The 2010 Machinima Expo will officially take place on Saturday, November 20th and Sunday, November 21st. The actual schedule of events is still being planned, but we’ll most likely be running from around 1oAM to 3 or 4PM in the afternoon (Pacific Time/Los Angeles), with a half hour or hour break in the middle. Click this link for a time zone converter to determine the correct time in your zrea.
Our goal remains to provide the best quality versions of hand picked films that were submitted to the Expo this year and to make your experience attending the Expo easier and simpler.
Also, we’ll be opening the screening reels on the Friday, November 19th sometime in the evening (exact time will be announced). We will be running the screening reels through the weekend and the rest of the week. Screening will stop officially on Sunday, November 28th in the evening. This means that everyone will have full access to high quality versions of all of the screening films for 10 days, 24/7.
The way the Expo is being presented this year is going to be very different from the previous two years. A main goal, in addition to quality films, is to make the Expo attendee’s experiences easier and simpler. If you have a computer, an internet connection and a browser you’ll be able to attend the 2010 Expo.
In order to facilitate this new change in the way we are presenting the Expo, we will be partnering with a number of organizations and people most notablyKen White /TMOA Radioand D.L. Watson /TMU Theater. We’d like to thank Ken and D.L. for helping us in creating a new Expo this year.
Some of the programming we are working on for the 2010 Expo includes:
“Women in Machinima” panel discussion. Chaired by Ingrid Moon
MachinExpo 2010 Awards Ceremony
Screening of Jury Grand Prize Winner
“Sound Design for Machinima” presented by Ricky Grove
“Finding and Creating Music for Your Machinima” with Phil Rice
Muvizu and Reallusion will have booths in Second Life and will also present a video overview of their programs (more tools in the planning stages
And many other events are still in the planning stage including more machinima tool presentations, a “Meet the Machinimators” mixer, a possible “Wolf and Dulci Hour” live show and a conversation with “Classic Machinima Filmmakers” who started the machinima movement years ago, but have moved on become professional Machinimators in the gaming world.
We will be announcing new programming as it’s confirmed and will post a final programming schedule sometime in late August or early September, 2010.
We are very excited about this years Expo. All of the Expo team members are working hard to make this the best Expo yet.
See what I mean? I just love the variety of work here. Thanks to the filmmakers for doing this!
Ok, all the trailers you submit will be displayed in rotation on the Expo site front page, and you’ll be helping to spread the news to the whole Machinima community.
Upload your short to youtube, and add the tag #mexpotrailer
Make is funny, make it sad, enjoy yourself…remember this isn’t a competition!
Entries accepted from now until mid November. Questions? Contact us via the website here and we’ll set you strait.
Here are the guidelines:
Machinexpo 2010 Trailer Guidelines
Concept
use a machinima engine to remake a favourite film or TV moment
for dialogue substitute the word ‘expo’ at vital moment (s)
film need be no more than 30s long, but can be longer
The films will be gathered together in a playlist and used to promote the machinexpo 2010
Help
eg Citizen Kane..sub expo for Rosebud, When Harry met Sally she shouts ‘expo expo expo’ in cafe scene, in Star Trek, Spock could say ‘It’s expo Jim, but not as we know it’, ET would say ‘ET phone expo’.
Subtitles are fine.
Films with no dialogue can use the word ‘expo’ replacing background text, eg in street signs or posters.
If your engine / editor makes it difficult to add logo just use text
Yes, do use your own language, we reach more people that way!
Remember, if you use music, to choose tracks which youtube won’t object to. See Jamendo for some great creative commons music, or have fun making your own.
Use the guidelines as inspiration only , if you get stuck just go with the flow and see what happens!
Note: we’ve updated the Submissions form with a “ticky box” that indicates you have permission to use any non-original music in your film. Here Kate talks about why we’ve decided to do this.
Why the Ticky Box?
Music is an emotive force, and as filmmakers we both share in, and in some ways understand the way music tells a story, though nobody really knows why human beings find it satisfying to empathise, and enter into another emotional world for a while. Anything that we, as humans, experience occurs within a full spectrum. There are peaks, there are most definitely troughs, and most of the time there’s the humdrum of everyday.
For some, music is such a precious resource that any attempts to commercialise or otherwise ‘debase’ the experience are utterly rejected…music should be freely shared, we should rise up and…what do we do next? That bit is always a little vague to me.
How does all this relate to the expo Kate? Do you want us to buy placards and stand outside our local music mega-store shouting “down with capitalism”?
Well, if your music shop is still open and you have a spare afternoon, I can’t really stop you. However in our corner of the UK, the trend is to abandon actual shops and ‘buy it on t’net’.
..and this is the point really. All that free love, er I mean music sharing didn’t seem to count for much when the net was young.Who cares if a few geeks pass on their Alanis Morissette albums, so long as the tills are still ringing on the high street?
..but when the masses left the out of town shopping mauls (sic) and started congregating, and shopping online, the balance shifted.
Music companies overreacted, and they still are. Legal sharks, smelling blood, nosed around in the panic and found a living for themselves. Software companies saw the chance to really knuckle down on those kids posting blurry photos and tinny recordings of their fave band on video sharing sites. We got you, we got you good kid! Ok… and some sensible levelheaded types did quite reasonable things when nasty villains stole their sweat-forged intellectual property (did that get the balance back, are we sued yet?)
The luckier victims, er perpetrators get take down notices, cease and desist orders, and most of the time that’s all that happens, most of the time.
We know you know that when you submit a movie, sorting out the licensing for the music is your responsibility, and so has it always been.
We also know you know that for a long time, machinimators have been able to dodge around the system a little, ‘hey what’s the worst that could happen?’
So we added a ticky box the submission form. So now, you know we know you know, and because we’re no longer sure what exactly is the worst that could happen.
If any films come in with the ticky box ticked ‘yes we own the music’ and it’s kind of obvious that you don’t, then, because we’re nice, and because we love you really, we’ll let you know and you’ll get the chance to resubmit. (You see, I told you we are nice).
The weird thing is, this seeming limitation ends up being exciting, because of how creative you guys are, and due to the vast number of wonderful musicians who exist outside the music system, either giving away their work for free, or offering very reasonable rates for licensing. Here’s a link to a document we’ve created which will help you find music for your machinima film that is legal.
