The basic idea behind the video presentations was to present a short (yeah, right..) introduction to the topic or machinima program being presented. We wanted a simple presentation on how a particular program works or what the basics are for a topic like “Sound Design” or “Writing Scripts for Machinima”. What emerged was better than I expected: a range of approaches that range from the pro-style video created by Indy Liu for Voovees Director to the personal video essay created by machinima writer Kate Lee of Chatnoir Studios.

Our thanks to all of the presenters for the time and effort put into making these vids and for being present at the Expo to answer questions live.

The main archive for the videos is here: 2010 Machinima Expo Presentation Reel

The individual presentations were:

-Voovees Director by Indy Liu

-The Movies by Killian

-Introduction to Muvizu by Barry Sheridan

-GMOD (Gary’s Mod for Half Life 2 by Harrison Heller

-Second Life by Pooky Amsterdam

-Sound Design for Machinima by Ricky Grove

-Writing Scripts for Machinima by Kate Lee

Jury Grand Prize

UNHEIMLICHE

Directed by Pierre Gaudillere, Thomas Van Lissum,
Oliver Delbos, Audrey Le Roy & Jonnathan Mutton

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Jury Prize

CLOCKWISE, PART 1

Directed by Harrison Heller

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Jury Prize

SUCCESS BEGETS SUCCESS

Directed by Freeta Kayo

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Jury Prize

TERRA

Directed by Rod Pulsar

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Latin/Spanish Jury Prize

JONATHAN JEKILL

Directed by Carlos Leal Rodriguez

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Special Contributors Awards

Phil Rice

D.L. Watson

For their contributions to promote
and support the Machinima community at large.

You can download the PDF of the Machinima Expo Schedule HERE

Note: Access to films and live events is mainly through our web portal at www.machinima-expo.com or through live video feed at various locations in the virtual world of Second Life. Links to those locations are listed at the web portal listed above.

ALL TIMES ARE PACIFIC/LOS ANGELES TIME ZONE

Friday, November 19th

-Final Dress Rehearsal.
Screening Reels start up.
-Booths start up (in Second Life)
-All Second Life locations open during
rehearsal.

Saturday, November 20th

9am Awards Ceremony
(Ricky and Kate)

930am Screen Grand Jury Prize Winner
-Conversation with Director of Grand Jury Prize

1000am Meet the Filmmakers
-Introduction of showcase artists Jorge Campos & Legs Machinima + short interviews with filmmakers Freeta Kayo (Success Begets Success), Carlos Alberto Leal Rodriguez, (Jonathan Jekill), Eddie Duggan (Looking for the Truth) & Maxime Lebled (Ghosts)

11am Keynote Address w/Tracey Harwood

1130am A Conversation with Tracey Harwood & Henry Lowood

1200pm –ONE HOUR BREAK–

1pm Women in Machinima Panel
-Ingrid Moon (chair) , Pooky Amsterdam, Lucinda McNary,Freeta Kayo & Squirrelygirl

200pm Classic Machinima Talk (Video + Panel)

-w/Henry Lowood, Phil Rice, Ben Grussi)

300pm The Wolf and Dulci Show LIVE

4pm Closing Party at Hathead’s Terrace in Second Life.

Sunday, November 21st

900am Voovees Director Presentation (Video + Live Q&A)
-w/Indy Liu & Simone Gale

930am The Movies Presentation (Video + Live Q&A)
-w/Killian

1000am Muvizu Presentation (Video + Live Q&A)
-w/Vince Ryan & Barry Sheridan

1030am Moviestorm Presentation (Video + Live Q&A
-w/Matt Kelland

1100am Gary’s Mod/HL2 Presentation (Video + Live Q&A)
-w/Harrison Heller

1130am Reallusion iClone presentation (Video + Live Q&A)
-w/John Martin II

1200pm –ONE HOUR BREAK–

100pm Second Life presentation (Video + Live Q&A)
-w/Pooky Amsterdam

130pm Sound Design for Machinima (Video + Live Q&A)
-w/Ricky Grove

230pm Writing and Adapting Scripts for Machinima (Videos+ Live Q&A)
-w/Joseph Kwong, Todd Stallkamp, Kate Lee

330pm Closing Remarks w/Ricky,Kate & Phil

4pm Closing party at Hathead’s Terrace in SL.

