machinexpo-blog

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Updating Blog With "Contact" Form + Expo 2012 News

We are in the process of updating our Expo 2012 blog here. Let me know if you spot any inconsistencies or errors (or if you have suggestions) and we'll get right on it. 

We now have a "Contact" form (care of jotform.com) where you can contact us directly with ideas or messages. Just click the "Contact" button, fill out the form and include your message, then "submit". We'll get to you ASAP. 

We are also in the process of re-working our main machinima-expo.com site so that we can accomodate more technical challenges and to make the site more flexible. I'd like to thank Phil Rice for handling our site for so long (and paying for the space). You are the best, Phil. 

Also, if you would like to volunteer for the Expo and/or are interested in being on our screening team, please contact us using the "Contact" form. We'll be publishing a list of volunteers and adding their names to our Staff list. 

Our next ExpoCast radio show is on March 5th. We hope to be able to run the stream live through our machinima-expo.com site, so stay tuned. Working out the tech right now. 

Very excited about the MachinExpo 2012 and it's only February! 

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Ten Really Bad Excuses for Not Volunteering to be an Expo Screener

1) My own movies aren't good enough.

We're not looking for movie making experts! If you've been around the machinima world for a year or so, and watched a few movies you qualify!

2) My own movies are too good.

Worried you'll miss out on a prize? Well never fear. Of course you can't vote on any movies you have made yourself, but you can simply step out while we judge your movies, and step back for the rest..simple!

3) I've volunteered before.

Welcome back!

4) I've never volunteered before.

Don't worry, there will be experienced screeners on hand to help you, and a new viewpoint is really valuable.

5) English is a 2nd / 3rd / nth language for me.

We need screeners who are passionate about machinima, not immaculately written reviews.

6) I only speak English.

That'll do!

7) I have to go to East Timor for two weeks in July

We have three months to screen, you'll catch up.

8) I have never been outside my own machinima engine.

No problem.

9) I'm worried I've got strange tastes and I'll ruin the Expo.

Discussing movies is more fun if we have different opinions.

10) I'm worried you'll all get to know me better.

The great thing is, we'll get to know you better. 

So what excuses do we accept? The core issue is around time and commitment. Over a three month period , June, July, August most weeks you'll need at least an hour put aside to watch movies, some weeks it will be more, other weeks less.

As we move towards the deadline, and just after you may need to commit 3 hours.

If you are due to go away on holiday at the end of August or 1st week in September you would struggle, other times you will be able to catch up.

If you are interested but need more information then get in touch, don't worry there's no commitment at this stage.

If you don't have time for the screening group, but you'd like to help in another way then let us know. 

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Machinima ExpoCast #1 Recording Now Available

Thanks to Kate, Phil Browne and Ken White for all of their help in creating our first ExpoCast! Silly me for thinking it work as a half-hour program! We ran a full hour (and more) and got to go over lots of fun Machinima news, update Expo biz and have a nice chat with Phil Browne. 

Here is the recording of the show via SoundCloud.

Our next show will be on Sunday, March 4th at 10am pacific at TMOA Radio. We are working to live-cast it at our machinima-expo.com address, but we'll let you know if we are able to make that happen. 

-Ricky

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ExpoCast #1: Links and outline for our first Expo Podcasts

Kate and I will be holding a live podcast/radio show today (Feb 5th) at 10am (pacific) at TMOA radio. Our thanks to Ken for helping put this together. We'll be broadcasting the first Sunday of each month for the rest of the year. The show will be about 30 minutes long and we'll talk about what's going on with the Expo, offer up machinima-related news and chat with a special guest. 

Here are the links and outline of today's show: 

ExpoRadio Show #1 Outline

I. Intro music (“Music inspired by Asimov” by Lee Rosevere at Free Music Archive. Use track #9 The Last Question)) -use about 1 minute of this music -describe how we will feature new CC music each month II. Welcome + Introduction (Kate and Ricky) -Kate and Ricky chat (what have we been doing since Expo in November)

-personal projects brief

-Introduction to Radio show III. Machinima + Animation news -LA Times article on Machinima.com -Obilith’s “The Hills Have Eggs” -Damien’s “Boss Fight”

