Riot Films Production Journal

Machinima vs. Anymation.... FIGHT!

2008-05-15T13:09:00.000-07:00

I was posting some opinions I had on the word "anymation" on Shattered Keyboard's comments. It got a little long, so, I thought I'd dig up this old dinosaur and make a brand new post. It's been a while, why not?

Before I say anything, note that this is just my personal opinion on the subject and is not intended to offend or criticize anyone. Or their opinions. Sometimes I don't communicate that clearly, so there ya go. So don't take it personally. Or go ahead, make controversy, throw onions at me, call me a filthy container of whatever. Up to you.

So what this all boils down to is there are some people that consider the old champion, "machinima", as a word no longer appropriate for what they do. They're starting to side with the challenger and underdog, the newcomer "anymation".

Me, I see the whole anymation thing as unnecessary and trying to define what is already defined, or, doesn't need to be defined.

Here's a long description of what anymation is. And here's a short example from a recent Antics blog post:

"I agree with the ethos of anymation - use any available tool to achieve the effect you want. There are thousands of users out there right now using Antics as one step on their journey to produce their vision in video. You might create your models in Google SketchUp, bring them to life in Antics, then add some polish in After Effects. Anymation in action "

Anymation in action? First of all, let me tell you why that makes no sense to me. A live action filmmaker might cast his actors from Venus, break into a bank on a Sunday to use as his "set", shoot half the shots on a 907mm film camera, half on a super-extreme-turbo-quadruple-fantastic-high-def camera, rob a souvenir store for props, use some stop-motion animation with barbie dolls, film some minature models of space stations so it "looks real" and then blue-screen it onto a matte painting of a desert, hand-rotoscope every frame to give it a "unique" look, and finally throw in a CGI Talking Animal for good measure, cause everybody else is doing it. I won't even go into what goes in the process of creating CGI Talking Animal just by itself. Let's just say it involves more tools than you can count on your fingers.

Anymation in action??

This is what FILMMAKING IS. This is what filmmakers do, they use any and all tools around them to make the final result. When I hear about anymation, all I see is a big circle.

-Films are made using whatever tool is necessary to create the result. Yes, and that includes an orchestra playing in the theater before film had sound.
-Animation is born, specifying a sub-genre of films that predominantly uses hand drawn images.
-CGI is born, specifying a sub-genre of animation that predominantly uses computer generated images.
-Machinima is born, specifying a sub-genre of CGI that predominantly uses real-time computer technology to output images.

And now, anymation is born, using whatever tool is necessary to create the result... and thus the circle. Definitions of the types of films have been specifying and specifying over time, and now when it's back to being generalized, suddenly it's a new concept?

All of those sub-genres are already using "any and all tools" to create the film. CGI film? Concept art may be drawn on paper. It may be scanned using a scanner, and edited on Photoshop. A clay character may be sculpted for reference. Previs may be created with Antics... (no wai!) Character models and environments/props may be created in Maya. It may be animated in Motionbuilder (hello real-time), then brought back to Maya. Textures may be created on Photoshop. Normal maps might be created in Zbrush. It may be color-corrected and 2d effects and filters may be applied in After Effects. So on and so forth.

That's a heck of a lot more "anymation" than someone using Moviestorm, don't you think? The concept is already implied. Let's face it. CGI doesn't use game images or 2D anime cause it looks like shit and doesn't fit in with the style. Not cause its following some unwritten rule that CGI must be this and that. I follow the philosophy that filmmaking decisions should be based on quality, asking "how" and not "what". And really, if you look around, that's what most films follow too. And no, I'm not talking about Uwe Boll.

Now with all that said, once again, this is my personal opinion on the word "anymation". Y'all are free to call whatever you do whatever you want, but me, I don't support it for the above reasons. But the following is really why I rant about this.

I do like the attitude of moving away from game-based filmmaking. That's cool, and I think there is a place for both. What I don't like as much is the supposed abandoning of the word "machinima". In other words, I don't like another segmenting of the community.

Machinima. Yea yea, I can see your face, half frowning and crinkled when I say it. It's indeed a funny and strange word. But it's definitely unique. As unique as "film", "animation", and "CGI". "Anymation", on the other hand, sounds exactly or nearly like "animation" when spoken.

Machine-cinema describes what we all do here perfectly.

All Machinima films are processed by a computer in real-time (that's the politically correct definition of machinima, not 'game movie'). The machine is doing much of the work for us, hence, machine-cinema. Rendered in real time or rendered frame by frame, whatever it is, the point is that the image you see was originally created in a real-time technology environment, using a computer programming language (the engine) to bring the elements together. Thus, the machine does a lot of the non-creative stuff for us in the background.

I consider 'Edge of Remorse' to be purely machinima, even though it was rendered in After Effects. That's because even though the elements (background and characters) were separated, the elements themselves are purely real time. Backgrounds for the scenes weren't rendered out. They were 100% FRAPS'd in WoW. And guess what determined how the wheat field was placed in relation to the sun, and how many polygons that mountain in the distance had? That's right, it wasn't me. That was the machine, a piece of code in the engine that determined that. And that element, the scene, ran in real-time (unlike say, a CGI scene that needs to be rendered first).

Using blue-screen to put the elements together and rendering it out, is I think what some would call "cheating". But I don't think that changes the labelling of the technique altogether.