Sunday, November 28th

-Booths Close
-Screening Reels close.

Note: -Times are all listed as Pacific Time (Los Angeles)

-A time zone converter (courtesy of Russell Boyd) is at: http://machinexpo2010.blogspot.com/

-Follow the whole event live at the machinima-expo.com portal or join us and your friends in second life. Locatations slurls are available at the machinima-expo.com web portal under the
“locations” tab.

-Watch our blog http://machiniplex.net/expo/ and twitter http://twitter.com/machinexpo feed for up to the minute news and late breaking announcements. Hashtag for twitter is #machinexpo

-Booths for our sponsor (Muvizu, Moviestorm, Voovees and Reallusion are located in Second Life. See web portal for slurl

So we noted exceptional scenes in those films that didn’t qualify as full screeners and came up with 30 hand-picked scenes from over 200 films submitted to the Expo this year. And what I particularly like about these scenes are how different they are from each other and how imaginative they are. Plus, there are some very strange moments in these scenes some of which are my favorites from any of the films submitted this year.

Our congratulations to those filmmakers chosen this year. We hope that our support of your work will encourage you to create more films in the future.

The 2010 Machinima Expo Highlight Reel films are:

ABDUCTED by Logan Payne

All Inclusive by Luca van Grinsven & Graham Fitzgerlad

Blood of Ghosts by Nicole Small & Alexandra Burnell

The Comeback by Paul Carr

Cube is Safe by NicoleX

The Disease: Bloody Mountain in Happy Mood by Ole Etzel

The Doomed Highway by James Potts

The Dragon Slain by Turlough Kelly

El Giafaron – An Incongruent Truth by Laurina Hawks

F.B.I. The Movie – Family Differences by Steven Gekas

Fire Quest by Larkworthy Antfarm

Gene Williams -Heroes! by Gene Williams

The Homecoming by LividEye Yoshikawa

I Surrender by Toxic Menges

Lutte Fratricide

Looking for the Truth

mAdvertising by Pooky Amsterdam & robwag Soothsayer

Mass Force – Fallen Angel by Colin Cooper

The Medium is the Message by Celestial Elf

RAGE by Logan Payne

Screaming in Agony by Crettex

S.A.B – Senior Avatar Bitchin by Xerras Azalee

Shadows of Dalaran City by Crettex

Some Days by Tommaso Palermo

Sting of the Scorpion, Part 1 by Faires Rivers

The Temple by David Moss

Two Friends One Festival Zero Ideas by Steven Gekas

Virtue for Vengeance by Aaron Jeans

Muvizu is pleased to announce a machinima film compeition co-produced with the MachinExpo 2010 gang . Being the new kids on the block, we’re relieved that the choice of prizes and the whole judging process are also being handled by the Expo organisers. Thanks especially to Ricky on this count.

Anyhow, this is the deal: we’d like entrants to submit a video, of any length but animated in Muvizu, on the general theme of “Holiday Hell” (any holiday is acceptable). What was the worst holiday you’ve ever had? Well, make a film in Muivizu about it!

Clips may be post-processed and effects added using whatever software you fancy, but we are interested in entrants trying to showcase what can be done in Muvizu – the more you push its limits the better. We’d love to see your experiments. Combine live-action with Muvizu, silhouette animation, abstract animation, David Lynch-style films; anything you can imagine!

$2,000+ in Prizes will be offered and, boy, are they swell:

Entries for the competition must be published on the Muvizu site and the film link sent to the Expo by midnight GMT on December 10.

