I recently went a-huntin’ on Machinima.com for Hugh Hancock’s final editorial from back in February of 2006, because I’d found it highly inspirational and wanted to enjoy it again. I’ve had trouble locating it there. The way they’ve organized the articles has changed, and old links are all broken and just give you a table of contents. So I ventured into the bowels of the Wayback Machine and found it. I’m going to reprint it here so it is not lost. His perspective on the way the nature of the machinima community was poised to change (and indeed, has changed now) was as encouraging to me then as it is now. It never struck me as spin, but instead as someone who embraced change with both arms wide open.
(What got me thinking about it, by the way, was Hugh’s recently well-written rant/explanation of the BloodSpell distribution headaches, which you can read here.)
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So it’s my final editorial on Machinima.com. I could talk about all the cool stuff we’ve done over the past six years. I could talk about everything we wanted to do. I could shamelessly shill for BloodSpell (coming in six weeks or less). I could come out with something profound and brilliant about Machinima. Although that’s not really something to rely on.
I’m not going to do that. I’m going to talk about music.
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The Ivy Film Festival has been around for seven years, but this year is the first where they’re accepting machinima submissions. Harrison Heller, long time supporter of Ivy, has worked hard to make this happen, and was able to get it done via a partner effort with Machinima.com. Entrants must be in high school, college, or graduate school. I see nothing to indicate that international participation is not encouraged. From their site:
The new Ivy Film Festival Machinima Competition, sponsored in partnership with Machinima.com, provides student machinima filmmakers the opportunity to compete against their peers for the Audience Choice Award, chosen by popular vote, and the Jury Prize, chosen by the votes of a panel of Machinima and New Media experts. The judging panel includes Hugh Hancock (machinima pioneer), Paul Marino (Director of the Academy of Machinima Arts & Sciences), Jason Choi (Mackie Award Winner 2007), Carl Goodman (Deputy Director of the Museum of the Moving Image), and Mark Tribe (Professor of Modern Culture & Media at Brown University). The two winning films will be screened at the Ivy Film Festival. This particular competition is accepting submissions from high school, college, and graduate students. International submissions are encouraged. Submission deadline is March 16, 2008.
More info available here: http://www.machinima.com/ivyfilmfestival
I made such a loud statement when I departed from Machinima.com earlier in 2007, it seems only right that I also make public my reasons for returning. And I’d also like to share something I discovered after I returned… something very pleasantly surprising.
That’s right, all of my films are once again available at Machinima.com. And there is but one reason I took steps to make that happen, and that reason is the one I indicated at the time of my departure. Receiving an apology was a plus, but I had to see for myself that the circumstances which made me want to leave were, in fact, an isolated incident - not the beginning of a pattern of behavior. To be specific, a moderator over there had handled a disagreement in a way I found inappropriate. So naturally, I was on the lookout for subsequent “crises” to see how they were handled.
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