Anyway, the whole "rendered in real time" thing, haven't we moved way past that already? By that logic all edited machinima films that are in a video avi/wmv/mov format are not machinima because they were rendered frame-by-frame in a video editor! I'm sure you oldies tore some hair out over that when Quad God first came out?

Antics, Moviestorm, iClone, Motionbuilder, Unreal, WoW, Crysis, etc. They all share the same thing: a rendering engine that displays images calculated in real-time on a computer. The only difference between them is the marketing purpose of the product, whether its for previs, filmmaking, or gaming. But its all the same type of technology, and personally I think making a film using one or any combination of the tools is in fact, machinima.

And finally, I'm gonna sneak in some personal rants (a.k.a. no longer respecting your opinions!)

Machinima's got oh, just about the entire gaming audience, that recognizes the word now. Anymation has what, 30 people? I admire the cool punk attitude, but i also admire being practical... I guess I'm an artist because I want people to hear what I have to say. Whether it's something that comes from my emotions or just a cool fight scene in my head. So for me it makes no sense to make an obscure film that gets 500 views. To me that is an utter waste of time and energy especially considering I put unnecessarily large amounts of energy into any short film (which I also think isn't worth doing if you're not gonna put in the effort). To put that much effort and not get reciprocated (positive or negative) is bullshit and you know it. That'll drain your inspiration over time even though you might deny it.

The point is not that quantity > quality, the point is be practical and smart in your decision so YOU GET BOTH. That might mean having to sacrifice some quality to make room for quantity, and sacrificing some quantity for quality till you have a great balance of both. I know not all people think like this, but I'm throwing it at you. Think about it. If you teeter too much into quality and obscurity then don't complain that you didn't get a lot of views. Or don't complain if a lot of people see it but it's got a 4% on Rotten Tomatoes... but if you do want both, well, I'm gonna say that abandoning the church and starting a new religion is not the way to get it. I am unfortunately a greedy man and I personally want both, so, I'll stick with the church for now.

Finally, I'm tired of all this segmenting and separating. Who. Cares. Let's just make some fucking machinima films and tell each other how much they suck. That was way more fun and inspirational than this crap. The community itself was inspirational to me once, but since that doesn't exist anymore, well, as Han Solo once said, "I'm in it for the money, sister". And no, I'm not gonna come back at a critically tense moment and conveniently save your life. Well maybe. Depends how much money they give me.

Maybe if we all stuck together and WORKED together, instead of separating and bickering on each other's blogs (oh the irony...), we might've solved the freaking licensing problem by now? The past is the past but, just a thought...

Blizzcon Recap

2007-08-05T17:46:00.000-07:00

Blizzcon was a great experience! Here's a quick recap of the whole event.

On Thursday night, the eve of the event, I met with a bunch of the machinima people attending, as well as a few of Blizzard staffers and had dinner near the convention center. I don't remember everyone who was there but some of the machinimators included Terran and Ezra of Rufus Cubed, Tristan Pope, Jun Falkenstein, and the members of Dead Workers Party.

Ricky and I headed off to the Anaheim Convention Center on Friday and arrived just in time for our time slot in the machinima booth. We carried with us a big box full of Edge of Remorse DVDs. Before the event I ordered 100 retail packaged DVDs, with cases and artwork professionally printed.

We laid them on our table and gave it all away to the people passing by, giving them a quick 10 second low-down on what machinima is. OK it was a little hectic and we probably did a terrible job doing so! But our film was playing on the TV behind us so hopefully people understood.

The DVDs were gone in 20 minutes. I wish I had made more to give out but just the 100 was expensive enough. I even got to autograph a couple! Me being the fool that I usually am, I forgot my fully charged camera at home... hopefully if someone else took pictures I can steal them and post it later. At one point Henry Lowood (from Stanford and archive.org) came by to say hello.

After the booth I played some StarCraft II - more on that later.

We met up with the Xfire staff, and had a live chat along with the other machinimators - John and Ryan from Red Sky Foundry, Ian Beckham, Stone Falcon Productions, Slashdance, and some others I might be forgetting. We didn't have a table so we were actually sprawled on the floor of the convention center lobby typing away on laptops. Here's a picture one of the Xfire guys took (me on the left):

After this we went to dinner with everyone and had a great meal. Ricky had to leave early after this so we called it a night.

On Saturday I went back and allowed my soul to be devoured by StarCraft. I watched the semi-final and finals of the StarCraft tournament. Watching the pro Koreans play was so amazing, it was ridiculous. So ridiculous that I couldn't help but laugh when I first saw the speed of their mouse clicks - some of the TVs showed a direct feed of the player's monitor, so every mouse movement was visible.

After that me and my friend went straight to the StarCraft II area and played it over, and over, and over again until the day was done!

Even though it was still obviously early in the development, it was extremely polished and very, very playable. And I might even say that it's already the best RTS game I've ever played. I'm having withdrawals right now. I missed the presentation on the single-player but from what I see online it looks to be amazing too.

