Machinima Expo is working with the Machinima Film Festival
After a meeting this weekend of Damien, Ingrid, Phil and myself, we’ve firmed up a lot of plans for the Montreal Machinima Expo this fall. The initial programming for the 3 day event is almost done and we are receiving entries for the Animation Festival as fast as we can process them. My thanks to Phil for being so thorough with the entries. And what’s great is that almost all of the entries so far have been of high quality. There are even a few inquiries that are so unique we are trying to figure out how to present them at the Expo (more on these later)
One thing we have decided is that we will most likely go with two keynote speakers for the event. While we are still trying to get the budget approval for Mike Jones, we really want Phil Rice to speak formally at the Expo. I can’t think of another contemporary filmmaker who understands the machinima community and machinima production as well. I’m really looking forward to hearing what he has to say. And after attending Siggraph a few weeks ago and hearing Ed Catmull’s keynote speech, I can attest to the power this kind of speech can have.
Another very positive development is that after a chance meeting of Friedrich Kirschner and myself at Siggraph, we really want both of our organizations to support each other more. So we are setting up a meeting with everyone and hope to make some announcements about mutual promotion and (whispering this)..even a possible mixer event in Second Life for both our organizations. I’ll be reporting on what we come up with as soon as we’ve figured it out ourselves.
Oh, and I’d also like to mention that I’ve been getting it wrong about one of the differences between the MFF and the Expo; the MFF does not have a limit on when the film was made in order to submit. The only caveat they have is that you can’t submit the film twice. Somehow, I was under the impression that your film had to be made during the year of the particular festival. THIS IS NOT TRUE. Both our festivals allow you to submit films made at any point in time; last week, last year or 10 years ago, you are ok to submit to both festivals.
Our guidelines are here on the sidebar. You can find out more about the MFF guidelines at their Festival site:
