Tuesday, September 7th at 12PM Pacific Time

In addition, we have decided to extend the submission period for the Spanish/Latin entries to Tuesday, September 14th at 12PM Pacific Time. We feel that because we added Spain and Portugal several weeks after submissions started, it’s only fair to those Spanish and Latin machinima directors to have a bit more time than everyone else.

The Expo has received well over 130 entries to date and are very pleased with the quality of the submissions. We plan on announcing the films that will screen at the Expo along with those films which we will send on to our Jury sometime in September. We are also planning a surprise announcement about a new category of film screening at the Expo this year. More info to come.

-Ricky

The MachinExpo 2010 promises to be the biggest and most exciting one yet. We are solely focused on two goals this year: to present the best machinima films we can find at the highest quality and to open the audience for the Expo to include anyone with a computer and a net browser. We want this year’s Expo to be easy to attend and simple to get around. It will take a lot of work, but we have a staff of over 15 now and we are very excited about what’s coming.

We’ll start the ball rolling with opening submissions to the 2010 Expo film festival on June 1st. We will continue to accept submissions of machinima films until August 31st, 2010. We decided to start the submission process a little earlier this year, so we could incorporate the goal of higher quality screening and figure out technical issues. We’ll also be announcing the new category of film award for this years Expo on June 1st and will have more information on the guidelines, which have changed just a bit.

So stay tuned and on June 1st and we’ll provide the guidelines, application forms and comment on some of the new ideas we have for the festival this year!

This Sunday, November 15th, from 9Am to 12AM (Pacific Time), we will hold a Technical Rehearsal for all MachinExpo 2009 participants. If you are presenting or on a panel, please make time in your schedule to come to this rehearsal. We’ll be going over the programming schedule and telling you how everything will work technically. You’ll have a chance to check your mic and headset, test the “power point” application Phil has set up for presenters and get a feel for the space.

This is especially important for newbies to Second Life. We’ll be able to help you out with learning how to move around and communicate. We might even set up a big “shopping trip” in case anyone wants to spruce up their avatars a bit.

It should be a lot of fun. So PLEASE come to this rehearsal even if it’s only for 15 minutes as it will make a big difference in how smoothly the Expo runs on Nov 22nd.

The event takes place on an island in Second Life owned (and graciously loaned to us) by UCS (University Campus Suffolk). Here is the slurl (once you click this link, it will open your SL application and take you to a page that you click again to transport to the location)

http://slurl.com/secondlife/UCSville/60/173/25/

You may have to log in in order to travel to the island.

Once you are there, look for a large building (the island is small) which is where we will be going over the programming schedule. If you arrive late, you can contact either myself or Phil. My in world name is

gtoon Jun

and Phil’s is

Sol Bartz

Also, if you need to convert your time zone, here is a nice time coverter you can use:

http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/converter.html

Hope to see you there!

Ricky/Phil

We still have the Jury films and the Asian films left to announce (which we will in the next several days), so if your film is not listed here, there is still a chance it may be on the Jury or Asian list of films. Our sincere thanks to all those who submitted.

Also, we have created a separate page on our new Machinima Expo called “Films Screening at the Expo” (clumsy, but accurate) where you can see the list with a screen cap from each film which is linked to the location where the film can be viewed. They are listed in alphabetical order by title

Phil, Damien, Ingrid and I would like to thank the Machinima community for responding so strongly to our festival. We really appreciate the support.

Here is the final group of films we will be screening:

-”Ad Hominem Attack” by Jorge Campos

-”Cloud Angel” by IceAxe

-”DoubleKill: Jess” by Dave Tyner

-”Elegantly Forbidden” by Cecil Hirvi

-”Escape – chapter_11 from DREAM ON/OFF movie” by cisko vandeverre

-”Indiana Jones and the Gray Ghost” by Wayne Poe

-”re: Your Brains by Jonathan Coulton” by John Norton

-”Rise” by Brian Mayberry

-”Rising Stasis” by James D. Holbrook

-”the Graveyard” Claus-Dieter Schulz

-”What is Second Life? (For Linden Lab Website)” by Kerria Seabrooke

Rather than list all of the screeners at one time, we are going to announce them in small groups over the next several weeks. Today, we are listing 10 machinima films we think should be screened at the Expo. As we confirm more screeners, we’ll announce them here. Remember, if your film isn’t listed here it might be on the next round.

Also, we have created a separate page on our new Machinima Expo called “List of Films Screening at the Machinima Expo” (clumsy, but accurate) where you can see the list with a screen cap from each film which is linked to the location where the film can be viewed. Of course, any filmmaker who gave us a private link to a film not yet released to the public, we will keep that link private.

Phil, Damien, Ingrid and I would like to thank the Machinima community for responding so strongly to our festival. We really appreciate the support.