I see and hear a lot of people complaining about how it looks like an expansion pack or doesn't live up to the hype... well, they couldn't be more wrong. Watching it from a distance and playing and being in the game is so different. It feels like StarCraft which is a very good thing, yet feels newer, more advanced, and overall superior to the old game. Overall everything just felt incredibly smooth. The way the animation plays out and the already polished interface gives everything a very "glidey" feel that's really addicting. Of course balance issues are impossible to judge at this point so who knows if it will live up to the "masterpiece" title that the original owns. Regardless, this game is going to kick some serious ass when it comes out... I'm going to buy like 13 copies just because. =P

I did not get a chance to ask any questions about machinima possibilities. Again I missed the single player presentation so I did not get a chance to see any of the cinematic capabilities either. But one of the trailers playing at the event showed the new Thor unit closeup, with the backdrop out of focus. That gives me hope that Blizzard might be considering machinima possibilities in the new toolset. Regardless I will definitely be doing something with it when it's released. =)

Anyway... that was my experience of Blizzcon in a nutshell. I had a great time, but missed out on a lot of things as well. Next time I'll have to schedule out things a little better.

Blizzcon '07!

2007-08-01T22:07:00.000-07:00

A few of us at Riot Films (gToon and myself) will be representing Edge of Remorse over at Blizzcon this Friday, August 3!

We have an hour of time in the machinima booth, at 2pm. Other World of Warcraft machinimators will also be present throughout the day as well as on Saturday.

If you're attending the event, be sure to stop by and say hello!

Golden Compass Trailer

2007-05-24T11:48:00.000-07:00

Here's the newly released trailer to The Golden Compass. FYI, it's the film that we at Shiny are creating the game of.

Convince me

2007-03-14T03:13:00.000-07:00

Someone convince me why I should continue with machinima. This isn't another "why machinima sucks" rant, but just a slight doubt I've been having lately.

As my skills improve in filmmaking, naturally my ambitions and goals increase with it. The kind of movies and the level of quality I wanted to achieve back in 2004 compared to today, is like night and day. Back then, simple machinima was good enough as long as it was captured well, edited cleverly, and was overall watchable.

From after the release of the first OTSS to right now, what I wanted for OTSS 2 kept growing day by day. At first I knew I had to step the quality up, which meant addressing the main issues with OTSS: emotionless and expressionless faces, looping stock animations, stiff "gamey" motions and graphics, and more importantly, the plot.

All that technical work would go to waste if the plot didn't live up to expectations. In my opinion a great film has all the elements in high quality, including (but not only) the story. Rewriting, rewriting, rewriting, etc., I won't get into it. I'm sure a lot of you have heard enough about OTSS 2 rewriting over the last few years.

With all that work and dedication into writing a short film, a film to be created in a game engine, not to be sold and not legally owned, seems somewhat ludicrous. Add to that, all of the custom assets that need to be created: character models, animations, textures, maps, props, weapons, and quality as good as or better than the original game the machinima film is made in.

It all seems way too daunting for the limits of machinima. Visually, I want to achieve a higher quality than the cinematics found in Gears of War. And the more I think about it, the more I realize that it won't be possible without a lot of money.

At that point you're taking away the main positive aspect of machinima: money. Time-saving is simply not a factor in custom content films. And when you're spending that much time and effort, why not spend a little more time to render out a full-blown CGI picture instead? If we were on a contract deadline, things would be different, but this is a personal project, one that could be potentially sold after it was completed.

But with machinima that isn't even possible, sometimes it is but still in limited form.

And the most disturbing thing that I've come to realize is this: video game engines become outdated. Fast. When one is obsessed with quality and technology such as myself, one must always strive to keep up with the times and choose the latest game engine on the market.

And everytime a new, stunning game engine is revealed that will "change the way machinima is made", this means you have to take the time to learn this new engine, the way its coded, its scripting language, the way its map editor works, the way lipsyncing works, the way the cameras work, what kind of workarounds or hacks there are, and so on.

In CG every new technology is an evolution of an existing tool, such as Maya or Max. Once you've learned how to use it, you don't need to re-learn it every few years!

So where exactly does time-saving come in, compared to a full CG render, if you're spending all that time learning different game engines?

I'm doubtful because over the course of many years, I would much rather spend that time mastering one tool, than trying to learn many.

Machinimachinimachinima! Arg!

2007-03-06T23:44:00.000-08:00

Holy crap look at all that spam on the previous post.

It's been a while since I've last updated this. Ever since I started work at Shiny, machinima in general has been difficult to get back into. Not just machinima, but any other work-related hobby. The so called "brain drain" mentioned by some in the Mprem community is definitely rearing its ugly head.

Every day consists of driving an hour and half, sitting at a computer for 9 hours to create what is essentially machinima, then driving another hour and half back home. So what's the last thing I want to do when I finally come home? That's right... machinima.

On that note, I thought I'd explain a little bit about my job, since it might interest some people (and have been asked on many occasions).

Firstly, they've finally announced which game we're working on:

The Golden Compass.

It's based on a giant film franchise coming out Christmas this year (by giant I mean Lord of the Rings giant... supposedly), which is based on a trilogy of books called His Dark Materials. Apparently it's very popular in the UK (called The Northern Lights over there), but not in the US as much.

Some more information about the game here, here, and here.

So, first we get a bunch of storyboards for a level in the game. At that point the animations and models are mostly unfinished, so we make a quick, rough version of the scene, with temporary models, and temporary animations. We use a tool which allows us to script and chain any existing animation together in a countless number of ways. I believe its mostly used for gameplay, but it works for our needs just as well.

