or two about traditional Machinima production methods would probably come away as I did - very impressed. Pierce continues to push the Machinima envelope in SL, stay tuned to his site as he posts more.

My next experience with SL Machinima was Eric Call's showcase work(aka Eric Linden) Silver Bells and Golden Spurs. An extremely ambitious project supported by Linden Lab themselves, I had the pleasure of meeting Eric at the Machinima Film Festival last year, where he presented his up-to-the-minute work on the film (Linden Lab was also a sponsor at last years fest). While I didn't have a chance to sit in on his presentation, I did manage to catch up with Eric during a visit to Linden Lab late last year, There, Eric described the production process behind his film (documented here)--how he developed the characters, how extras were recruited from the SL community, and set designers were hired from in-world as well. It was pretty fascinating for my ears, and yet one more example of how close Machinima can be to real-world filmmaking--both in production and its collaborative process. Eric finally completed the work in February, and has developed one of SL's finest Machinima works. Silver Bells went on to a screening at South-by-Southwest this past March, a great place to showcase all the hard work put into this prodution.

Another person's work who I recently came across is an artist by the name of Robbie Wright (aka Robbie Dingo). Wright speaks of how he's new to Machinima, but his out-of-the-gate piece, "Better Life," has become one of my favorite Machinima music videos, SL or otherwise. Wright used music by Angry Man, a band he has a close relationship - once again, showing how Machinima can benefit both lesser-known artists (though the band has a logo that is eerily close to the SL logo). Wright continued to build upon this portfolio with another simple, yet moving work called "Stage," which recently took the Best Film award at the June Take5 Festival in SL. Robbie has also gone the extra step and documented some of his production techniques on his blog (there's several postings regarding this - page through them on the right).

Beyond the Machinima works themselves, support for SL Machinima is expanding as well. One group who's helping to facilitate this is Alt-Zoom Studios. Alt-Zoom is the work of the tireless volunteers BuhBuhCuh Fairchild (real name unknown) and Sasha Rudie (Moo Money) - both people who not only produce machinima of their own (BuhBuhCuh was the cameraperson for Silver Bells and Sasha is a beginning machinimator mixing Machinima with vlogging), but also promote Machinima in world through monthly classes, as well as their monthly fest, Take5.

In less than a year's time, Second Life is showing that it offers quite a bit for the Machinima community. The visuals might not hold up to the latest game engines, and issues with server lag and framerate still factor in quite significantly, but as a few artists have already shown, much is possible for those with the ideas and initiative.

Machinima in the Crosshairs

Hot on the heels of my posting some positive Machinima events, comes that not-so-comfortable feeling.

I just completed watching an ABC Nightline segment on the machinima titled "Sonic Jihad", created using Battlefield 2 by a filmmaker named Samir. It's mostly gameplay footage, and the film starts with soundbites lifted from Team America: World Police - the Trey Parker/Matt Stone puppet-fest (specifically from Middle Eastern character who speaks of why he became involved in the war).

Sonic Jihad isn't the most compelling of Machinima works, but here it gets star treatment because of the focus given to it last month by the House Intelligence Committee, where the machinima was held up by "experts" as propaganda and recruiting material for terrorists. The great blog, Game Politics, gives the whole scenario a thorough once-over. The sum of this silliness is that the machinima itself was labeled an advertisement for a Jihad-friendly video game - which, of course, doesn't exist.

The film is an interesting cousin to Alex Chan's The French Democracy, with much less of a message. However, given the flavor of the game and its content, this machinima comes under extreme scrutiny - particularly at a time when video games are already a polarizing subject matter in political circles. My personal concern is the possible ripple effect these actions can have. Just as Hot Coffee was initially targeted as flaws of the mod community, Sonic Jihad can be held up as yet another scapegoat, and possibly impact how Machinima is viewed by publishers and developers overall.

Thankfully, the ABC piece is a bit of fresh air in the current reporting climate. In fact, they interview Georgia Tech's Ian Bogost - of who I'm a big fan - to get the skinny on what the House was looking at. He tells them straight up that Sonic Jihad is just a film posted by a player of the game - but not the Jihadistic material as it was labeled. Additional kudos to ABC reporter Jake Tapper, who takes Pentagon official Dan Devlin to the mat for misleading the House on what was posted.

Is the Internet being used to express anti-American sentiments? Sure. Can Machinima be used for unfavorable purposes? Absolutely. But saying American made games, their associated mods and Machinima are the vehicles for these messages is a bit of stretch - at least in this instance.

More importantly, the House should look to more savvy experts on how to qualify when and where the net is being exploited for hostilities to the US and its allies. That's the real moral to this story.

Now, excuse me while I jump into a quick game of America's Army.

Propping up some successes

For those of you of are not steeped in the Machinima day-to-day, some recent controversies have stirred the coals within a small section of the community, which is both a bit uncomfortable yet to be expected. Ken Thain's always great 3DFilmmaker.com blog, details out some recent points of contention and gives them a proper overview. Kudos to Ken for doing this. It is unfortunate that communities don't always play nice. But that's opinion for ya - and life wouldn't be exciting without it.

In any case, I chose to focus this post on some of the current successes of Machinima. This isn't to turn away from the aforementioned controversies - more to balance out some of that discussion with some positive events.

So, without further adieu (and in no particular order):

1. Return
The team of Terran Gregory and Ezra Ferguson surprised the Machinima community last year with their late-in-the-running WoW prologue, Return. The film showcased epic storytelling, post production polish and fine voice acting - moving on to win last year's Best Off-the-Shelf Machinima Award. They recently released a trailer for their upcoming "Return: Episode 2" showing off once again the team's superb production values. They also announced last month that they were working with Xfire (now an MTV company) to produce work around this year's E3.

2. Deviation
One of the biggest coups this year has been the inclusion of the Counterstike-based Machinima, Deviation, into a world-respected event, the Tribeca Film Festival. The film directed by Jon Griggs asks a politically charged question in "who's guiding whom?" and resonated strongly with fest jurors. A tip of the hat to Jon for getting his work in such a prestigious event and making his own mark in the Machinima timeline.

3. Red vs. Blue
While RvB might not be everyone's cup of tea, there's no doubt that the Rooster Teeth series has probably put the word "machinima" into the vocabulary of more people than any other series to date. Having recently completed Season 4(!) of Red vs. Blue, Rooster Teeth just announced an RvB mini-series, Out of Sight, being produced exclusively for XBox Live Marketplace. Rooster Teeth continues to push the commercial envelope for Machinima, showing how it can be beneficial to developers, publishers and audience alike. Red vs. Blue was also highlighted recently in Wikipedia's Featured Article of the Day - another feather in the cap of the Austin-based Machinima team (disclosure: this author works with RT on a variety of projects).

4. Bloodspell
Having yielded the reins of Machinima.com to others, Hugh Hancock has pulled his director's cap firmly on and is now focused on his grand vision of Joss Whedon-proportions - Bloodspell - "the largest Machinima production ever created!" While I have issues with hyping the work as such, there's no question that Bloodspell is ambitious and has its strengths in concept and storytelling. It's also released under Creative Commons, which is something I hope more artists/teams embrace. BloodSpell will be delivered in episodic chunks (a very common format these days), but we are promised a feature-length Machinima piece at the very end of its production. BS might not fit to everyone's liking, but there's little doubt that Hugh Hancock and co. are developing an epic - and on their own terms.

5. Tra5h Ta1k live at UCB
The ILL Clan is one of the oldest Machinima teams, and a pioneer in terms of both Machinima production and live performance. They've recently been producing Tra5h Ta1k (Trash Talk for the l33t-speak adverse), a Machinima series that mixes both gaming news and the mishaps of host ILL Will. While the show got off to a rocky start, The ILL Clan has seemed to find its groove, with the past few episodes striking a balance of both pace and punch. The team has also just announced a live performance of Tra5h Ta1k, taking place at Upright Citizens Brigade Theater on June 29th. A showcase for leading improv talent, the mix of UCB and the ILL Clan is another watermark for the medium. (yet one more disclosure: I co-founded the ILL Clan and help them from time-to-time.)

6. Joe Falcione/Reliant Films
Joe's story is one I'm extremely fond of. I had the pleasure of meeting Joe at the 2003 Machinima Film Festival, where his film, The Outcome, had taken the Best Editing Mackie for that year. Joe continued his work, submitting his Battlefield 2 epic, The Objective, at the 2005 Machinima Festival. While the Machinima did not go on to win any awards that year, it did gain significant attention of the judging committee. More importantly, it gained the attention of EA/Dice. As a result, Joe was contracted to produce the trailer for the BF2 Expansion Pack, Armored Fury. Way back in 2002 when we first organized the AMAS and the festival, one of our hopes was that the fest would be a showcase for up-and-coming talent; giving opportunities for the filmmakers to apply their craft not only for personal growth but also for professional. I don't know all the small details behind Joe's tale, but he's become a shining example of how Machinima talent will find its audience and opportunities. (Nope, no disclosure here.)

7. Ken Thain
Ken is definitively one of the "old hands" at Machinima, with his Q2-based piece, Rebel vs. Thug, being the first Machinima music video tied to a mainstream artist (Fine Arts Militia, of which Chuck D was the producer). Ken has continued to produced excellent work, particularly the UT2004-based sci-fi drama, The Everseason. Last year, Ken was snapped up by lead game developer Bioware to help produce cinematics (aka Machinima) for the new UE3-based title, Mass Effect. Ken's story is one more Machinima artist finding a place (and a paid one at that) to continue doing what they love to do.

There are more signs of Machinima's maturation and wide acceptance - Boing Boing's posting of An Unfair War by Thuyen Nguyen, the inclusion of Machinima at several festivals throughout the world, etc. The point is we're seeing more and more of these events and the momentum seems to be gaining speed. I have no doubt that there will be a part 2 to this posting in the near future (keep your eye on folks like Friedrich Kirschner, Jonathan Perry and Nathan Moller).

Back-patting aside, it's very important to note not only our differences of opinions but also how far we've come. What was once a way to record deathmatch, is now a platform for creative expression, live performance and commercial opportunity. How about them apples?!

Psst! Skip on the viral promotion! Pass it on....

A couple of days ago, a Reuters story surfaced about how the RIAA is less-than-thrilled with viral distribution of music videos - particularly with the all-you-can-eat buffets of YouTube and others. Once solely a promotional tool, music videos have recently been offered for purchase, and (according to the article) have accounted for $3.7 million in 3 months of sales alone. Thus, the RIAA is looking plug up any holes of potentially lost revenue and direct users seeking these works to the label-backed services such as iTunes, Google Video, Urge, etc.

While you could weigh in on either side of this argument, my fear is how this will affect Machinima works (as well as AMVs and other home-brewed creativity) in the future. One of the great uses of Machinima is being able to create music videos - to be so moved by a piece of music, that you feel inspired to put your own vision to it. Just as the majority of narrative Machinimas are homages to the games by which they're developed from, these works show a deep appreciation to the artists who create the music (yes, even the aforementioned WoW/Guild Wars/"Can't Touch This" vid).

Soon enough, YouTube and others will have (if they don't already), a "copyright task force" monitoring their systems for any content seemingly unlicensed. This will most likely be partnered with stronger messaging at the POT (point of transfer). Right now, a Machinimist can upload their music video work without fear of takedown (for the most part) - however, once these services have stemmed the tide of unauthorized uploads of music videos, there's no doubt they will shift their focus to the "unofficial" videos - the ones the fans are producing to show off their work combined with their favorite music. Surely, these can only be good for the recording industry. In fact, I know first hand that it has a positive effect--quite a few emails have been sent to me by people who were introduced to Breaking Benjamin through my Still Seeing Breen vid, who in turn, purchased the artist's CD. But given the RIAA's "no comment" to Cory Doctorow's inquiry surrounding RPGFilms.net last year, it's only a matter of time before they disrupt these new "word-of-mouse" channels themselves.

To end on a somewhat up note - here's two CC-linked music videos: Code Monkey by Jonathan Coulton - a Machinima music video made by Frank Dellario of the ILL Clan, and a real fave band of mine, Pearl Jam's "Life Wasted" music vid, released under the CC Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 license.