Shady

I've just attended the in-world memorial service for Shady Fox.

Since his passing a little over a week ago - caused by cancer, diagnosed just last October - I've really wanted to write something about Shady; about his impact on Raglan Shire and its development from its inception, his stature within the Shire community and, on a more personal level, what his friendship and support meant to me - but I've found it almost-maddeningly impossible. Not because I've been racked with grief about his sudden death but because to summarise even parts of his 10+ year odyssey in Second Life in a single blog post (or even several) is virtually impossible. He was known by so many communities across the grid, had touched so many lives in such unique ways and had brought joy to so many more that to try and capture even an essence of what Shady Fox was about would be a disservice to him and would undervalue his real worth.

The only thing I can categorically say - and which was quoted by Raglan magistrate Zayn Till in his memorial speech - was this: whatever he became involved in, Shady Fox was the cherry on top of the cake; he was that one ingredient that made something already rather good so much better.

And with him gone, I fear that nothing will ever quite be as good again.

Rest in peace my friend. I, like so many others, will miss you forever.


A machinima video I made in an afternoon after having spent just a couple of hours with Shady

The Raglan Shake

So my good pal Pyewacket and I filmed this yesterday...



Fun times!

Piece of Pye

So August's Month of Machinima entries have been posted; I entered (again) but wasn't accepted (again). Not quite sure what the criteria for inclusion is; maybe my movies just aren't up to scratch. Anyway, someone who was included was my good buddy Pyewacket, whose AM Radio film made the final eleven! Check it out.

Spaceship Spotting

Someone filmed Linden Lab CEO Rod Humble - aka Rod Linden - when he jetted into SL8B around the time that Songbird was preparing to go on stage. See if you can spot anyone hanging around, staring at him...

Forever Unknowable

The sim of Unknowable is still out there on the Grid, but the Alien Isle that it once was is no more.



As I mentioned a couple of weeks back, Judi, Lorin, Madcow et al can no longer afford to maintain the Isle so I decided I'd try and make a machinima-postcard whilst I still had the time. It's not my most advanced work - I only filmed for about 20 minutes to get a dozen or so shots. The soundtrack is probably more advanced than the filming process; here I used twelve different sound samples overlaid with each other to give the score a slightly ethereal alien sound. I hope the AI crew like it; it's difficult to capture the majesty and the detail of such a sim, but then that was (and still is) part of the fun of exploring - these experiences are unique to everyone and we all see or discover different things.

Bye Alien Isles. I'll miss visiting you but I'm pleased that I did and that I filmed you.

Popcorn Art

I've been involved in not one, but TWO SL8B plots this year. I took the reins for building not only the Shire plot, but also got to build a plot with my pal Pyewacket to promote our Virtual Popcorn blog!

For me, tinydom is one of the most magical things I get to see in SL each day; the idea that these biped critters can make all these wonderful things and reside in a landscape of pure whimsy is something that never fails to raise a smile and I love the reaction that my tiny movies have especially to non-tiny residents. So it's this route that Pye and I have chosen to go down: showing off how much fun the magic of tinydom in SL is, rather than what we have set out to do with our blog, trying to bring some of the less-seen machinima to the masses (all six followers so far!).

I have a problem with plots with buildings on them; I'm not for a moment suggesting it's wrong, but for me, walls suggest 'KEEP OUT' rather than 'Come In', so I decided the best way to showcase them in this kind of set-up was to build a drive-in cinema, rather than a walled theatre. We've got a big movie screen set up at one end and several amazing 1-prim 'Toadsters' (named by and after their creator Toady Nakamura of Grendel's Children) parked up in front of it. The cars mostly accommodate tinies, but there is a car for the longer-legged resident to sit in. Pye has compiled a playlist of about 20 tiny machinima films that a viewer can sit and watch and hopefully see the magical lives we see every day!

Mrs. Bones: The Raglan Film Fest 2011

Mrs. Bones: The Raglan Film Fest 2011, originally uploaded by Mrs. Bones.

A wonderful little montage of shots filmed at the Raglan Film Festival by The Bones!

And Cut!

I hosted our second Raglan Film Festival last night! We had 10 new tiny-centric machinima on show, and with over 40 tinies in attendance, it was another typically raucous occasion! You can see the films in question in this thread at the Raglan Shire forums.

Unlike most other machinima events, the RFF is more of a celebration of tinydom and the fun of the community than a contest between film-makers. In fact, my real motivation behind it is to show others how achievable it is to make machinima, in the hope that others give it a go.

The only real criteria for film-makers is that their film must include at least one tiny but because of the lack of limitations, it means that we always end up with a real mixed bag of film styles and lengths. Some people prefer to have hordes of extras in their films whilst others prefer to have just themselves or perhaps one or two others. Because of Raglan’s constantly changing environment with each new event, costumes and sets are virtually built for a film-maker to just grab a camera application and shoot!

It was a shame that there was no real support from the wider machinima community though. I’d been given – and utilised - a number of platforms to promote the event and I’d given away notecards to dozens of people, but even those most enthusiastic about it initially didn’t even find the time to show up for the event, let alone film anything. That’s fine; their loss, in my opinion. However, there was one person in attendance who’s been to a number of machinima events and festivals and was kind enough to tell me that they thought that the RFF was one of the best they’d been to. I put that down less to my hosting and organising skills and more to the audience, for whom the night was really for. In any walk of life, over time you can become complacent to the wonder and the joy of what’s immediately in front of you; sometimes putting it on film makes you see it from a different perspective and reminds you how awesome a community you inhabit!

MoMmy

Here's an interesting post - not by me, I hasten to add, but some thoughts from Soror Nishi: An Unexpected Alliance at LEA Opening.

As for me, I attended the opening night of the inaugural Month of Machinima yesterday too. I'm disappointed in myself that I didn't consider entering anything, but so pleased that Daveypup Nirpaw got his Karma Kong on the shortlist!

It's nice to see my favourite creative medium getting some long overdue exposure and recognition. But it's an interesting question: who exactly does this benefit? The Lab? Almost certainly, when used correctly; they have no direct input in any of the films, either creatively or financially, yet will take the credit for allowing the films to have happened. But is that so bad or unheard of?

Consider this: Pirates of The Caribbean - Disney film, Johnny Depp film or Gore Verbinski film? Well, actually all three but you can almost guarantee that if you ask Joe Ordinary, he'll probably tell you it's a Disney film. What input does Disney have in the finished product? Well, yes Hollywood is a different animal admittedly, but overall their input was probably minimal once the cameras started rolling. Their logo will still be all over the film, the posters and the press material, and they'll take the chunk of the money it brings in - so does that mean that the talent behind it suffers? Not at all. In this case, the Lab just acts as distributor to your film.

So consider the Lab as a film studio, and where does this leave the film-makers? Will they get any reward from this, either financially or artistically? This situation can be turned round by the machinimatographers themselves, as long as they're not putting their efforts into ranting about it. They can market themselves, exclusive of the Lab's efforts. The right thing for the Lab to do would be to not only give these film-makers a forum, but support these creators beyond that and make sure that if they (LL) are using residents' machinima as marketing material, that they will make sure that credit is given where it's due - and if that's a financial credit, and a creator earns from the work that they've created, the Lab should support that accordingly too; after all, they will ultimately benefit without taking a cut of any earnings but from the free exposure they're already taking. That will be the thing to watch, not picking apart someone's sentences.

Artists should use these opportunities to do just that. Use the stuff you create as a portfolio and use it to find other opportunities, if that's what you want; but don't try and tear it down just because you're not involved. At the end of the day, it'll be what you the creator puts into it that'll make it successful; a film studio (or in this case, the Lab) can dress up any old piece of junk and promote it, but an audience will still see it for what it's worth.

Poppin'!

Machinima is hard to make. Lots of people try it with varying degrees of success. Some those people get high praise for their work, but most don't.

