Many of you will be eagerly watching the blog and asking the big question ‘Am I In?’, so you’ll be glad to know we’ll be sending out personal emails letting you know as soon as the screening team has finished their final sorting process. This is likely to be in around three to four weeks from now.  The email will let you know if your film has been selected or not, and if so, in which category you find yourself. Those movies which make it to the screening group will be shown in full at the festival. Films which are outstanding enough to be considered Jury material will be passed on to an independent group of Judges, chosen from outside the immediate Machinima community. The composition of this jury will be announced shortly.

Before we fall completely into the full furore of pre-festival organisation, this is a great opportunity to thank our screening group for all the hours of work that they dedicate to their task. Since the beginning of June this small group of volunteers have been watching, discussing and assessing submitted films, and this process continues until the end of the month as they catch up with the deadline rush of entries.. The festival would not be possible without their help and continued willingness to give up their time.

We’d like to thank;

Tom Jantol – for his insightful discussion points, and endless dedication to quality.
Dulci – who despite an incredibly busy schedule, still managed to keep on task, and lend us her valuable and unique perspective.
Phil Browne (Biggs Trek) – for his down to earth approach, willingness to be open and commitment to the festival.
Damien Valentine – for his common sense attitude, and straightforward honesty.

and last, but very much not least, the chair of the Screening group Ricky Grove.

Ricky has a complete passion for Machinima film and it is wonderful to hear how excited he is about this year’s submissions.

We’ve been lucky enough to have a screening team who keep turning up, do their job really well with no drama or expectations of reward, and we’re incredibly grateful for that. Their attitude exemplifies the spirit of this community led event.

Thank You Guys !!

-Kate

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 notably Ken White /TMOA Radio and 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:

• Keynote address by Tracy Harwood
• “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.

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

We’ve had some wonderful entries to the Expo and we’d like to thank everyone who took the time to apply and send us your film. When the submission period closes on Oct 13th, we will post those films that we will be screening and take a week or so to determine who will be our jury finalists. Somewhere around the end of October, we will announce those finalist films and send them to our jury to determine the 4 who will receive the Expo jury award. We’ll announce those four films at the Expo on November 9th in a special event.

NEW FILM SUBMISSION DEADLINE IS MIDNIGHT ON OCTOBER 13th.