Well, Kate and I have had our first meeting for the Machinima Expo 2011, which will take place some time in November, 2011. One of the goals we have this year is simplifying the programming and media for the Expo. So, to that end we are inviting anyone with an interest in volunteering for this years Expo to come to Second Life this Sunday, March 6th at 10AM (pacific time) and help us organize the festival.
We are looking for people to help with promotion, programming, logistics and ushers/help for the actual Expo event. Come on by if you are interested. We’d love to have you.
Will post the Second Life slurl here in a few days. Still working on the location.
And for those of you who don’t care to come to Second Life, we are going to try to set up a chat channel where you can interact with everyone.
The MachinExpo and Muvizu would like to thank everyone for their interest in the “Holiday Hell” film contest. Although we didn’t get as many entries as we’d hoped (probably due to the holidays), we do have a winning film we’d like to announce:
We liked how well the film was shot along with the strangeness of the story. Rollo uses Muvizu well, especially in the rendering department. Congratulations to Rollo! We’ll be sending Rollo a brand-new copy of Sony Vegas Pro 10, the digital video editing package, for his winning entry.
Also, Muvizu and the MachinExpo plan on hosting another competition in the spring, so stay tuned for the details.
Focused as I was on getting people on and off the stage for the Expo this year, I only half listened to Tracy Harwood’s Keynote speech at the Expo on Saturday, Nov. 20th. What I heard is was excited, intrigued and a little annoyed at different times? “Why the hell is she talking so much about Machinima.com?”, I thought. Don’t get me wrong, I knew she had a reason. But we had tried so hard to get them involved with the Expo and received a cold shoulder over and over, I just didn’t want them or any mention of them around the Expo this year. Well, smack me in the head, because after reading (and listening to) the speech, I understand fully what Tracy is trying to say. I won’t spoil it for you, but here points are right on the mark.
I also appreciated her challenge to the community to be more demanding with our filmmaking. She urges us to help each other by honest criticism and help in order to make our films better. Amen, brother.
One point she makes that I can clearly echo in my work on the screening team this year for the Expo, is how truly international machinima is becoming. We had dozens and dozens of films submitted from all over the world. And given the statistics for attendance at the Expo, it appears that we had people come from all parts of the globe to watch films and learn about the “state of the art” as Tracy puts it.
My thanks to Tracy Harwood for taking the time to watch films, ask questions, go over the submissions and for making connections for us that help and stimulate the machinima community. And, by the way, she also designed this year’s Machinima Expo program!
You can listen to the audio here and/or read the entire speech in a Scribd document below. Remember you can enlarge or reduce the text if you need to, just look at the controls at the bottom of the screen. You can download the document (pdf, 141kb)