So, in an effort to try and give some more people the much deserved recognition that I think they deserve, I've teamed with fellow tiny machinimatographer Pyewacket Bellman and started a sister blog to this one: Virtual Popcorn, the machinima review blog!

What gives us the right to put forward our reviews? Well, for one, we make machinima. We've gone through the whole process of casting, filming, editing, scoring, titling and uploading a number of films between us. Are they all the best you can get? In some opinions, yes; in others, not at all. Personally, I can look at every film I've done to date and pick faults with almost all of them. Sometimes you don't see these things until you're watching them as a neutral observer and that's what I hope we'll be here. We will criticise where we feel criticism is needed and we'll applaud where it's deserved.

I hope you'll follow that blog too and if you know of any Second Life-generated machinima that you feel deserves more exposure, do let us know!

Insilico

A beautifully atmospheric machinima capture of the quite wonderful INSILICO sim, by my pal and master machinimatographer Toxic Menges. Go visit it!

MoM's Day

Wow, this looks interesting - the Lab's Linden Endowment of the Arts (LEA) is starting a Month of Machinima event from next month (on my birthday, no less!) which could prove useful in encouraging people to try out the medium.

It's nice to see the Lab actually acknowledging machinima again. Back in the day there used to be a nice - albeit small - focus on it, before the website got its dreadful Big Spaceship-led overhaul, but since then, it's fallen by the wayside. There's been lots of discussion in the past as to why the Lab took its focus away from it, but due to the diligence and perseverance of some extremely talented in-world film-makers it's proven time and again to be an extremely successful tool for promoting Virtual Worlds. It'd be nice for those people to start getting some proper recognition from the Lab!

Tweet

Hip Hop Fox

A couple of years ago, I made a video for a medley of Parry Gripp tunes. One of the 'sequences' within that video was a spoof hip-hop sequence with Shady Fox, where he played the rapper part whilst three scantily clad young women danced behind him - pretty much like 95% of hip hop videos usually are, and I always wanted to expand on that idea.

So, this past weekend, I once again roped Shady in to film, alongside two scantily clad young women and a couple of guest stars. I filmed from two static camera positions, taking just under an hour to film it all and about 4-5 hours of editing work. This is the result.



Wyze Gicasso is an unsigned artist whose tracks I found when looking for some music to use. I didn't want to use an established artist as the video might've been muted by YouTube if there was any dispute. I did send Wyze a message asking him to take a look and if he didn't like it, I'd take it down; however, he replied saying that he liked it!

Tweet

An Otter Award Ceremony

Photo: Red carpet at Tiny Film Festival 2010 © Teal Freenote

This past weekend, I announced a date for our second ever Raglan Film Festival!

Last year, we had the Festival of tiny-oriented machinima just before the Oscars; this year however, I've been bogged down with dealing with an RL move of house, so couldn't commit to anything sooner until we really knew what was going on. However, I've now set a date for Sunday 12 June 2011!

More detailed information is on the Raglan Shire forum page here, but essentially, it's a festival (rather than a contest) to celebrate the joy of being a tiny in Second Life. Last year's event had about 10-15 films in total, a list of which is here and it was great to see how different people approached using different tiny avatars.

It's really open to anyone, and of any ability level. Toxic Menges gave me the chance to share some information about the event at this weeks' MachinimaMondays meeting, so hopefully we'll see some interest from machinimatographers from outside of the Shire too; and as an added bonus, EVERYONE who enters a film into this year's event will walk away with a Golden Otter prize as a reward!

Tweet

The Echelon SFX

I occasionally attend meetings of the group Machinima Mondays, a group started by two of my favourite machinimatographers, Toxic Menges and Chantal Harvey. The meetings are a chance for machinima film-makers to get together and share work, advice, solutions to problems and, if a Linden is there (as there was this past week), a chance to offer suggestions for a more-dedicated machinima viewer, or what elements would be useful to have in a viewer.

This week, I actually feel like I contributed something of use! I was able to share the link for my last piece of work (my Echelon Effect video) and talk about it. Some people asked whether I was using Space Navigator (a type of mouse) and had a really steady hand; however, I did explain how I'd done the single shot zoom effect using the SL viewer's Debug menu.

