MaFestiChinimaVal

When they say "Jump the Gun", I say, "How high, Sir!"

2009-07-31T05:44:00.000-07:00

In a previous post, I prematurely enthused about the 2009 Machinima Film Festival getting the green light. At the time, even though I had jumped the gun, there was still a lot confidence that there would be a fest.

Now that confidence is gone, and to the best of my knowledge, there will be no film fest this year. I fervently hope that history will repeat itself and I will be once again caught jumping the gun - that someone will see this and say, "No you doof, there will be a fest this year!"

If you're reading this, you probably have at least a passing interest in the Machinima Film Festival, so you should know that as a volunteer organizer, I am only tangentially connected to this decision. I'm not a member of the AMAS board, and the decision rests with it.

Am I sad and disappointed that there won't be a fest? Very much so. But I also know first hand how much time, effort, and above all, money even a modest film fest like ours requires. I don't doubt that the current economic climate has dampened considerably the prospects for corporate sponsorship of the event. I also know that the organizers have to pay the rent, feed their kids, and worry about their careers at the same time. So I understand the challenges the Festival faces, and recognize the near-impossibility of holding it this year.

It's just me, but I can't quite accept that its completely impossible, though, and that little nugget of hope is the knife that twists in the wound.

But soft, what light through yonder window breaks?

2009-07-23T19:09:00.000-07:00

Stay tuned, people. The engine is ticking over, but will it catch? Hopefully, there'll be news to share soon. Action is afoot and discussions are underway.

Faster than a speeding Bullet

2008-11-24T20:09:00.000-08:00

Hey Quickdraw, I think we are in trouble!

So I posted an entry about plans for a Festival in 2009. Prematurely, it turned out. So I deleted it. But not before it had attracted some comments (more than most of my blogosphere output!), and even some referrals and links (see Overman's blog). And of course, the rest of the committee gave me a virtual smack upside the head, since I should have known there's no point in shutting the barn door when the horse has already left.

So I'll just reiterate the important point from my last post - the organizing committee is committed to putting on a festival in 2009. Where and when are not clear at this moment, but if its up to us (and it is), there will be an MFF'09!

And let that be a lesson to me: things move fast on this-here internet-whatamacallit.

(Maybe I'm quoting the wrong HB 'toon?)

MF09, hopefully!

2008-11-24T17:09:00.001-08:00

Sorry folks, it seems I jumped the gun with my previous post (now deleted). The organizing committee is as committed as ever to a festival in 2009. However, some of the particulars which I rashly assumed were in place already are not so assured. So stay tuned!

In any case, we remain as in need of help as before, so do consider volunteering!

Three Laptops and Coffee

2008-07-07T21:45:00.000-07:00

What does it take to organize a film festival in 2008? Three laptops and coffee, that's what. Had another meeting of the organizing committee this weekend. (BTW, The best excuse for being 15 minutes late is being the first one there! Everybody else was AT LEAST an hour late.)

But back to organizing the festival: After FK bought the rest of us coffee to apologize for being late, we got to work. In other words, we each whipped out our laptops. We'd already made the main decisions regarding the festival's categories for this year, as well as agreeing to have a "soft-launch" this week, so there wasn't much decision-making needed by the time we actually started working. Mainly we got busy updating the festival wiki and setting up an email list for the committee.

You'd think that would be a fairly trivial endeavour in 2008. After all, email is older by far than even the Web. And therein lies the problem. Everyone has so many eddresses these days, and their various email clients are used to access so many accounts using a panoply of return-addresses that locking in an email list with one canonical eddress per person actually took a fair amount of time!

Back to the soft-launch: this means that the festival is not actually accepting submissions yet. Instead, we are officially announcing the festival and more importantly the categories for which awards will be given. (The submissions period is tentatively set to begin Aug. 1.) In the meantime we continue to prepare the infrastructure to handle all the submissions - we had over 130 last year - invite jury members, plan publicity for the fest, and so on.

Progress!

2008-06-28T14:11:00.000-07:00

The game's afoot, folks! We're getting ready to open the festival for submissions. There's going to be a few tweeks to the categories. And we have our first volunteer (of many, hopefully)! Welcome aboard, Lenny!

So much for history, on with the present

2008-06-26T15:32:00.000-07:00

There's good reason to be excited about this year's Machinima Festival:
Halo3, Mass Effect, Blizzard's machinima-friendly EULA, a SecondLife documentary feature on HBO, and on and on. So I for one am excited to see what people will come up with.

Last time we had over 130 submissions. Whew! that was a lot to go through. No easy task, let me tell you. All the same, there were complaints about the nominees' selection. Well, here's your chance to make a difference. If you're not submitting a film to this year's festival, why not volunteer? We can use all the help we can get!

The big disappointment for me on a personal level is that I've yet to produce a machinima film. I mean, that's just embarrassing. In my defence, I do have to pay the rent, and I have to keep up to date on a bunch of other stuff professionally, so there's not a lot of time to spend figuring out how to machinimake. Excuses, excuses, you say, and you're right.

Well, now I'm in a bind, because I can't submit a film and be involved in the nomination process in any way, shape, or form. And I mentioned that we need all the help we can get? So it would be irresponsible of me to disqualify myself and leave more work for the rest.

BUT! I have a compromise. My goal is to make some promo pieces for the fest that won't be submitted for consideration. Hah! just when you thought I'd found another excuse!

So that's the plan. The next step will be to write some scripts. Then to figure out if I can do it on my mac. (I have no pc. Anybody want to make a donation to the AMAS academy of an old gaming rig?) For that matter, anybody want to help?

Countdown to the 2008 Machinima Fest Begins!

2008-06-25T11:28:00.000-07:00

2006 was my first time participating in the Machinima Film Festival. I volunteered to help organize it. I had been to the 2005 fest and was blown away. I had only just found out about Machinima and read Paul Marino's awesome book, and it was a great event. In the months that followed I heard about 5M - an ecclectic group of NYC based Machinimists - and it was hanging out with them that I got to know Mr Marino himself.

Naturally thoughts turned to the next fest, and I found myself thinking about all the things I would have liked to see at the fest. So what else to do but put my money where my mouth was and sign up as a volunteer? Well, it turned out to be a huge amount of work. A real time sink.

But I loved every minute of it. I was really sad when there wasn't a 2007 fest. (People have lives you know!)

So here we are in 2008 and gearing up for new fest. Lots has happened in the two years. A lot of the familiar faces are still around. Paul is no longer in NYC, but hey, that's what Skype's for! And Asaf, who was such a titan in 2006 and really made such a huge contribution to its success, far beyond the call of duty, is now in Texas. There wouldn't have been much of a fest without him two years ago.

But luckily, this year Friedrich Kirschner, legendary mad scientist and machinimist extraordinaire, is jumping in with both feet. Thanks to his involvement Eyebeam has agreed to serve as the venue. What a great fit! Its a great space with a really exciting, creative vibe.

So this blog will be a place for my random musings on the long and winding road to the Machinima Film Festival 2008! Stay tuned!