Here are the first 10 films we’ve decided to screen:

-”anonymous (Part 1) by Jorge Campos

-”Daddy is Home” by James Thorpe

-”Friend” by Layne

-”Hello” by Azmira Jamlus

-”Le Terroriste” by Olibith

-”Moordenar [0] What Came Before” by Anima Technica

-”Ptolemy’s Blues” by Harvey LaReau

-”7 Keys” by Casper

-”The Shadow Over Innsmouth” by Joseph Kwong

-”Welcome to the Desert of the Real” by Paolo Pedercini

Congratulations to the filmmakers and thank you for submitting your film.

Phil, Damien and I are proud to announce that the 2009 Machinima Expo will take place on Sunday, November 22 from 9AM (Pacific Time) to 2PM (Pacific Time) on the University Campus Suffolk’s island in the virtual World of Second Life. We’ve done our best to set a time that most people in northern hemisphere times zones could accommodate. Here’s a time converter if you want to see what the Expo event times will be in your time zone:

Time Zone Converter

MachiniExpo 2009 is being produced with the assistance of the University Campus Suffolk http://www.ucs.ac.uk. University Campus Suffolk (UCS) is a unique collaboration between the University of East Anglia and the University of Essex. UCS was created in August 2007 in order to establish a university campus in Suffolk, UK. The UCS island in Second Life is a teaching and learning resource available to staff and students in the School of Arts & Humanities.

When we put out the word we were looking for a space to hold the 2nd Expo event, Eddie Dugan, Senior Teaching Practitioner in the School of Arts and Humanities (and who teaches a course in machinima at UCS) contacted us and offered the school’s facilities in Second Life along with assistance in producing the festival.

We will be screening a selection of UCS student machinima films as part of our screening series and there will be several UCS students on hand as helpers and assistants at the festival. You’ll recognize them by the special t-shirts they’ll be wearing (or perhaps an unusual hat?).

After an extensive tour of the UCS island in Second Life, we are excited at how well the structures will fit with our Expo program. There is a large, three story building with open interiors for information areas, panels/presentations, screening sessions and even a top floor lounge for folks who want to talk and drink fun virtual cocktails. Here are a few pictures:

There’s also a wonderful structure just off of the island. You can see the stone walkway that leads to this cabin in the above photo. Some very smart person set the stones just under the level of the water so that the walk to the cabin is very pleasant aesthetically.

This cabin is very much like a 50’s style bachelor pad all decorated in bright colors and square furniture. Lovely views of the ocean expanse all around and an especially beautiful view of the UCS campus building on the island. Phil and I spent a lot of time here mulling over logistics and debating programming. Here’s a shot of our mull session (I’m away from the camera; Phil is closest with his legs inside of the couch)

And here is the bachelor cabin from a view a little further away. Man, I just love flying in Second Life. We awer planning a very special event to take place here. One that we will be announcing soon. There will be a very slight re-design of the space to accommodate the programming.

Many thanks to Eddie, his students and co-workers for offering to help and then for working with us to make the Expo happen. We’ll be announcing the programming and the first round of film screenings on this blog very soon.

Reallusion, the makers of iClone 4 and Crazy Talk 6, have agreed to sponser the Machinima Expo this year. In addition to logistical support, they have graciously provided prizes for all the main competition categories. Here’s a breakdown:

• Jury Grand Prize(1):  iClone 4 Pro + Crazy Talk 6 Pro

• Jury Prizes (5):    iClone 4 Standard

• Asian Jury Prize(1):  Crazy Talk 6 Standard

If you don’t know Reallusion or their products, they’ve been involved in the Machinima community for several years now. Always supportive, they offer tools for the Machinima filmmaker that extremely useful. IClone 4 (to be released in Sept., ‘09) will be their best Machinima creation tool to date. For more information on Reallusion, IClone 4 and Crazy Talk, check their website and weekly blog or click the Reallusion logo at the top of this post.

Our sincere thanks to John Martin and Charles Chen (CEO) at Reallusion for making this possible. Your support for our Machinima festival is deeply appreciated.

-Ricky Grove

-Phil Rice

-Damien Valentine

The decision process for choosing which films to screen is hard to describe. We approached it systematically and went through several phases of comments and cuts. There were so many good films submitted that towards the end we found it difficult to decide. In the end, though, it really comes down to our collective taste in films. Another 4 people would have come up with a different list of films to screen.

We sincerely thank everyone who submitted a film to the Expo. Especially the late submissions that came in after we had to cancel the 3-day Montreal live event. We appreciate your faith in us. We took our responsibility seriously and are proud to screen each of these excellent films.

