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Killzone 2 behind the scenes episode 2 released
"You're not welcome here." That's the message Guerilla Games is trying to send to you all throughout Killzone 2, according to the various members of the team who speak in this second episode of the behind-the-scenes documentary. They discuss the world of Helghan, the ideology of its people and how that's reflected in the architecture. Check out the video after the break to hear it and to see some more in-game footage. It won't tide you over until the game's release this Friday, but it's a start.
Killzone 2 documentary, part one
SCEE has released (via ThreeSpeech) the first part of a behind-the-scenes Killzone 2 documentary, which focuses on the atmosphere of Helghan and player-immersion. Various members of the development team, Guerrilla Games, are seen describing the game while apparently in Helghan -- some classy special effects guys! There's also plenty of gameplay and cutscene footage without their ugly mugs transposed over top. Find the first video after the break. The second part will be released on Monday.
Mac founding-fathers appear at Welcome to Macintosh screening
This year at Macworld 2009, two documentary films about the Mac held screenings. While we didn't have anyone on-site at MacHEADS, a few of us were fortunate enough to attend Thursday night's screening of Welcome to Macintosh. Welcome to Macintosh, a documentary by Josh Rizzo and Rob Baca, chronicles the history of Apple and the Mac, using interviews with the people and the users that were there. Tony Walla contributed a great piece about the film last April, which fills in more background. While the film is amazing (the DVD is available now and it is chock-full of awesome), the discussion after the screening was truly magical. Five of the participants from the film, along with Very Special Guest, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, appeared on-stage and answered questions from the crowd. (See the Woz answer our own Mike Rose's question here) Read on for more historic geekiness...%Gallery-41649%
Arcade documentary Chasing Ghosts now showing on Showtime
We wrote about the fantabulous arcade documentary Chasing Ghosts: Beyond the Arcade when it premiered at Sundance in 2007, and we featured interviews with director Lincoln Ruchti and producer Mark Verrachia. It's been a long road for the film -- which was playing in Park City against The King of Kong at Slamdance -- but now you can finally see it.Chasing Ghosts is on Showtime this month -- in HD, no less -- and has three more showings through the end of December. Set your DVRs for "capture" and have yourself a little screening party. It's well worth seeing and features everyone's favorite/most hated gamer, Billy Mitchell. With any luck, we'll see this on Netflix or DVD soon, because playing this on your Xbox 360 or PS3 will surely make the space-time continuum fold in on itself.
First Star Wars: The Old Republic video offering now available!
As promised yesterday, the first video offering from the Star Wars: The Old Republic team is now available! Though it's only about five minutes, it offers a ton of great insight into what BioWare and LucasArts will be offering with this title. There's no obvious new information, but there are a bunch of subtle hints about what we might expect to see this ambitious MMO experience. Whether mictrotransactional or not, this game is going to be a one-of-a-kind offering for the genre ... and here's your chance to see the first footage! Click on through below the cut for the first video offering from Star Wars: The Old Republic, and then head over to our quickie feature pulling apart the details of the video.%Gallery-35034%
A first look at SWTOR's in-game footage coming tomorrow
LucasArts and BioWare have just announced that their first video documentary for Star Wars: The Old Republic will be posted on that game's official website tomorrow, December 12th. There is no mention of an exact time, but you can bet fans of this upcoming mega MMO will be watching intently. Ladies and Gentlemen, man your refresh buttons!This video is said to show an overview of the game and provide the public with its first look at actual in-game footage. In the meantime, if you'd like to get caught up on the progress of the game, you can check out our SWTOR screenshot gallery linked below, as well as our complete coverage of the game as it stands so far.%Gallery-35033%
'Welcome to Macintosh' DVD available for pre-order
Welcome to Macintosh, a documentary film by Rob Baca and Josh Rizzo that covers the history and community behind the Mac phenomenon, is available for pre-order on DVD. The DVD costs $19.84. Cute. Billed as "the first documentary of its kind," the film explores the early years at Apple through interviews with observers and former employees of the company, such as Guy Kawasaki, Andy Hertzfeld, Ron Wayne, John Moltz, and Leander Kahney. The DVD has three additional hours of footage beyond the 83-minute movie. Quantities, according to the official site, are limited, and orders will ship mid-December. Thanks Tony W.! [Via Cult of Mac.]
WoW Moviewatch: What Happens in Booty Bay Stays in Booty Bay
(Warning: This video contains some harsh language.)Just in time for the weekend, like a quick junket to Vegas,we offer a movie called What Happens in Booty Bay Stays in Booty Bay. The filmmaker, Brigitte Swiftblade, calls this an "RP documentary." I love this format; it's very original. Since she's playing on an RP server, she decides to follow around her pal, Zaitzegrait, and film the consequences while he tries to meet chicks in Booty Bay. Apparently Zait is quite a famous character in Trade chat (US Twisting Nether-A), so it's like she picked a celebrity for a reality show. And, in a way, a "reality show" is really what this movie is since Zait is the only one who knows why the little Dwarf Rogue is following him around so closely. (Her POV is the camera's eye.) Everyone else plays their part to perfection, albeit unbeknownst to them. The subtitles offer insight into the documentary setup and a running non-RP commentary on the action -- or Zait's lack thereof. The result is a very humorous, original movie that contains themes of love, betrayal, honor, and cross-faction hanky-panky. I would love to see more of this kind of documentary movie-making from role-players![Via WarcraftMovies]If you have any suggestions for WoW Moviewatch, you can mail them to us at machinima AT wowinsider DOT com.Previously on Moviewatch ...
