Examining the street/traffic scenes from Nine Inch Nails: Only as an example of a heavily fabricated scene using compositing.

Intro music is “Impulse” by Processor, from their album “Are You For Real?”, available at Magnatune.com

Those of you on The ZS Forum have probably already seen the posts I’ve been doing recently, highlighting some of my favorite work submitted at the Bitfilm Festival this year. I don’t typically post a lot about entries in the machinima category, mainly because you are likely more familiar with those anyway. I will say there are some really excellent machinima entries this year, some which you’ve probably never heard of and need to see, so go look at ‘em and vote.

Here are some films which caught my attention in either the FX Mix (read: Anymation) or Real Time (read: Demoscene) categories which you might enjoy. Note that I’m linking to forum posts for them because in all cases the link to the Bitfilm entry is included there, and in some cases a link to a higher resolution version is also available:

• A Brief Guide About Bridesmaids (Category: FX Mix)
• Chromasphere (Category: Real Time)
• fr-041: debris (Category: Real Time)
• Josie’s Lalaland (Category: FX Mix)
• Kindernoiser (Category: Real Time)
• Procrastination (Category: FX Mix)

See any others over there that you really liked? Tell us about them at the forum or by a comment here. Thanks!

Hugh over at Machinima For Dummies has posted an article titled “The non-game speedbump,” in which he tries to make sense of the relationship between some machinima films and their audience size. The conclusion, in brief, was that those leaving game worlds to produce independent machinima had best be prepared for the de facto loss in audience they will encounter. My first reaction was, “Where have you been?” (The answer, of course, is Bloodspell). My second reaction was, “Where did Kate pick up her mindreading trade?” because her first comment on the article was precisely the sentiment of my first reaction.

A closer examination of the article reveals some overlooked aspects which, to me at least, eclipse the naiveté Kate and I ribbed him about.

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With the buzz about Ghosts I-IV still going strong, Trent Reznor has dropped another bomb. Nine Inch Nails have just released another album - this one a full length with vocals titled The Slip - under Creative Commons license.

What’s different this time is that the entire album is available for free, even the ultra quality versions. There will be a physical release around July, we’re told, but unlike Ghosts you don’t have to buy something to get the CD-quality audio. However, I wouldn’t be surprised if there wasn’t something special in store for those who buy the physical media, much as they did for Ghosts.

The CC license - and its implications - are spelled out much more directly this time:

the slip is licensed under a creative commons attribution non-commercial share alike license.

we encourage you to
remix it
share it with your friends,
post it on your blog,
play it on your podcast,
give it to strangers,
etc.

©2008 NIN

One thing he didn’t list, which is allowable under the license, is: use it as your soundtrack for your (noncommercial) film. How often has an established major artist made that offer to the public? And not just for a song or two, but for close to three hours of music in the past two months!!!

About a week or two ago, they’d released the first single, Discipline, directly to radio stations just hours after it had been mastered. That’s a turnaround time which has proven to be totally impossible under the old music model.

I should also mention that just prior to the release of Ghosts, they launched their own remix site dedicated explicitly to user remixes of their songs. (Since With Teeth in 2005, Nine Inch Nails have been releasing the multi-track files for their songs and encouraging listeners to remix them, a phenomenon which precipitated the creation of my Only remix and music video.) And shortly after Ghosts, they launched a YouTube festival of sorts, encouraging people to create videos for their music from that double album.

Oh, and don’t forget the whole ARG phenomenon surrounding the album Year Zero.

The whole thing is almost unbelievable. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen such a massive surge of productivity by a single musical artist in my lifetime, certainly not one where that artist is so hands-on with the details, nor one which is so cross-media in nature. And, for a fan like me, it’s all good good good.

Get The Slip for free at: http://theslip.nin.com/