-Loris Rizzo's "Night Hunters" -Oscar nominated short films -Moviestorm/Muvizu have new versions out -Skyrim Creation Kit -Virtual Worlds Conference - calling for machinima entries -Free Greenscreen people http://xoio-air.de/2012/greenscreen_people_01/ - free Daz tools? http://www.daz3d.com/i/3d/free-3d-software-overview -3DXchange 5 coming soon.- Reallusion 3DXchange 5  teaser ttp://forum.reallusion.com/Topic111308-299-1.aspx -The new networking..scoop.it http://www.scoop.it/ - come out beta, many from machinima crew using - Inworldz..is it becoming a viable alternate to second life? http://inworldz.com/ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Y63R_VEXF4&feature=youtu.be III. Expo news -No non-profit application this year - Thank last year’s volunteers -If you want to volunteer, contact us (mention Facebook page) -Looking for one more person to be on screening team -Expo Rewind and access to last years films/presentations -Discuss Expo 2011 statistics V. Intro Biggstrek (Phil Browne) -from “Terrible Old Man” to “Haunter...” -Phil’s Expo experience -Haunter of the Dark DVD -What he’s up to now -3 way discussion about how Expo can grow and improve

VI. Closing -note links for show on Expo blog (note new colors and design) -Expo planning to be around all year with radio show on the first Sunday of each month. Contact us if you’d like to be on the show. -Thanks to Ken and TMOA radio VII. Music out (do a minute or so of another piece from the collection). Use track #6 The Dead Past

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2011 Expo Wrap Up: Stats, Rewind and the Future

We had a great Machinima Expo this year. The quality of films was very high. Our effort to expand the managing of the Expo and share more responsibility was a great success. We have a strong core of volunteers for next year and very clear ideas on how we can improve. 

Remember the Expo is about YOU: the machinima filmmaker. We've always wanted the Expo to bring the community of filmmakers together to share our work and learn from each other. 

Expo Rewind

The Expo Rewind is a Vimeo channel we've created for you to see all of the recordings we've made of past Expo events. This year we didn't do a good job of archiving (promise we'll get everything next year), but we did record several excellent programs from Pooky Amsterdam's "Legendary Sessions" on Sunday, November 20th, plus Tikaf's Second Life class on Nov 18th and Henry Lowood's Keynote Speech on Nov 19th. 

Every Pixel Tells a Story w/Ingrid Moon and Frank Dellario

What Makes a Great Film - Great w/Tom Jantol and Russell Boyd

How to Create Machinima in Second Life w/Tikaf Viper

Educating Machinima w/Michael Nitsche & Anna Akbari

Inside the Mind of Moviestorm w/Matt Kelland, Shewin Liu and Kate Lee

Keynote Speech by Henry Lowood

We may be adding more depending upon how good the footage is that's been sent to me. I'll add it as it comes in. If you've recorded any of the programming, please let me know. 

Statistics

The Expo in 2011 had fewer people attending than last year (about 25% less overall), which is odd since we put much more effort into promoting the event than last year. Still, we had well over 1,000 people come to the machinima-expo site and around 150-200 came to the UCSville Expo Hub. That's still quite a strong attendance record. We hope to build on it for next year. 

International attendance was still quite high. The US and the UK had the largest amount of people visiting, but Estonia and other countries had a surprising amount of people attending. 

Second Life attendance was excellent. We hope to change the way the Expo works next year by perhaps focusing a full day just on Second Life events. We tested this out with some programming on Friday, Nov 18th (Tikaf Viper's SL machinima class) and it worked very well. 

The Future, or MachinExpo 2012

We've learned a great deal from this year's Expo. Not sure if the time is right for us to go non-profit as the amount of effort, money and paperwork are huge, but we certainly are entertaining the notion. We'll be losing our UCSville Hub this coming year and will look to replace it with our own SL home. We'll be joining up with the New Media Film Festival in April of 2012. All 11 jury films are entered into their new machinima category. 

Good chance that the jury films will show on a local San Francisco cable network this spring, thanks to the efforts of Anima Technica. 

We plan on keeping the Expo a year-round presence. And starting in January we have some interesting programming coming your way. Too soon to announce anything, but stay tuned to this blog and our facebook page. 

With that, I'd like to thank all of our volunteers, our filmmakers and sponsors. 4 years of successful Expo events is pretty damn good, IMO. I hope to continue for as long as there are people willing to help put it together. 

Have a wonderful Holiday Season! And see you in January, 2012. 

[machinexpo-blog]

Expo 2011 Photo Galleries

We've had some great photos posted to the flickr group this year. Kate Lee has hand-picked just a sample of the best ones. Too many to fit into one gallery, so here are two slideshows covering the whole weekend.