Then we continue to work on the scene as the assets are completed (models, animations, storyboard changes, etc.) or we move onto the next scene while we wait. Most of the time we have multiple ones going on at the same time (currently we have about 15 or so...).

For the first few months, me and a coworker split up the various cinematic scenes in the game, and we each had our "own" cinematic that we began and completed separately. While this was kind of cool because we could call a certain cinematic our own, it wasn't very efficient. As all machinimators know, making even one scene in a machinima film is a combination of many different skills. And most know, that the more skills you try to tackle on yourself, the less the overall result will be.

About a month ago this changed as we hired a third person on our team, a programmer. And so our roles changed a bit, a bit more like an assembly line.
My coworker focuses on blocking the scene into the level (via triggers and keyframes), the new hire focuses on animation scripting, and i focus on what I feel I do best: all of the camerawork.

If I have an 9 hour day, I can now work on a camera for 9 hours, instead of say, 3 hours on cameras, 3 on animation scripting, and 3 on blocking. Technically speaking, the camerawork will be 3 times better than if I attempt the whole scene myself. The animation scripting and blocking will also be 3 times better.

So in the end by doing specialized work in our best talent, we end up with a highly polished scene. And I've always been saying this and this is the clearest example I could possibly make. TEAMWORK > SOLO!!!!

Unreal Delusion

2006-10-31T17:57:00.000-08:00

Unfortunately, the long-awaited Only The Strong Survive II: Delusion has been delayed yet again. This time for good reason - OTSS 2 will now be using the Unreal Engine 3!

Meanwhile, we still have a few fun projects lined up before OTSS 2, including Knight Time, Precedent, and a yet unannounced project. More details about these projects are coming soon!

Official!

2006-10-25T12:08:00.000-07:00

I made the announcement at machinima.com a few minutes ago.

I've recently been picked up by Shiny Entertainment as a junior cinematic animator. It's an unannounced project so I can't say anything about it yet. But I'll be starting there immediately after the Machinima Film Festival, on the 7th of November. I'm very excited! Although the commute will be a killer... I'm sure I'll get used to it.

Xfire contest winners will be announced on Friday! Excited for that as well.

Our next WoW project, Knight Time, will start very soon. It'll be a bit different from the usual Riot Films stuff. So stay tuned!

So Lucky Am I

2006-09-28T00:53:00.000-07:00

I feel extremely lucky and glad to be surrounded by such immense talent. This is why collaboration is important. It is not just simply splitting the work - that has nothing to do with it. Neither is specializing in each field. No, no - the true power of collaboration comes from influencing each other.

Understandably at first, the script for EoR recieved decent response. "It's good...". You know, nothing mind blowing. After all, I am no writer and it was written in about a week, so I definitely wasn't expecting much. By the time I started production though, over half of the story had to be cut out. For example there was a battle scene planned with over a hundred fighters. In the end it was cut down to four.

I most definitely was way over my head when I wrote the original draft, since we only had a month. In fact even during production with the shaved down version and even in post, I was constantly bashing my own head thinking "you're way over your head" "what were you thinking!" and "you're fucking crazy dude".

But I got to work, trying to hurry off a rough cut with an edit lock, so that gToon and Scott can start on the audio as soon as possible (the Xfire deadline loomed over us - I think it was about 2 weeks left at that point). So I finished the cut, then came the sound effects.

Sound made everything different - it made things flow better, made the film infinitely more watchable. But the point is, the quality of the sound, and in some cases sound that was not originally planned for, caused me to take a second look at the visuals. What can I do to improve the visuals, so that it may reach the level set by the sound effects? And thus, the visuals improved, and gave me different ideas on then incomplete visual effects.

gToon gets a new cut with more complete and advanced visual effects, and he changes his sounds to match the new visuals, and so on and so on. Xfire deadline was extended, and we breathed a sigh of relief.

Then came the music... yea. That changed everything. That was when the afterburners turned on, and caused both me and gToon scrambling to catch up. That was a very intense and exciting time.

Additionally, morale support and technical / creative suggestions were often made at this stage by the rest of the active team: Allen Marshall, Nefarious Guy, Macabre, and Drowned Fish. This was important for me at least, seeing any kind of response, just knowing that someone else is watching and giving you support, is good enough for me to keep going, even completely without sleep on the last few days. Thanks guys! I owe you guys (especially Scott and Ricky) more than just a credit and thanks.

So even though we had a passable film on the first edit lock, each person's contributions just added to the film and influenced the others to change or adapt to the newest version. It was great that all of us were discussing on the same forum, as it allowed us this opportunity of collaboration. The product feels like a cohesive product, working seamlessly rather than something stitched together at the last minute. (which is admittedly what we did!)

Next time you're making a movie by yourself, reconsider. Even just getting a few friends to give you comments and suggestions is a giant leap away from doing it yourself. Multiple brains are always better than one.

Patience!

2006-09-25T22:49:00.000-07:00

So as you may have heard on the front page or elswhere, we finished Edge of Remorse! Unfortunately due to the Xfire contest it can't be released until Oct. 9. If it's selected as a finalist, it will only be downloadable through Xfire for a few weeks. From what I hear the exclusivity period is 6 weeks! Lame.