(Note: these films will screen in addition to the Jury nominated films. We will have a special theater for the screenings. We will post a schedule at the Expo with the approximate time each film is screening)

The Films:

Film Title: The Abyss Within Us
Director(s): Bettina Bröckers, David Riedel

Film Title: Alice
Director(s): Christina Bryan

Film Title: Apocalypsis Ex Machina
Director(s): Andrze Kozlowski

Film Title: Apology
Director(s): Phil Rice

Film Title: The Ballad of Black Mesa
Director(s): Zachariah Scott

Film Title: The Ballad of the Noob
Director(s): Jun Falkenstein

Film Title: Boomerang
Director(s): Aaron Jeans

Film Title: Clockwork
Director(s): Harrison Heller

Film Title: Combine Nation, Episodes 1-2
Director(s): Zachariah Scott

Film Title: CSI:NY Virtual Experience Teaser
Director(s): Kerria Seabrooke

Film Title: The Death of Jar Jar (Supreme Edition)
Director(s): Damien Valentine

Film Title: Desassossego
Director(s): C. D. Schulz

Film Title: DoubleKill
Director(s): David Tyner

Film Title: Faith Hope and Charity
Director(s): Russell Boyd, Michael Lockhart, Neil Pugh, Sjon Stevens, James Thorpe, Bruce Wallace, Steve Worsley, Jose Vallejo-Neumann, Bob Van Natter

Film Title: Galaxy Gulp
Director(s): Ross Scott

Film Title: Half-Life 2 Anxiety & Nightmare (Hitchcock Meets HL2, double feature)
Director(s): Kevin Cianek aka Xanatos

Film Title: Jill’s Song
Director(s): Zachariah Scott

Film Title: Mercy of the Sea
Director(s): J. Joshua Diltz

Film Title: Morning Run Amok
Director(s): Frank L. Fox

Film Title: The National Discovery
Director(s): Fatoux Philippe (Olibith)

Film Title: A Noticeable Change
Director(s): John McCaleb

Film Title: Patchie Chronicles
Director(s): John Hsu, Epla Hsieh, Outy Yang

Film Title: Play It Again, Carl
Director(s): Frank L. Fox

Film Title: Poets in a Blues Mood
Director(s): JJ Webb

Film Title: Radiohead: Bodysnatchers
Director(s): Phil Rice

Film Title: The Return of the Revenge of Dr. Mechanico
Director(s): Jun Falkenstein

Film Title: Rusty Whispers: Dennis
Director(s): Robert Stoneman

Film Title: Snacky’s Journal, Episodes 1-3
Director(s): Jun Falkenstein

Film Title: Screen Scenes
Director(s): Frank L. Fox

Film Title: Star Wars: Darkness Unleashed
Director(s): Damien Valentine

Film Title: The Terrible Old Man
Director(s): Phil Browne

Film Title: Tokyo Tales – The Lecher Story
Director(s): Paul Carr

Film Title: A Touch Too Much
Director(s): Bill Klimke

Film Title: Turbulence
Director(s): J.Rojas

Film Title: Videotape
Director(s): Britt Snel

Film Title: War of the Servers
Director(s): Robert Stoneman

Film Title: Zombie Flick
Director(s): Wayne Poe

Here are the 2008 Machinima Expo jurors:

Armand Constantine

Armand is a graduate of the Professional Program in    Screenwriting at UCLA. He’s worked as a writer on such games as Far Cry 2, Rogue Warrior and Saboteur. His short fiction has appeared in various literary magazines and he is currently at work on a novel. Armand lives and works in Los Angeles.

Matt Kelland

Matt Kelland is the creative director of Moviestorm, a free machinima software program that has been in development for several years. Before that…well, there is no “before that”. Matt refuses to acknowledge any pre-Moviestorm existence. He does read a lot and is a film buff. He suggests that we all go and read Alan Moore’s “Promethea” Chapter VI.

Isabelle Arvers

Isabelle Arvers is a french new media curator, critic and author, specializing in video and computer games, web animation and digital cinema. Recent projects: No fun games and the gaming experience, Bergen Norway, 2005; Mal au Pixel, Paris, France, 2006; Articule 3, emerging swiss creation, Annecy, France, 2007

Joey O’Bryan

Joey O’bryan is a professional screenwriter whose picture is a hard one to track down. His screenplay for Full Time Killer was made into a very successful (and tre cool) Hong Kong film directed by Johnny To and starting Andy Lau. He has written for video games and is currently working on the American version of the Japanese film “Wicked City”.

Ben Grussi

Ben is one of the founding fathers of machinima having gone back to the time when bicycles where used to keep the energy going to the computer. He has forgotten more than I’ll ever know about the history of machinima. His massive history of machinima, game by game is still ongoing. He likes to read a lot, too.

I’d like to thank all of the jurors for being a part of this machinima festival. There are some incredible films submitted to the Expo. I think the jurors are going to have a hard time choosing.