Gallery one... http://www.flickr.com/photos/41327978@N00/galleries/72157628167056517/with/6342681606/lightbox/

Gallery two... http://www.flickr.com/photos/41327978@N00/galleries/72157628167309969/with/6376116935/lightbox/

Also, Chantal and Ben Grussi made some video recordings over the expo weekend, these are being edited at the moment, and will be uploaded as soon as possible. Here's a sneek peek at one of the videos, this is Tom Jantol and Russell Boyd's highly entertaining discussion.

Many thanks to all those who made recordings and took photos of the Expo! 

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Links for Jury Films and General Screeners

We've set up Vimeo channels for all but 2 of the Expo 2011 Jury films and almost all of the general Screening films. Easy as pie to go to these links and view the films you may have missed at the Expo, or use a widget and post one of the channels at your website. 

Expo 2011 Jury Film Channel

Expo 2011 Screeners Channel

Expo 2011 Second Life/Open Sim Channel

The films that aren't included are: The Goalkeeper and the Void, The Haunter of the Dark, Rio Arriba, Spies vs Guards, 5 tips for Ending Your Relationship, Graphic: A Risky Business, Righteous Revenge, Chronicles of Humanity: Descent and Clear Skies 3. Use the available links to screen these films if you like. 

We will be working to try to get all films screened at the 2011 Expo available for you to view. 

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Post Mortem for the 2011 Expo is this Sunday, 10am in SL

Although I consider this year's Expo a success, we still have a ways to go before we get to the level I imagine for the festival each year. To that end, we hold an Expo "Post Mortem" session every year to discuss what we can do to make the Expo a better event. 

We've already begun plans for next year, but we need your input! Please come to the Expo Hub this Sunday, November 27th at 10:00AM (pacific time) and tell us what we can do to improve the Expo. 

Expo Hub in Second Life is here:

http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/ucsville/192/143/1101

We plan on meeting for approximately an hour. And if you can't make it, post on our Facebook page or contact me directly: grovericky@gmail.com

And thanks for coming to the Expo this year!  

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2011 Machinima Expo Jury Prize Winners + Screening Schedule for Next Week

Ian Chisholm and Kate Fosk opening the Sunday events at the Expo

I am very proud to announce that the winners of this year's prizes are:

JURY PRIZE: The Goalkeeper and the Void by Marta Azparren

JURY PRIZE:  Mastermind by Ezequiel Guerisoli

JURY PRIZE:  A Journey Into the Metaverse by Tutsy Navarthna

GRAND PRIZE: The Haunter of the Dark by Phil Browne

AUDIENCE AWARD: The Haunter of the Dark by Phil Browne

SPECIAL AWARD: Cyberhermit of cyberhermit.com

My congratulations to the winners. We will be mailing you your prizes next week. I'll contact each director individually to arrange shipping. 

I'd also like to remind everyone that we will continue to screen ALL of our 61 films this next week right at the www.machinima-expo.com website. They will begin at midnight tonight (November 20th) and run through Sunday of next week. The reels will be in alphabetical order A-H, followed by the two screening reels A and B. Then the cycle will repeat. That's approximately 65 hours of machinima running 24/7. 

If you need to check the timings to find out when your film plays, look at the timings document (access the Google Doc right here: EXPO TIMINGS

You can also download our complete list of films and their running times right here: COMPLETE FILM LIST

My sincere thanks to everyone who came to the Expo this year and to all of our volunteers for their hours of time spent putting this event together. 

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Expo Sunday Schedule + Program

Kerria Seabrooke was kind enough to create this year's Expo Program (thank you, Kerria). It contains an introduction by Kate Fosk, full schedule, list of jury films, notes on our sponsors and special thanks. You can download the program here:

2011 Machinima Expo Program

                                                   Sunday, November 20th

              (streamed live at the Expo Hub, macinima-expo.com

and UWA Theater)               The Legend Sessions - Produced by Pooky Amsterdam

                           --all times pacific time-----   10:00AM -Where We Have Come From – Where We Are Going

w/Kate Fosk & Ian Chisholm

  10:30AM -Sound Advice - Hearing with your eyes & seeing   with your ears w/Ricky Grove & special guest