The past month felt like a year. I don't think I've ever worked so hard on one thing in my life, ever. For a measly 7 minute film made in 1 month, we carved through 8 rough cuts. That's gotta be some kind of new record or something, haha. Those early cuts seemed like it was last year but in fact it was only 2-3 weeks ago... if anything, this film made me (re)realize how much I actually love making films instead of just talking about it.

Especially when the tools are so great and flexible as they are in World of WarCraft. This was also a great project for me in terms of effects. I've fudged around with After Effects in the past, but I never attempted to make a film with it. Let alone an HD film. You definitely learn things exponentially faster when you got a concrete goal to meet.

I'll write some more later, right now I'm gonna go sleep for about a week. :P

3rd Base

2006-09-21T10:47:00.000-07:00

Almost done!

We got to listen to Scott's music for EoR yesterday - it's indescribable. I'll let that be a surprise.

We're well on track with a great audio mix, but with just under 24 hours left until the Machinima Film Festival deadline, I'm going to be up all night getting the last of the shots completed and rendered. Rendering is the part that scares me due to time - usually a non-existent issue in machinima, but hey, you get what you work for.

Edge of Completion

2006-09-06T17:38:00.000-07:00

As mentioned on the front page, I've been working on a World of Warcraft machinima for the past few weeks titled Edge of Remorse.

Very interesting way to create a film - although it is quite short at around 4 minutes, there are over 100 shots in the film and every shot is composited and has some kind of special effect on it.

I finally finished rough composites for every shot in the film, and will be editing a locked rough cut so that Scott and Ricky can start ASAP on music and sound. With 6 days left until the contest, it's really pushing it, but luckily it's not a long film.

It'll be released on Xfire on Sept. 25, but look for a trailer in about 2 weeks. :) A few weeks after the Xfire release, I will also be releasing a special HD version of the film. STAY TUNED!

One last deed left undone

2006-06-29T11:52:00.000-07:00

As mentioned on the front page, we have new and very talented members on our team:

Nefarious Guy, who is a Jedi Academy machinimator. He will be handling our marketing and recruitment jobs.

Drowned Fish, who is a talented 3D modeller, and he will be creating weapons and static objects for OTSS 2.

Macabre, who has done popular machinima films in the past such as NYPD Blues (one of the very few Max Payne 2 machinima out there). He will be doing some of the heavy Faceposer work for Precedent and OTSS 2, as well as sound and music if necessary.

Snipa Masta, who will be taking care of UV Mapping and skinning for OTSS 2's custom models.

The OTSS 2 script is really more of a fourth draft than a second, mostly because I've scrapped several versions before fully finishing them. I wish I could keep redoing and redoing, because with each passing day it becomes better and better. But there has to be a point where it just has to be done and you gotta accept that it's never going to be perfect. All I know is that it's much, much better than the first draft, and I'm fairly proud of it now.

A question that has been ringing in my head is whether we should release the film in 3 parts or 6. Releasing the whole film together is out of the question, although it would be my first choice. It'd take another 2 years if we did that. The total amount of custom content is depressing - right now I'm estimating around 15 different character models, and around 18 different sets. Not to mention all of the custom animations, weapon models, static objects, textures for the sets, and skins for the models.

Most people suggest 3 parts, and that is my main choice as well for the moment...

Precedent is on hold until I get my laptop back from Dell (next week).

Desmond, bitch.

2006-06-22T11:34:00.000-07:00

We finally recorded the voiceovers for Precedent last night. We scored a really nice recording studio for a relatively cheap price. The sound quality is very professional, so I'm very happy! There was also an expert sound mixer/engineer on board, mixing our recording on the spot. We were really lucky to have him there.

When we recorded for OTSS, we didn't get to have that luxury. Ricky (gToon) was the sound expert, but he was also acting in most of the scenes as well. While most of the sound was great, one of our actors (you can probably guess which one) was too loud and caused all sorts of troubles. In the end we had to cut out most of his takes, and somehow Ricky stitched up a workable edit.

The way that I record voice acting is to have the actors in the same room at the same time. Most voice acting is done line by line if I'm not mistaken, with an actor locked in a room repeating the same line in different ways. I prefer a more dynamic approach, setting up multiple mics (or taking turns) in one room, and having the scene play out as if it were being filmed with the actors playing off each other.

One problem we ran into was the turning of scipt pages - that one month since the rehearsal turned out to be detrimental, as our actors had forgotten a lot of the lines, especially the longer ones. They had to resort to reading off the page, which not only caused problems with the acting itself, but we also had to be careful about the noise of turning our pages. The more things the actor has to think about, the worse the performance is... we had to resort to pausing after each page to turn it over. That also totally killed the pacing of the scene. The first half of the scene was great, in the second half, one actor had trouble getting through the long lines, and since we were on a time limit, we had to come up with something.

