Machinima Festival 2Thousand5

I went to check out the festival since I was relatively free that Saturday. (More on this later post.) It was a crisp, autumn afternoon as I ventured out to Museum of the Moving Image at Queens. I haven't had the chance to check out the museum itself, so it was an ideal situation, say the least.

It was a small museum as I expected and two friendly reception ladies for the festival promptly greeted me. They gave me a nice booklet and all, but unfortunately, they told me tickets are sold out. They were only holding tickets from Internet preorders. Bummer! I really wanted to see & hear what the Valve representative had to say about their tools to produce machinima, but I guess I would have to learn by trials and errors and reading all I can at their wiki site.

I didn't really care for missing out on the machinima shows themselves because they are pretty much available on the web. It's their only 2nd festival, hence there are ample room to grow along with this perculiar medium grows in its awareness.

On the related subject, the Movies, the game that allows you to be a movie studio mogul/director/actor/writer/etc to produce any movie that strikes your fancy is out and already showcasing some movies that people made with the game. (The game that makes movies, instead of otherway around, the circle is complete.) I saw couple of clips and I see some exciting potentials with the expressiveness of the game characters and the game engine. However, I'm hearing that Lionhead Studio is claiming all the copyrights for the movies made with their game. It is a gray area to begin with since many machinima makers are hard pressed to make their own digital assets that they mostly use in-game assets. However this case sets up serious precedent that may hinder more serious machinima productions for the game, unlikes the Sims 2, where it already claimed Rooster Teeth Production producing quality machinima episodes. Regardless of rising awareness of machinima, Lionhead Studio doesn't seem to view the Movie game beyond the scope of gaming, unlike the Sims with its rich narrative potential.

So where does that leave me today? Judging by this year's entries, the medium has a long way to go even though they are extensively used in nearly all commercial games. The entries are frought with many mistakes like any other students/independent films. I come to view it as more of a tool to tell some exciting stories than brand new medium. Machinima as a medium is shaky, but it's an effective tool for storytelling and pre-viz nonetheless for right creative people.