  11:00AM -Inside the Mind of MovieStorm w/ Kate Lee, Sherwin Liu (Chatnoir Studios) & Matt Kelland   11:30AM -May iClone be with U

w/CodeWarior Carling & AnimaTechnica & AnimatorCathy

  12:00PM - 1PM         Break.       (Live Music at Expo Hub)   1:00PM -Every picture tells a story

w/Ingrid Moon & Frank Dellario

1:30PM -Machinima as The Next Frontier

w/Henry Lowood & Bernhard Drax

2:00PM -Educating Machinima

Michael Nitsche & Anna Akbari

2:30PM -What makes Great film - Great?

w/Tom Jantol & Russell Boyd

3:00PM       -Thinking Outside The Frame - The New Mediums

                      Meaning   Susan Johnston & Tony Dyson 3:30PM       -Final Comments and Thank you’s w/ Ricky Grove -Closing Party with DJ Hathead at BoSamba Ocean Paradise sim in Second Life

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Haunter of the Dark with Director's Commentary

Congratulations to Phil Browne for his Grand Prize and Audience Prize wins today at the 2011 Machinima Expo. He's been kind enough to provide a "Director's Commentary" for the film and I've posted it at Vimeo and am embedding it here. I'll be following this up with my own commentary track on the sound design and acting the film. And next week we'll post an ISO image file for a DVD of the film with all three soundtracks (main, director commentary, sound commentary). 

This special edition of Phil Browne's 2011 Machinima Expo Grand Prize film, The Haunter of the Dark, features his director's commentary for the complete film. More info on the 2011 Machinima Expo at www.machinima-expo.com

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Machinima Expo Saturday Schedule + Program

You can get your Expo Program right here. Our thanks to Kerria Seabrooke for putting it together. 

PST Saturday, November 19th Expo Schedule        (streamed live at Expo Hub, machinima-expo.com and UWA Theater)                 -Produced by Chantal Harvey   10:00AM -2011 Expo Welcome and Orientation with Chantal Harvey    10:15AM -Keynote Speech w/Henry Lowood   10:30AM -48HFP Winner “The Lucid Journey” + Interview with director,                   Fake Jewell   10:45AM -Conversation with Tom Jantol, machinima filmmaker   11:00AM -Screening our jury-nominated films - Selection 1   “DEAR FAIRY” by Tom Jantol “HAUNTER OF THE DARK” by Phil Browne “A JOURNEY INTO THE METAVERSE” by Basile Live chat @ machinima-expo.com    12:00PM -Screening our jury-nominated films -  Selection 2   “DANSE MACABRE” by Paul Carr “FLUID IN BLUE” by Spiral Silverstar “ORDER IN CHAOS” by CD Shulz

  “GOALKEEPER AND THE VOID” by Marta Azparren “SMALLwSTUDIO’S HALLOWEEN SPECIAL” by Mark Pleasant       Live chat @ machinima-expo.com        1:00PM -Screening our jury-nominated films -  Selection 3   “MASTERMIND” by Ezequiel Guerisoli “THE GIFT” by Kate Lee & Sherwin Liu (Chat Noir Studios) “TIME TRAVELLERS” by Russell Boyd & Pooky Amsterdam Live chat @ machinima-expo.com    2:00PM -2011 Machinima Expo Awards Ceremony w/Ricky Grove                   and Kate Lee   -Winners of the 3 Jury award winners. -Winner of our Grand Prize.                   -Special Award for contribution to machinima community                           -And the “Grand Prize” winner of popular vote (make your vote                                                                                                               via the machinima-expo chat box)   2:30PM -Jury Panel with winners w/Ricky Grove & Damien Valentine    2:50PM -Closing words with Chantal and Expo cast.   3:00PM -“Meet the Filmmakers” Chat with Expo filmmakers and network   at the Expo Hub in Second Life   -“Wolf and Dulci Show” live with Dulci and CathyAnim8tor                     streaming live.   3:30PM -Closing Party with DJ Hathead at the BoSamba Ocean                    Paradise sim in Second Life

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Expo Friday Schedule: Special Second Life Machinima Class & Screenings

We will open the 2011 Machinima Expo a little early this year by holding a special screening of all films created in Second Life or Open Sim, followed by a Master Class in "How to Make Machinima in Second Life" taught by Tikal Viper. We will end the day with a Q&A session with Tikal. 

The screening reel starts at 12pm (pacific time) at the Expo Hub within Second Life. We won't be broadcasting it via our machinima-expo page, so you'll have to come to Second Life to enjoy the films and take the class. 