I usually do voice recording in three steps: 1) a recorded rehearsal, 2) a few run throughs of the script as it is, and 3) a completely improvised version on top of the script. We only had time to do the first two steps. The third step is my favorite, and because we were running out of time, I wanted to take the chance. Halfway into step two, we went into improv mode for the remainder of the time, and the result was great. I actually regret not having started it sooner. The freedom of not having to read words the correct way off the paper felt like a huge breath of relief. Between all of the takes from the rehearsal, the run throughs, and the short improv, we definitely got a nice little performance. :)

Complexity

2006-04-21T15:20:00.000-07:00

We're having a final rehearsal for Precedent tonight, and also going to take reference photos of the actors for the modellers. Also, I'll be filming the session, focusing on closeups. This gives me a couple of advantages to the production:

1) A perfect reference for lipsyncing and facial/head animating in Faceposer.
2) Additional reference for the modellers.
3) Ability to start editing and experimenting before anything is even shot.

Think of it like as pre-vis, but completely reversed.

I've once again resumed writing the second draft of OTSS 2 after a really really long hiatus. Funny how my creativity just comes and goes, months at a time.

Everyone says less is more. I agree. But some people translate that to simple is better. Personally I don't feel that at all. I take it as "don't show/tell everything". In other words, withhold information. You can make a world as epic and complex as Star Wars, and still get by with very little shown. As long as all of that is there, behind the scenes, in the writer or director's head, it'll show. And people will flock to their favorite fan forums and bicker at what they think the director had in mind. And then there are those who come up with ridicuous theories (that make sense), but is probably a couple hundred levels above what the director had originally intended... It's incredibly awesome how people interpret a single piece of art in their own twisted way.

In other news, I ordered a laptop (my first). Found a $750 off coupon online for the model I wanted, so I convinced myself that now was the time. It's a Dell Inspiron E1705, with a T2600 Core Duo processor. I actually wanted the XPS M1710, but with the parts I wanted it was $4000. Plus no coupon. With the coupon the Inspiron came out to $1700.

Seems like Machinima.com is quiet for the moment. It may seem like it's dying out, but it's just the forums. Since the last few months, the number of users visiting the site has doubled. I have confidence in the site and I try my best to make the site better with whatever limited power I have. Thus, some people's attitudes (still) really bother me. Don't really want to say more than that. Sometimes I wish people would just trust us and appreciate what we're trying to do for the community.

Make up your mind!

2006-04-01T15:17:00.000-08:00

OK, so I decided not to go with the new computer... instead I'm going to wait until the Summer for the AMD AM2 processors. Meanwhile I'm looking to sell my current computer and get a nice laptop for the time being.

The rehearsal last week went pretty well, the actors were very good on their own and with a little bit of work we manged to get a nice balance and contrast between the two characters. I don't know how well the humor will play out on-screen, but at the rehearsal I just could not stop laughing. Funny stuff. As a comedy, Precedent is not necessarily like RvB where the humor comes from witty dialogue or plain insanity - Tony wrote this in a way where it could happen in real life. Sort of. Many of the lines were simply too long. One character has almost an entire page of non stop dialogue - although that might be great for a novel or play, I don't think it will work at all on the screen. I get depressed thinking how I'd set that up visually.

Unfortunately we had to cut some of the dialogue, but in a way where the major point is still there. After going through the new version several times I think we managed to get a nice pacing for the dialogue. More meat, less filler.

I haven't had the chance to work on the set design for a long time (machinima.com is eating away all my time), and as you probably expected this is going to take a little more than two months to complete. Still, we have good members on board our team and we're definitely going to finish it sooner than later.

Ugh

2006-03-23T11:52:00.000-08:00

Seems like the rest of my computer parts are bottlenecking my new video card... I'm only getting a tiny performance increase from my old one. That's what I get for getting budget stuff before - inability to upgrade and no scaling...

So I've decided to screw it all and go for the top of the line and futureproof myself. Gonna sell my processor, video cards, and get:

AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ (Dual Core)
Asus A8N32-SLI Motherboard
nVidia GeForce 7900 GT (and a second one for SLI later)

HD here I come.

We're having the first rehearsal for Precedent later tonight. Will update with details.

Show off time... And some thoughts on quality

2006-02-26T22:35:00.000-08:00

We had the actors meeting for Precedent a few days ago - man did that go well. Think we made some great choices with the casting. "Desmond, BITCH!"

I recieved my nice new DVD DL burner (BenQ DW1655) and 1GB Corsair RAM yesterday - man what a difference the memory makes. Before, my HL2 was nearly unplayable because of stuttering issues, but now with 1.5GB, it runs like a dream. Now all I need is that video card... HDR here I come! I've decided against the BFG 6800GS OC and will instead go for the just released BFG 7800GS OC. Can't afford to upgrade my motherboard/processor at this point yet, so I'm still stuck with AGP for the time being. So unfortunately no SLI for me. I'm surprised they're still making AGP cards, though I got a feeling this will be the last one ever.

Old specs:

P4 3.06 Ghz @ 3.45 Ghz
512 MB Corsair PC3200 RAM
ATI Radeon 9800 Pro 128MB
Creative Sound Blaster Audigy
200 GB Hard Drives

My upgraded specs (once the card arrives):

P4 3.06 Ghz @ 3.45 Ghz
1.5 GB Corsair PC3200 RAM
BFG GeForce 7800GS OC (gonna overclock this baby too)
Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeMusic
780 GB Hard Drives

Not bad eh? I think it can last for at least another year or two. The only parts remaining from a year ago is the motherboard, processor, and power supply... I really want an Athlon 64FX but I don't think I don't think I'll need it for a long while.

