This year I am honored to be part of the organizational team behind a very exciting event coming this November, precisely one week after the AMAS festival in New York. For several years now, Ingrid Moon has been conducting The Machinima Roadshow, last year making a stop at Festival Arcadia in Montreal. This time around, Arcadia has expressed interest in having machinima move from auxilliary to a full on showcase before the festival’s expected 20,000+ attendees.

We sure hope you can attend and enjoy a weekend with us. Whether you can attend or not, please check out the following call for entries. We’re looking to screen and showcase some really great machinima from all around the world. Films selected for screening or jury prize consideration will be seen by thousands on a gigantic screen with a great sound system, it’s a wonderful opportunity to get your work shown to a large live audience.

International Machinima Expo Call For Entries
July 29, 2008

The International Machinima Expo (MachinExpo) is now accepting submissions for its 1st annual showcase which will feature the best work by emerging and established machinima directors. Part of Festival Arcadia in Montreal, Quebec, the event takes place from November 7-9, 2008 at Place Bonaventure in downtown Montreal before an audience expected to exceed 20,000.

Sponsored in part by Machiniplex.com, the expo is organized by Ingrid Moon of The Machinima Roadshow as well as three other veteran machinima producers: Ricky Grove, Damien Valentine, and Phil Rice.

MachinExpo will feature workshops, panel discussions, live film premieres, and several hours of screening of machinima films from all around the world. A jury of professionals from the entertainment and video game industries will select five (5) films for a Jury Prize, with a special 6th film awarded a Special Jury Prize honoring one exceptional Canadian machinima film. There are no category / genre restrictions on submissions, and there is no entry fee. Deadline for submissions is October 6, 2008.

For more information, including submission guidelines and instructions, please visit www.machinima-expo.com, or contact expo2008@machiniplex.net.

(Visit the film on Vimeo for an opportunity to view it in HD)

“the overcast” #034: Mass Effect

Ricky and Phil kick off this massive show with some machinima news and current events, before launching into an in-depth discussion of Bioware’s epic video game, Mass Effect. SPOILER ALERT: Some of what is discussed in this show is directly related to the game’s storyline, so if you’re concerned about preserving a sense of surprise before you experience the game, please be advised.

And don’t miss the next episode of Ricky’s Wonderful World of Sound at the end of this podcast!

http://theovercast.com/overcast-034/

Thank you for listening! This show runs on an ancient Prothean technology we like to call: Your Feedback. Tell us what you think!

Regardless of where you stand on the Vimeo decision to excise “gameplay videos” from their site, one thing’s for sure: it has made nearly everyone concerned take a moment to evaluate other options. Are there any other video sharing resources that compare favorably to Vimeo? Particularly in two key areas: allow posting of gameplay videos, and even more relevant, have options to host videos in high definition?

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After examining some other options, the next Talk the Machinima Talk audio conference is set to take place once again in Second Life, this month at a brand new location: a new private island owned by Fleef Fimicoloud and Stormy Harker!

Plus, we’ve picked a time which should be friendly for both North American and European participants.

Info on start time and location available here:
http://z-studios.com/conference/

And here are some links relevant to planned topics for discussion, with the understanding that the floor is always open to other subjects:

• Machinima Film Festival 2008
• NVISION ‘08
• Machinima at The Cambridge Film Festival 2008
• Shattered Keyboard on the Vimeo “gameplay videos” decision
• Machinima For Dummies on the Vimeo “gameplay videos” decision
• The Ill Clan’s recent article on 4:3 encoding

We could even talk some Securom if ya like!

EDIT: This Vimeo thing is definitely the hot issue of the week. Here are a couple more references:

• The Official Vimeo Blog Announcement
• Eric Rice weighs in on Vimeo decision
• Kotaku reports on it (as their comment thread evolves it might serve as a decent pulse of gamer response
• WeGame makes a very smart play in response

If you know the creators of the classic Quake film Blahbalicious (Mackey ‘Avatar’ McCandlish and Brian ‘Wendigo’ Hess), can you please put them in touch with me?

Or if you by chance ARE Mackey or Brian, please drop me a line via email (top right corner of this page) or via the comments here.

If Ben Grussi, the Social CPU of Old School Machinima, doesn’t have current email addresses for you (which he doesn’t), that means you’ve done a better job at hiding than your average Witness Protection program.

I need to chat with you about Blahbalicious. If you’re out there, or if any of you out there are in touch with either of them, please put us in touch.

Thanks!

Here we examine a scene transition from Male Restroom Etiquette as an example of using extra details to reward your more attentive viewers.

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