The Expo Hub is located at: 

http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/ucsville/192/143/1101

At 2pm (pacific time), Tikal will take those who wish to take his class to a special location within Second Life that he's set up for learning how to film inside of Second Life. He'll provide the teleport co-ordinates for you, or you can look for Pooky Amsterdam for help. 

And at 3pm, Tikal will take general questions on his class and machinima within Second Life in general. 

You can download Tikaf's Lesson Outline for the class here. A full list of films showing at the Second Life screening is here. 

Be sure to come by from 12pm to 4pm (pacific time) to watch choice Second Life films and to learn filmmaking in Second Life from a master. 

Our thanks to Kate and Pooky for helping to produce this event. 

[machinexpo-blog]

Expo Special: Free Access to All Essays in Journal of Visual Culture - Machinima Issue

You gather machinima makers, academics, lawyers, and others who care about the world s of machinima together and good things happen. At the Play-Machinim a-Law conference hosted by Stanford University we discussed topics such as how EULA requirements in video games influence the making of machinima, guidelines machinima creators can use to decide when they are within the bounds of fair use, as well as the curatorial, historical, and archival projects seeking to preserve the history of game culture and creativity through video capture. Speakers included JoAnn Covington, Joseph DeLappe, Douglas Gayeton, Lauren Gelman, Clint Hackleman, Kari Kraus, Fred von Lohmann, Henry Lowood, Michael Nitsche, and Jennifer Urban, among others. Find out more about the conference, read the media coverage, or see it for yourself.

Collaborations between machinima artists were hatched at the conference. A draft of a legal guide for machinima makers was debated and will be released soon. And the idea for a machinima-themed edition of the scholarly Journal of Visual Culture from SAGE Publications was proposed.

A team of editors from Stanford University Libraries took the idea and ran. We approached a number of the speakers from the conference as well as other practitioners and observers of machinima scenes that we thought had something of interest to say about machinima. We wanted to hear a variety of voices from the extended machinima community. The goal was not to necessarily promote machinima, but to produce ideas about it.  

The enthusiastic response to our inquiry was encouraging! A number of the folks listed above joined the project as did Marque Cornblatt, Frank R. Dellario, J. Joshua Diltz, Jun Falkenstein, Hugh Hancock, Tracy Harwood,  Kate Fosk, Mizuko Ito, Robert Jones Friedrich Kirschner, Mark Methenitis, Robert F. Nideffer, and Eddo Stern. With a spirit of experimentation and play we invited the participants to answer all or a select number of questions from a questionnaire we provide. If that approach didn’t resonate with them, we invited them to craft a response that was spurred on by, or was in a way of their choosing in conversation with or against any or all of the questions. The end result, as expected, displays the wide diversity of expectations, experiences and perspectives within the machinima world. 

As a side note, one interesting “dilemma” we encountered in editing this machinima-themed issue was what to call those people making machinima. The varied group of people writing for the issue submitted terms: machinima creator, machinimator, machinimatographer, machinimists, machinima artist and machinima maker. We settled on the phrase “machinima maker” because it would be the most clear to the general audience of the Journal. The other terms, while maybe more interesting, might confuse readers or distract from the message of the essays.

While normally the journal is available through subscription only, we asked and the publisher has generously opened access to this issue through the end of the year. So whatever you choose to call yourself, we hope you enjoy free access to the essays (http://vcu.sagepub.com/content/10/1.toc) in the machinima-themed Journal of Visual Culture while it lasts!

-Susan L. Rojo, co-editor of JVC-Machinima Issue

(Note: On behalf of the machinima community we'd like to thank the publishers of the JVC for making the essays available for free during the Expo period and after)

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Pooky Amsterdam on Sunday Expo Programming