I also recieved my Adobe Production Studio Premium the other day, after waiting a month for shipping. Being a student has its advantages, I got nearly half price off. I haven't had a chance to play around with it but I did check out Premiere Pro 2.0. I'm loving the new interface and overall feel of it. Go to hell, Final Cut Pro.

Anyways... now that my PC has (nearly) caught up to the times, I think I'm definitely doing Precedent in 720p. I wasn't gonna bother with it before as it was gonna be a bitch to capture and also to edit. But now with my upgrade and the fact that PPro 2.0 has native HD support it will be easier in both capturing and postproduciton.

Here's something you guys might not have thought about. HD is rapidly becoming the standard everywhere and is slated to officially become the standard in a year or two. You already see it everywhere. Because of that I really think people need to start taking machinima to the next level and start recording in HD resolutions. Of course, if you want to stick to the internet crowd it won't apply to you, but if you want exposure and attention: film festivals, television, job opportunities, etc. it might be a great way to push your film through.

The reason I'm dead set on creating OTSS 2 in HD 720p (actually 1080p now, depending on certain things...) is not because I want viewers to see things clearly (after all who has time or space to d/l a 40 minute film in HD), but because I want to push my film everywhere. By having a HD master I now have the option of taking it to TV stations to be broadcast in HD, doing the same in film festivals or convert to film, etc. Someone wants to distribute my film theatrically (yeah right)? Well, because of the HD master, it's actually possible. Sorry, no one's gonna distribute your crappy 320x240 "film"...

I just think that aiming high and allowing these opportunities to open up almost forces you to seek them out. I honestly think up to this point, there is not a single machinima film worthy of being distributed or on television. Not because of idea, but because of execution. Quality. Severely lacking in my eyes. I'm probably harsher than most when it comes to this because I just cannot stand bad production values. If I had a choice of creating a badly written film with excellent production values, or a ingenious film with shitty production values - I'd take the former. I'd just be too ashamed of myself if I had my name attatched to a crappy production. Now I'm not saying I have uber production skills or I that don't produce crap (I certainly have in the past... and maybe in the present), but come on, you've seen them. Those "films" that make you wanna sit in the corner of the bathroom and slit your wrists.

Point is, we can't stay in our cave forever. We gotta head towards the outdoors and see the sun. The rest of the world. That's the only way to advance our art. Great writing alone will get us attention for a few weeks and die off as the "interested" lose interest when they watch everything else.

If you're gonna do something, don't do it half-assed. Research, learn, incorporate, redo. That's how I try to approach the films I do.

Mashenemah

2006-02-23T03:24:00.000-08:00

It was my first "official" day at machinima.com today. Fairly straightforward, went on a mad hunt for machinima films all over obscure sites. Found a really interesting HL2 film I've never seen before, called City 17, but I'm not sure if it can be categorized as machinima. It's mostly live action and based on HL2, with some HL2 models edited in. Some of the XFire WoW machinima contest finalists have really impressed me. I think WoW is shaping up to be a fairly respectable machinima engine.

Precedent progress update: Me and Johnny (producers) were to meet with the 2 actors tonight, but somehow things got messed up and we had to delay. Being a pretty short script, I think that 1 or 2 quick rehearsals should suffice. More so than my previous projects, I really want the actors to add their own touch to the characters and see what happens. Though I haven't directed anything/anyone in about a year, so I'm a bit on edge about it.

Being that it's so short and concise, I'm currently designing the map (a rooftop of some building) as economically as possible. When I picture "rooftop", I immediately see a tall building dwarfing the rest of the city. In level design terms, that means creating the whole damn city. So my solution for this is to have the location be a rooftop of a small building, maybe one of those square-shaped office buildings. That would then be surrounded by taller skyscrapers, so no matter the angle, the rest of the city would be hidden, thus, not needed to be made. The dilemna is, how can I make that look cool or interesting without making it look like a big room with no ceiling? Maybe I'll leave one side open, and try to focus the angles towards that.

I also want to experiment with some depth of field effects with this project. After I get my new video card (Geforce 6800 GS) I'm going to run some visual tests and see how it looks. In my imagination it looks great... somehow I get the feeling it's going to be more complicated than I think and won't look too hot.

Slightly Later Man

2006-02-21T01:19:00.001-08:00

We've released 'Slightly Later Man' over at machinima.com. Check it out here.

"Activision and Machinima.com have combined forces to bring you an original comdedy, "Slightly Later Man" produced with The Movies PC game.

In an effort to break through the fourth dimension and control time, Dr. Lloyd Wexler created the Time-U-Later. But a mysterious lab accident caused the Time-U-Later to explode, bombarding Dr. Wexler with dangerous "time waves" and causing him to miraculously exist seven seconds in the future. Dr. Lloyd Wexler realized that he must use his new found powers to fight evil and become: Slightly Later Man!"

The downloadable versions aren't up yet, but I put up temporary mirrors on riot-films:

Slightly Later Man WMV
Slightly Later Man MOV

Precedent

2006-02-08T02:30:00.000-08:00

I finally got my monitor back from the repair shop. 2 weeks of not being able to use a computer felt more like a month. Sometime during that 2 weeks one of my hard drives also died... fortunately all of my project files and such are ok but the biggest loss is that my music is all gone. :(

We're doing a new project, a short called 'Precedent', written by Tony Gleed (The Crafty Hombre). Gonna try to get this out as fast as possible, in 2 months or so. The film is 99% dialogue based, and we'll be using Source to film it. Having just started the production, I'll be updating this blog more often with more news about it.