It was actually a tip I found from Torley Linden's video tutorials on YouTube - and if I could find the video again, I'd be posting a link to it now! Basically, what you do is change the time it takes for your camera view to switch back from a zoomed position or point back to its default position above an avatar's head.

To change the time, first you need to activate and open the Advanced menu on the viewer, by pressing Ctrl+Alt+D and then go down to Debug Settings; this opens the Debug dialog box.

In the command bar, you'll need to type zoomtime; this should then present you with a time option. By default, the setting will read 0.400 - that's the time it takes to go from a zoomed point back to default, less than half a second. For the video I shot, I knew the soundtrack ran to just under three minutes, so to give my video a bit of breathing room before the music started and just after it finished, I set my zoom time to 180.000 seconds. However, take note: before you change the zoom time, you should have already zoomed in on something (using, for Windows users at least, Alt + Left Mouse button), as if you then try and zoom after you've changed the zoom time, your new setting will already apply.

So, you've zoomed in on something and changed your zoom time? Now, to activate the zoom, I tend to use the Esc button. First, you'll need to click away from the Debug dialog box (as long as your zoom point is fixed using Alt+Left mouse button, it shouldn't be a problem); just left click on something nearby. Turn off all windows by pressing Ctrl+Alt+F1, and then hit the Esc button twice - the first hit will close your Local Chat bar, and the second will activate your zoom. If everything goes to plan, you should then have a slow zoom (depending on what time you changed the zoom to) neatly back to above your head. In the video I shot, I wanted the camera to come to a natural stop but obviously didn't want to include myself in the shot, so I triggered an animation that would hide my avatar underground, without changing my avatar position.

It was nice to hear several people had learned something new from my explaining this, and they vowed to then go and use the effect in their own projects. I use it almost all the time in mine; I think the results it creates make a really nice touch.

If you're interested in learning more about Machinima from the people who make it, join the group and come along to Machinima Mondays. The meetings are held - unsurprisingly - on a Monday at two different times to cover as many time-zones as possible. It's either a small (virtual) world, or I know a lot of talented people, because almost every week I meet another tiny at one of the meetings!

Tweet

Short And Sweet

I made a new machinima!

I needed to make something just to get me back into the creative flow of things; it's been a year since I did some machinima work, and although am not short of ideas, often find my ideas becoming so big and running away from me, that they become unmanageable, and I discard them. So I needed to change tact.

I got permission to use Flea Bussy and Toady Nakamura's amazing Avaria sims for filming, but didn't want to do anything too demanding. I just wanted to do something quick and easy, so found a good spot, ramped up the Draw Distance and Zoom Time and came up with this. The music is by a guy professionally known as The Echelon Effect, who I'm a really big fan of. He's been turning out some wonderful lush post-rock electronica soundscapes for a while, and I've been wanting to use his music for a video project for ages. This piece was just the right length to make this film work.

NB: The video screen looks small here, because it's widescreen. Best viewed full screen or on YouTube.



Tweet

Medieval Looms

It's the FOURTH Medieval festival this month on Raglan Shire!

I'm proud to say that I remember the very first one on the Shire. It was held over a weekend, I believe, and took up the area that is now known as the Silicube. Over the years it's grown to now take over the whole field - where the square is, surrounded by Artisan tents and the like - and a grand castle. I made outfits for the first one. Thankfully, due to the fact that the style I made hasn't changed since it went out of fashion over 300 years ago, they still look good these days!

This year, I've tried to contribute my commemorating the tinies favourite festival (for many, at least) by making a huge tapestry. I've been taking pictures of medieval tinies individually and then arranging them on long panels. I've then applied a canvas-style effect over the images, chopped them into sections and uploaded them, to stick them back together into one long tapestry. I've managed to photograph 133 tinies - one of whom appears twice (in different outfits) at my request, because I didn't think many people would be interested! I might still add more yet. I've put it up for display in the castle, and have had lots of requests from people to buy copies of it. I may sell the textures rather than the prims, and then folks can make sections if they want.