  When asked to produce Sunday's events for the MachinExpo this year, activities such as a game show which would have teams of filmmakers rushing to hit the buzzer to answer questions under headings of “Crap or Craft”  first bounded to the frontal lobe of my mental zipper.   ShowHost voice And Bob, from what machinima released in 2006 did this dolly shot not work? “The Line –' Is it Raining” was a staple of a great film by which member of our community?   The list of one liners, interesting edits and questionable camera angles seemed endless - great fodder for entertainment that would highlight different craft areas of our nascent genre. With further reflection, I knew this had some value but not enough. Surely I thought, we have a responsibility to one another as we download our screen capture programs, as we write our scripts and craft our characters and assets – we take on this responsibility when we give voice to our cinematic dreams, and populate what had been an empty wilderness. And we do populate our screens with image, personality, dialogue, sound and special effects ,among other components.  We do need to provide films of substance and meaning to one another for surely we do not create in a vacuum.  Our work passed in links from Vimeo or Youtube, reflect ourselves, and the public doesn't always see the painstaking work that comes from endless hours of production. The public sees the final product, as it should be, and IMHO they shouldn’t be thinking about how the film was made – just that it delivers merit.   The final product is what MachinExpo is about, the final products of many filmmakers who have labored year long and are now amongst our peers and colleagues.  People who do understand what goes on behind the screen, like nobody else. The films which have been submitted from around the globe form the basis of this event – the year long crafting of our films presented to one another, and the world stage.   How can we share the meaning and depth in what can be a religious experience in the worship of our goals for film? Truth like beauty reward the lonely worshiper. And these long hours we put in towards pursuit of meaning, are often spent alone.  Yet even then we have dialogue with one another, in our minds if you will, because we are always influenced by what we have seen – always somewhat conscious of things we have shared, read, observed.

  So I thought, what about bringing voice to these kinds of conversations?  And what if we, the audience, could be a fly on the wall and hear two or three people, whose work we know of and admire, discuss different areas of our industry.  Our industry, we have one: our game engine films are becoming more and more sophisticated, our ambitions growing with our skills and audience reach.   As we begin to “level up” it is important to hear what those who really have distinguished themselves have to say – so we can hear those conversations, as we work, deep into the night, deep into our visions, sometimes even needing this kind of conversation to bring our work to another point.   So here I bring you The Legend Sessions – they are born of the desire to advance what we know and allow us to hear and even participate through Livestream and real–time interaction with those whose voice at the right time and place broadcast into our thoughts, will help us utilize to the best craft capabilities we can, the increasingly beautiful and important films we are making. There are 9 sessions of 2 and 3 people each under headings and topics which have appeal to our community. They will be recorded (3 cameras) and archived for the future. A future we are increasingly improving upon, a future which becomes better with this shared knowledge.

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Screening Reels Have Begun 24/7 | Download Complete Film List & Timings

The Expo Screening Reels have begun!

Starting last night (Sunday at midnight) we began showing all 50 films we have chosen as the general screeners for the Expo. Jury films will begin screening this Saturday. 

We have broken the alphabetical listing of films into Reels A through H. Each reel is about 70 minutes long. We will run each reel in order and then start over again. These films will run continuously 24/7 at our main Expo site:

www.machinima-expo.com

I've created a complete list of films along with a list of all the reels and what films are contained in each reel. You can download the full list of films here:

Complete list of films Screening at the Expo

You can also download the Screening Reel timings for this week on a spreadsheet I've created. They show all of the timings 24/7 from Monday to Friday, Nov 20th through Nov 18th at midnight. Download the spreadsheet here;

Expo Screeners Timings Nov 14th to 20th

Of course, the Expo takes place on November 19th and 20th and we will screen ALL of our Jury films then and announce Grand Prize. The week after the Expo, we will start the screening reels again on Sunday, November 20th at midnight and run the Reels A-H again 24/7. I'll be posting those timings over the weekend. 

How to determine when your film is playing

Find your film on the Complete list of films (it's in alphabetical order)

Then figure out which reel your film is playing in. If your film title begins with an A then its in the early reel A; if it starts with the letter W then it's in a later reel. 

Once you know what reel your film is on, check the Screening Reel Timings to determine when that reel is playing

Add or subtract the time of the films before or ahead of your film. This should be the time your film is playing. 

Example: Your film is "Ode to the Visual". Looking at the Complete films list, in alphabetical order "Ode is the 4th film on reel E. Checking the First Week timings spreadsheet, I see that Reel E starts at 3:19AM on Monday, Nov 14th. If I add the time of the other 3 films before Ode to 3:19 (31.34 minutes), Ode will be playing at 3:50AM (give or take a few minutes). 

I'll be posting next weeks timings this coming Sunday after Expo programming closes. We'll run films all next week and screen the Jury films on the weekend of the 26th and 27th of November. 

