I think I’m committed to swearing off games in my machinima toolkit, but seeing something like this makes me waver. Such a great looking game.

Today is the premiere of Clockwork, an Amorphous Blob Production which gave me another great opportunity to work alongside Ricky Grove. I made the music for the film, and Ricky handled the sound effects and overall mix. We’d done this once before for Andre Pesch’s The Days After, and again for Frank Fox’s Morning Run Amok. I don’t want to embarrass Ricky here - and this isn’t anything I haven’t at least in some way tried to communicate to him privately as well - but this pairing of he and I is the most creatively fulfilling collaboration experience I’ve ever had. It just clicks.

In this particular film, we got to voice act opposite one another as well, and my thanks to Nefarious Guy for casting us the way he did. It was great fun; I really love a good villain role.

The cast and crew will be getting together for a live premiere and chat in Second Life later today, at which I’m sure we’ll go into more detail about the experience of working on this film. I also plan to go into some more detail on my approach to the musical score, how I prepared myself, the tools I employed and what I was trying to achieve. I’m sure we’ll try to record that conversation, but for the full experience please feel free to come out and join us at Hathead’s place in SL. Details on the where and when are available at the Machiniplex blog.

Hope to see you there!

A simple method for creating Synthetic Shadows in post production.

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

There was a moment during our interview for my podcast when, right in the middle of a thought, you said, “I’m sorry, can you excuse me for a second?” And then I could hear you stand up from your desk, start to walk out of the room, and suddenly you were engulfed in silence. I remember being able to hear what that room looked like… the slight creaks and cracks of a wooden chair on bare wooden floorboards. But I couldn’t hear you. It was as if you’d disappeared. A couple minutes passed, and I remember expecting to hear a cough, a clearing of the throat or blowing of the nose… the things people typically step away from the mic to do… but instead, complete silence.

Then the minutes were over, and you were sitting down at the desk again, and you picked up with your answer right where you left off.

I remember later, when it came time for mixdown, listening to that part of the recording, wondering what had happened there, realizing I’d forgotten to ask you about it in our lengthy post-interview chat. It was a point of banal curiosity, but I found it remarkable that in such a vibration-rich wooden environment, it could sound as though you took a few steps and - suddenly evaporated.

It would continue to bug me, the next few times we spoke, afterward realizing that I’d again forgotten to ask you about it, forgotten to share a laugh together over my silly obsession with it.

When you came up with the idea of having monthly machinima audio conferences, I should have been focused on how willing you were to have them be at a really awkward time of day for you if that would mean more people could show up in the US and Europe. And when we auditioned a number of technologies before finally settling on Skype with plans to eventually try out Second Life, I should have made a bigger deal out of how willing you were to go outside your comfort zone with these things, all for the sake of creating a community outlet for others. But all I could think about was your magic trick of space-time.

The longer I waited to bring it up, the greater pressure I felt to come up with a good lead-in for bringing it up… an engaging Houdini anecdote, a good wormhole joke. Something, anything. Too much time had passed now, just bringing that up out of the blue would be weird, right? I mean, we’d certainly become friends. No, good friends. You were giving me pointers on a sci-fi screenplay, but it didn’t feel like I was using you - even in a benevolent mentor sense - no, it felt like sharing between friends, as if you had a vested interest in seeing me make the best film I could, because you really cared. Because there was nothing you wanted to do more right now than talk to me and hear what I had to say. That’s how you made me feel, so why couldn’t I bring up this simple thing? “Hey, Peter, that night when you teleported right out of your room, what was that about?” What was so hard about that?

Perhaps it is the nature of the friendship built upon online contact, where it feels perfectly natural to talk about “the work” or share a laugh or a sigh about events out there in the world… but to inquire about that space on the other side of the keyboard and microphone, that sacrosanct space where a physical presence lives and breathes, that feels risky, awkward, invasive.

And so to take a moment to comment on that real physical person, to say what a kind, generous, all-giving man of immense talent sits there… to call attention to what your professionalism and skill has done to legitimize and strengthen machinima… if I could never muster up the courage to tell you that, how could I find it in me to ask about that night when you disappeared?

Looking back on our most recent conversation, realizing now that it is the last we will ever have, the price of my hesitancy is clear: I will forever wish I’d dared to breach your space.

Interacting with you made me a better filmmaker, Peter, and I will never forget you.

See Also: Machiniplex3: On the Death of Peter Rasmussen

I’m going to be AFK for about a week while I move to some new digs. I wish I could have continued the series of remodel pics that I started here, but shortly after I took that first pic, my son turned into some kind of alpine climber, snatched from its thought-to-be-safe perch my lovely camera I’d won in the DivX Festival last year, and decided to run a gravity experiment. But I should be able to get my hands on a new camera in time for a nice “After” picture of the studio… before I make it all messy by diving into some work! I can’t wait!

Above is the third in a series of four WIP production stills I’ve had queued to share with you. The fourth I’ll share shortly after I return. Perhaps the most interesting thing about them is… none of them are from the same film. So a pretty hefty slew of movies coming your way very soon, and more on the slate right behind them. Two more Dissection Lab vids are already in the can and queued for release, and that will be an ongoing series. I’ve got some changes planned for The Overcast - not the least of which will be a more stable release cycle. More Stories Behind the Skits and general blogadociousness. After Elf got me thinking, I’m relaunching The ZS Forum, which will service all my sites - please come join us! And some other things which I’m just dying to share with you but cannot just yet.

Stay tuned, it’s going to be a great year. See you on the other side of this move!

Alrighty then! The contest’s entry deadline has been extended to SUNDAY, APRIL 27, 2008, to provide a more reasonable time frame to craft a great-looking entry.

Details are still available at:
http://z-studios.com/overcast-contest/

Have at it!