But what about OTSS 2, you ask?? On a short hiatus. Nearly finished with the second draft (I've been saying that for months!) and I'll be finalizing it during the production of Precedent. Also, I'm also looking to get some practice with the Source engine so that OTSS 2 will go a lot smoother. And this time I'm going to make sure concept art and other such talent-enticing stuff is finished before I start recruiting people... Our first run was a bit of a failure.

The project done in The Movies that I mentioned earlier was finished a few weeks ago and you'll probably be seeing it sometime soon. Look for 'Slightly Later Man'.

New Show!

2005-12-27T20:21:00.000-08:00

I've been working with several other LA-based machinimators to create a new series (maybe) in The Movies. I'm not quite sure if I'm allowed to say any more than that. It will be very different from what you'd expect to see from me, though.

Making a machinima film in The Movies is the most frustrating thing I've ever experienced. It has a lot of potential, but the limits are too crippling for any serious filmmaker. If I were to compare it to another engine, such as Half-Life 2, then The Movies is to HL2 as a bicycle is to a Ferrari. Ironic considering that you'd expect that the game calling itself 'The Movies' would have the horsepower, not the other way around.

So why use The Movies? Probably because it's new, and fresh. So far. Maybe that's stretching it even. But I feel that I can put some effort into this new production because it does seem like a fresh and new thing rather than the same old music video or Halo film.

As for OTSS 2, work will resume immediately after this one is finished (in a week or so). The second draft is nearly complete. Because the story was changed around so much, storyboarding would've been useless. As soon as the second draft is done, I'm going to turn it over to our "art department", the Animation Design Center (whom I'm currently working on other projects with). They will handle the storyboarding, character design, and some set design as well.

Getting this production kick-started really depends on me getting this draft finished. Still, I really want this to be good and something I'm actually proud of. Meanwhile, though, I'm glad I have small projects to do here and there such as this one with The Movies.

Back to editing...

Quickie

2005-12-13T06:55:00.001-08:00

The second draft is going through some MAJOR surgery right now. No matter how long it takes, I want to shoot something that I'm happy with. I've decided to finally get rid of old ideas to replace with fresh new ones. So now I would say that 80% of the seoond draft will be completely different and new. Almost there...

Victory

2005-12-09T02:12:00.002-08:00

Ricky Grove and Scott Buckley, you guys rule. I don't think OTSS would've been half as succesful if it weren't for the sound and music. This goes to you guys.

State of the Organization

2005-10-28T05:51:00.000-07:00

I'm currently about 1/3 done with the re-write. Overall I'm very pleased with how it's progressing. So far it's just bigger, badder, deeper, and more fun than the way things were in the first draft. I had hoped to shorten the length a bit, but so far it remains the same.

The first scene has been completely overhauled, with a new setting, location, characters, and situations. Whereas before it started with pure exposition and saw no action until the second act, this time there is some simple, suspenseful action right from the beginning.

In addition I've made the entire story a flashback, and because of that it made it a lot easier to flesh out Andy's character in both his actions and voiceovers. Every piece of dialogue has been scrapped and completely re-written.

The goal of the story has been completely changed as well, to something more understandable and definitely more interesting. The first and third acts will essentially remain the same, save the re-imagining of unecessary scenes and the re-writing of dumb dialogue, like the scene I mentioned above. The second act will be entirely different. I was never too happy with that section anyways - it was the least planned and most of it ended up as filler.

Currently I'm considering having act 2 start a bit earlier than it used to be, and make the rest of act 2 the new scenes, making things shorter and tighter. That's the plan, but of course it all depends on how it paces. In my older stories, I had a problem with rushing the endings. So I always keep that in mind. Finding the right balance will be hard. Even though this can be solved later in editing, I like to perfect things as much as possible on paper rather than doing it at the last minute.

Unfortunately I can't stand for anything less than "great", and even the slightest doubt makes me depressed and obssessive. Being a perfectionist is a disease. Sometimes I wish I can just write a really short project and just make the damn thing in a few weeks, good or not. Everytime I start one of these kind of projects, it ends up being about 10 times bigger. The new live action project was concieved as a 2 minute piece, but now it's a 10-15 minute piece. OTSS 2 started as 15 minutes, and is now 40 minutes, and 50 times the amount of work compared to OTSS 1. I wish I had 20 short films to show on riot-films.com, that was the original goal for the site. A year later, the number of films is still 2.

I'm now at the point where I have so many projects going that it would be suicide to take on another, short or not. Maybe I should give up a few or postpone one or two.

Anyways, I will be posting a screenshot of the "Parking Garage" level as soon as possible, when Allen sends me the current build of it.

Oh by the way, yay for the MFF2005 nominations! (Best Sound and Best Off-The-Shelf Machinima) The competition is very strong in both categories, but I have my hopes up for Best Sound. After all, you can't deny that crazy ass soundtrack that Ricky and Scott cooked up. You guys rock!