[machinexpo-blog]

Marta Azparren's Jury-Nominated Film THE GOALKEEPER AND THE VOID

Marta Azparren describes herself on her website as an "multidisciplinary artist", but I call her a modern poet. Doesn't matter what the medium is, Marta has the visions of a poet. Take the main image on her homepage: a view through trees looking up. How many times as a boy did I do this; looking up through the pecan trees in winter. Black boughs silhouetted against the sky. A marvelous evocative image that also serves a practical use by creating open spaces for subjects on his page. 

This combination of practical/poetic is in evidence in the magical film she submitted to the MachinExpo: THE GOALKEEPER AND THE VOID. Here's what I had to say in the screeners forum:

"I absolutely adore this short film. Imaginative, moody, beautifully designed and full of strange poetry. Music is perfect as is the use of machinima soccer for a use that is so far away from traditional machinima. Great, great film for me."

GOALKEEPER is certainly one of the most original films submitted, but it's also very beautifully controlled poetry. Although there are few words, they are more significant when they do come by artful presentation and by their clarity. The filmed scenes from Pro Evolution Soccer 2009 blend perfectly with the narration and the whole film is wonderfully original. Combining philosophy, soccer, silent film technique and poetry, Marta has come up with a film I certainly hope wins a Jury award. 

Henry Lowood, one of our judges for the jury prize at the Expo this year, had this to say about GOALKEEPER:

"This was the most innovative piece in terms of subject matter and style. It tackled the difficult subject of sports as an art form in an original format and medium. Finally, it offered a new take on the emerging possibilities of non-fiction machinima"

I'd also like to share what Marta wrote in the credits to the film when she submitted it to the Expo:

“I confess that I have applied to art aspects learned on football.” Eduardo Chillida. The sculptor Eduardo Chillida was goalkeeper of the Real Sociedad team from 1942 to 1943, when he was very young. He retired because of a knee injury. Later he became one of the greatest sculptors of XXth century.This machinima explores the thoughts of Chillida, about space, time and sculpture, from within the three-dimensional void of a football goal. Music is by Carolina García-Gasco

  Marta also graciously answered a few questions I had for him about the film.

How did you get the idea to create the film? How long did it take to make? What tools did you use? 

Marta: I am a member of a  video artists collective which gather from time to time and choose a subject to create a film, just as a kickstarter to work with. Someone suggest soccer (at that time Spain has won the world championship and it was somehow a national issue!) and we all agree.

Coincidentally I was reading a biography of the sculptor Eduardo Chillida and I get surprised to discover that he was the goalkeeper of Real Sociedad, a traditional basque team, in the 40's. I found that very interesting and begin to collect all his thoughts and interviews about soccer. What I found most surprising is that he didn't hide his past as a goalkeeper (sports and culture often see each others as enemies) even he said he aplied to art things that he had learned playing soccer.

And that's how it came the idea of a film which were a sort of sculptor instructions for goalies.The longest part of the process was to gather information, seek interviews at newspapers archives, read all about Chillida and choose the most interesting phrases and drawings for each chapter.

Did you have any problems creating the film? How did you shoot the soccer sequences?

Marta: The first big problem was how to get soccer images from the 40's, then there was no television and the few matches that were filmed for cinema were of top teams like Real Madrid. I had been looking forward to try and make a machinima, and I felt this was the ocassion and could solve the problem. I had no experience so everything was very low-tech, no mods, no specific software...

I spent days playing Pro Evolution Soccer and capturing all the clips from tv directly to my videocamera. Then I edited the clips in Adobe Premiere, using effects to get a vintage texture. Last but no least part was music; I was looking for something that clashes with the images. Something that sounded organic, instead of digital.

Carolina Garcia-Gasco did a great job with an acoustic piano and great sensitivitySo this is my first machinima but I'm sure it won't be the last one.Soccer scenes had the difficulty, which I guess it's obvious at machinima films, to get the goalie doing exactly what I wanted. I remember it was specially hard to shoot the penalty scene, because the goalie was doing something unusual in soccer playing.On the opposite side, they were scenes that came by accident, such as this last Chillida's gaze at camera that just happened and really thrilled me.

Where are you from? What are your goals as an artist?

Marta: I'm spanish, I live and work in Madrid. I'm an artist quite multidisciplinary, primarily working with video, but also drawing, net.art ...

I am interested in the art associated with games and game as art. In addition to using videogames to create artworks as machinima does, I am also interested in games specifically created with artistic intent. I have made some inroads in this area and would like to continue searching deeper.

THE GOALKEEPER AND THE VOID by Marta Azparren will premiere at the Expo this coming Saturday, November 19th.