machinima-for-dummies
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WoW Machinima: The basics
(Dell is holding a machinima contest, which we'll discuss shortly. They asked me to write a tutorial to help new machinimators get their start.)Every day, I feature a video by some brave soul that dived in head first into the world of machinima. For those that aren't familiar with the term, it stands for machine and cinema. The literal definition is movies made in a 3D gaming platform. Using this basic guide, as well as the other tutorials and resources available to you, you'll be creating your first project in no time!Here is what you'll need if you want to make a machinima for free: WeGame camera - A free capturing program GIMP - A free image editing program Audacity - A free audio editing program Windows Movie Maker/iMovie - Free video editing programs that should have come with your appropriate system [Thanks for originally suggesting this, Bryan!] Read on for optional and advanced tools, plus additional resources ...
Cinemassively: Windlight - Fleef's Second Life Sojourn
With Windlight mania turning the heads of even the harshest SL critics (Sorry, Hugh!), it's safe to say that it will become a staple of Second Life Machinima. FLeeF, aka Frank L. Fox, not only managed to capture the beauty of our new skies, but also provided the score for the film! The song, "From Agnes, Flowers," was written for his mother. All together now: "Awwwwwwwww."Previously known for his hilarious Moviestorm film, Morning Run Amok, FLeeF provides great examples of just about every sky preset available, including a wintery blizzard scene. One notable moment offers comic relief - the blinging snowman towards the end. He also highlights some of SL's great architectural feats, like the Ivory Tower of Primitives. If you've been skeptical about trying Windlight, this video may seal the deal![Via Machinima for Dummies]
Bloodspell feature length released
Just in case you weren't at the Machinima Europe Festival the other weekend, you might like to know: Bloodspell is out. The feature-length machinima film (created with Neverwinter Nights) has been released, in both streaming and downloadable versions. The film was released by machinimakers Strange Company, who have also worked in Azeroth before. And two of them, founder Hugh Hancock and Johnnie Ingram, were nice enough to sit down and chat with us about Bloodspell, the future of Machinima, and their new book, Machinima for Dummies.Still no word on the Bloodspell DVD, which we were told was going to be released as a downloadable disk with all kinds of commentaries and extras. Strange Company only says that it is still coming, in the next two or three months. And if you can't bear to watch anything that hasn't been created in WoW, there's good news for you, too-- Hugh tells us that he is planning to work on more WoW machinima soon.
Machinima Europe nominees announced
Lots of good news recently on the WoW Machinima front -- both for fans and artists. First, we had Blizzard's recent "open letter" to the machinimators of Warcraft letting them know just what they can and can't get away with. In that, they also offered a contact to the artists on how to get more information if the letter wasn't good enough to codify things. Follow that with some fabulous new machinima out recently from Oxhorn, Baron Soosdon, and many others.And then we see on the Machinima for Dummies blog, and in a great tip mail from Hugh, that Machinima Europe has announced their nominees for this year. Among the many entries from all across the world are a few solid entries from WoW! In the "Best Commercial/Game" category, we have 4 commercials for MtvU by Oxhorn. Later down the page we see that Oxhorn has received another nomination for yet another machinima -- Hark! Hear the Wails in the "Best Sound" category. Further down we see the third and final WoW nomination into this years' Machinima Europe awards, Azerothian Super Villains (Episode 3) by Ian Beckman. Hopefully they both will come away with awards and even more recognition for their fabulous creativity. Best of luck to all of the nominees this year, but especially to our WoW machinimators -- without whom, WoW Moviewatch (and many lunch-hour viewings) wouldn't be possible. [Thanks, Hugh!]
Blizzard outlines 'acceptable use' for machinima
One of the things that I learned last weekend at Dragon*Con was a great deal more about machinima than I'd ever really known before. Sure, I've got FRAPS, and I've tried to make cool music videos too. Then I realized that I'd need something more interesting than my Tauren Druid running around to my favorite Rush song. So my dreams of making machinima went by the wayside, best left to the machinimators with that little thing called "talent." One of the things that I always wondered about was just precisely what you could and couldn't get away with in regards to making films using World of Warcraft. After all, the characters on my account are Blizzard's IP. I could argue about not being paid for it, but I've always been curious about the larger legal issues involved. Blizzard has finally put out what they consider to be their acceptable use policies in regards to machinima created using Blizzard's IP. After listening to the talk that Matt Kelland and Clint Hackleman gave during the Machinima 101 panel at Dragon*Con, I'm pretty happy to see that Blizzard has taken such a step to reach out to the community. This open letter lets artists know they have the potential ability to get licenses to show their work, and just how much commercial "sponsorship" is acceptable. It also defines where many of the boundaries are (for example their edict that movie/video content remain consistent with World of Warcraft's "T" rating) that I feel will hopefully help to clear some things up on where the artists stand in all of this legally.For those of you who are budding machinimators, check out Blizzard's open letter. It's fairly straightforward reading, and they've gone so far as to put a contact email address in for specific concerns not outlined in their letter. With these guidelines in hand, hopefully artists will feel free to go in even more creative directions in the future.[via Hugh "Nomad" Hancock, author of Machinima for Dummies]