…psssst! Hey, kid, come here a minute:

if you stop by the Muvizu Second Life booth during the Expo on Nov 20th, 21st, there will be a special content pack for the Holiday Hell Muvizu contest. Remember: only those who stop by the Muvizu booth will have access to this custom content. Stay tuned here and at Muvizu.com for the link to the Muvizu booth in Second Life.

A question I’m being asked frequently these days and a topic I’d like to return to from time to time as the pre-festival preparations swing into action.

Let’s start with the simple stuff: Tell your friends.

The net can be as disconnected as it is empowering. Your best friend may visit the same forums, share a group of online buddies and still not pick up those vital bulletins that seem so obvious to you.

-Following the Machinexpo twitterfeed?  Retweet anything your followers might be interested in.

-Notice an Expo related topic on Facebook?  Click ‘like’ and the message is shared with anyone watching your newsfeed.

-See a forum topic about the Expo?  Respond, and that thread becomes a new post and will be more likely to be seen.

-So you want us to Spam in a good cause, Kate? Not exactly! People soon switch off if they are getting the same message a hundred times a day.

-Intelligent and discriminating spamming then? Let’s call it sharing a good thing.

-Kate

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!

Phil and Ricky mull over Expo 2010 in Ohio

An excellent meeting yesterday (Sunday, April 18th) to get the ball rolling for Expo 2010. We had a great group of volunteers show up with lots of very good ideas. In fact the meeting was so constructive we were able to make several major decisions regarding how we will present this years Expo. I’d like to thank all of those who attended for taking the time to help us transition the Expo from a two-man team to a larger group effort which was one of the main objectives we had this year: give more responsibility to volunteer staff.

Another decision we made was that the Expo this year will be a two-day event (Saturday and Sunday) at a date in November. The advantages of a two day festival are obvious: increased attendance, better time zone management, more films to view and more events to program. This decision came out of a desire to improve the quality of the event for attendees. We want it to be simpler and easier to see films, participate in events and make friends.

We have also decided that this years Expo will be programmed sequentially (no simultaneous events will be scheduled) and will be a cross-platform, decentralized event. This means that in order to combat lag in Second Life we will design a custom HUD which will allow users to easily transport to different Sims, listen to local or main audio for the programming and watch films all inside of the HUD. And while we feel Second Life is the best location for the Expo, we plan on creating an internet portal for programming and content, so you don’t have to use Second Life to enjoy the Expo.

And finally we feel that we absolutely must increase the viewing quality of the films we are presenting at the Expo. In order to do this we will be streaming the video from outside of Second Life which will enable us to provide very high quality video. We hope to partner with TMOA Radio to help provide this new method of presenting our Expo content.

A motley crew of volunteers will make Expo 2010 shine

Entries for MachinExpo 2010 will be earlier than in previous years and we will deadline the submissions sooner in order to provide quality presentation at the Expo and to allow for more promotion of the films screening and the jury films as well.

All in all, this should be an amazing year for the Expo. Stay tuned for more announcements and info in the coming weeks.

PS for those who might be interested in listening to the audio from Sunday’s meeting you can do so here:

Audio from Expo 2010 planning meeting on 4/18/2010

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 publicly announce them in small groups over the next several weeks. Today, we are listing 10 more machinima films we think should be screened at the Expo. 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 second 10 films we will be screening:

-”All the Little Fishies” by Toxic Menges

-”The Body is Obsolete: Stelarc Performance” by Chantal Harvey

-”Chanel Untold” by Hardy Capo

-”Coming Home” by Lizard

-”Dignity of Men” by Kate Lee

-”Erlkonig” by Ciskovan

-”Heightfever” by Luca van Grinsven

-”Pinhead: In the S***” by afterThought

-”Lights Drive My Soul” by Donald Rack

-”To My Beloved” by Cecil Hirvi

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