I'll donate the proceeds to the animal funds that we're currently raising to go towards our continued adoption of a tapir in the States and a giraffe at London Zoo in the UK. Zayn is also hoping to raise enough to be able to donate to two secondary charities that work with animals on a more general basis.

I might have some interesting news regarding my 'Le Squabbit' machinima movie too soon. I don't want to say too much at the moment, in case nothing happens. But...watch this space!

MMIF

The MaMachinima International Festival takes place this weekend, and I'm part of it!

It's a seven-hour long showcase of over fifty (yes 5-0!) machinima films, and my 'Le Squabbit Et Les Admirateurs' movie will be part of the proceedings, kicking off hour two, hosted by Pooky Amsterdam. The event was put together by Chantal Harvey, a keen and experienced machinimatographer herself, and is the second event of its kind. The first was held last year to such great acclaim that Linden Lab have offered Chantal and her team the use of not one, not two but FOUR sims on which to host the event. I went exploring there a little earlier, and wow, what an incredible build!


The layout means that all four of those bridges converge at the points where the four sims meet, meaning that the potential audience can be four times bigger. And the really cool thing about this event is that as well as being an in-world festival, there's also an opportunity to watch the whole event streamed at a RL venue in Amsterdam! It looks set to be another amazing event and full credit to Chantal for even getting this far with it!

Find out more about the event here at the MMIF Official site.


As much fun as it looks set to be, and I will attend at some point, I will miss the time when my film gets shown. It clashes with the time that Raglan prepares to celebrate Stillpink's recent passing, and we're holding a New Orleans Mardi Gras-style funeral parade for her, as well as unveiling a permanent memorial to her.

Speaking of whom, here's another chance to post another machinima I made, this one featuring Stillpink; she's the pink bunny with the bright pink hair!



Tweet

Otters Are Golden

I hosted the Raglan Shire Film Festival last night; was great fun, and I was really honoured to have lots of tinies in attendance but also to have a couple of machinima veterans in Pooky Amsterdam and CodeWarrior Carling come along and watch the show too.

I debuted my latest - 'Mummer's Dance' - with Songbird1028 Sorbet, which was very well received. I picked up two Otter awards - for Best Film (Over 4 Minutes) and the Audience Award, for which I shall be eternally grateful. Songbird was also voted Best Actress for her work in this film (based on the fact that she had so much to do!), and a lot of people were mightily (and rightly) impressed that she sings too!



The overall line-up of films was fantastic. I'm so proud that the community were able to really get their paws and claws into trying some machinima, and the pay-off was that they were all well-received. There was a nice variety of music, shorts, remakes and original stories in there. For a few people, this was their FIRST attempt at machinima, both in terms of filming and editing, which is just amazing. Great job Shire!

And The Nominees Are...

Looking forward to the Film Festival at the weekend! The theatre has been built, the seats have been cleaned and fresh popcorn is popping in the machine! Last September, in an effort to try and get some more people just trying to film some machinima, I announced we'd hold a festival just before the Oscars to celebrate tinies on film. A lot of folk were immediately enthusiastic about it, but once the New Year hit, and I began chasing folk up about it, it became obvious that that enthusiasm had waned over the Christmas holiday period, and there didn't seem to be that much on offer.

But I've been pleasantly surprised over the past few days. Some people have been able to turn out little 2-3 minute clips in a matter of a week. They've been asking for advice and tips, which I've been more than willing to help with as best I can; and I've been genuinely pleased to see some of the things people have come up with! I've also been sourcing judges to look over groups of videos (split into certain categories), so that we can award a few of the filmmakers with their own golden statuette - the Otters!

However, it was never about giving out prizes. It was just about encouraging people to have a go; and they have, and for that, everyone will be rewarded with a host of brilliant and cute tinycentric movies. I'll also be showing off my new machinima on the day, keeping it tightly under wraps until the event itself.