Joystiq review: E-@thletes
Televised professional gaming, for a variety of reasons, has never had much success here in North America. After last night, I feel like I know the secret to making pro-gaming a phenomenon: Make it exactly like E-@thletes, a new documentary that follows two teams of pro-gamers as they battle through a year and a half of tournaments.Over director Jonathan Boal's 75-minute film, you'll became acquainted with Team 3D and Complexity, two gaming squads that (in 2006 at least) always seemed to end up facing each other for the top prize. Their game of choice is Counter-Strike. In fact, other games hardly get so much as a mention.
Nerdcore Rising will have its west coast premiere at PAX
Warning! There's an expletive-filled trailer below for the film Nerdcore Rising. It also features people binge drinking Yoo-Hoo, just so we have full disclosure. If you haven't heard about the movie before, it's a documentary that follows MC Frontalot on his first national tour as he goes from South Carolina to last year's PAX, where he was captured on film by our own Christopher Grant.Nerdcore, which is trying hard to become its own genre of music, features songs about everything from Dungeons & Dragons to 8-bit video games, and the film explores what that's all about with Frontalot, his band, and several other Nerdcore artists. The film premiered at SXSW in Austin earlier this year, but PAX gets the goodness of the first-ever west coast showing of the flick this Saturday at 4pm. Head below the break to see the special PAX trailer for the movie, created by director Negin Farsad and MC Frontalot himself.
Razor Digital reveals new line of Blu-ray documentaries
We'd say Discovery still has the whole "pretty Blu-ray" thing all wrapped up, but Razor Digital's looking to get a piece of the pie with its latest lineup of Blu-ray documentaries. By teaming with MagicPlay, the outfit has re-mastered a number of pieces originally shot on 70-millimeter film and released in IMAX in order to wow consumers in their own homes. The new flicks include Bears, Wolves, Ocean Oasis, Great North, Guge: The Lost Kingdom of Tibet and Emperor of the Seas. Best of all, they each retail for under $24.99, so fetching some new showcase material won't completely shatter the bank.
Cinemassively: Our Brilliant Second Life
While a lot of news reports focus on the breaking up of real marriages because of Second Life, a surprising amount of partners actually log in together. One couple, Blair Fizz and Alegria Garden, were in a documentary, Our Brilliant Second Life, last year. Created by Mixin Pixel to show a different side to virtual relationships, it ended up being shown at the Aspen Shortsfest in 2007!If you have machinima or movie suggestions from any MMO, please send them to machinima AT massively DOT com, along with any information you might have about them.
Interview with MacHeads director Kobi Shely
Back in January, we told you about MacHeads: The Movie, an upcoming documentary about Mac freaks fans from brothers Kobi and Ron Shely. It looks to do for Mac people what Trekkies did for obsessive Star Trek nerds. Apparently the brothers Shely have finished the movie, and Gizmodo's got a nice interview with Kobi Shely about the moviemaking process and the choice of subject. The filmmakers are planning to make the movie available through "community distribution"...and of course, they want to get it on iTunes.
50 years of NASA footage hits Discovery in HD this summer
Sure now we get live HD from the ISS like it's nothing, but much of the last half century of space exploration has never been seen by most in anything other than grainy analog broadcasts. That'll change in June once When We Left Earth: The NASA Missions debuts on Discovery Channel, drawing from more than 150 hours of NASA footage, called a cross between The Right Stuff and EHD fave Planet Earth. The Orlando Sentinel mentions the new doc is part of a push to ensure funding to speed further space explorations, as long as they provide more great HD opportunities we're all for it. Look for the Blu-ray boxed set July 24 for $79.95.
Cinemassively: The making of BloodSpell
While Neverwinter Nights wasn't quite an MMO, players were able to host up to 64 people at once on a home server. It was also extremely customizable in a way that few MMOs allowed for. That's why it served as the medium of choice for veteran machinimator Hugh Hancock to create his feature-length machinima, BloodSpell.Making a feature-length anything isn't easy. It requires a lot of planning, time, dedication, and a large cast of supporting players. Hugh has been releasing documentaries once a week that go over everything from concept to development to preproduction, all the way to finish. These short films are extremely helpful to any aspiring machinimator plotting a large-scale project! For more information, check out the BloodSpell blog.If you have machinima or movie suggestions from any MMO, please send them to machinima AT massively DOT com, along with any information you might have about them.
Cinemassively: i.Mirror, a Second Life documentary
Second Life avatar China Tracy created this documentary full of moving imagery and music in three acts. China's typist, artist Cao Fei, opens viewers eyes to romance and deception. This 28-minute SL film was featured last year as part of the China Pavilion at the 2007 Venice Biennale. Cao was previously mentioned on Massively for possibly selling an in-world art installation for $100,000 USD![Via New Media Research Studio]If you have machinima or movie suggestions from any MMO, please send them to machinima AT massively DOT com, along with any information you might have about them.
Hawaii volcano film to be released on Blu-ray... and HD DVD?
There's simply no question that the beauty of Hawaii Volcanoes National Park (above) can only truly be appreciated after a winding drive down from Kailua Kona (or Hilo, for those who love the rain), but for folks without weeks on end to spare waiting to see lava flow from some of those majestic creations, a forthcoming film should give you the next best look. Volcanographer Mick Kalber has assembled an hour-long movie entitled Kilauea's Flow to Waikupanaha, and while we'd generally brush something like this off, a recent writeup about it most definitely caught our eye. We thought we had already seen HD DVD's last hurrah back in March, but if KHNL-8 is to be believed, the forthcoming flick will be available on Blu-ray and HD DVD. Granted, there's no release date mentioned, but given that red has been decomposing for months now, we're tempted to believe someone was simply misinformed.
TUAW On Scene: from the premiere of Welcome to Macintosh
Here's to the crazy ones. TUAW reader Tony Walla got to attend the Wisconsin premiere of the new Mac-doc film that's sure to be a crowd pleaser (depending on the crowd), and he sent us this report.On April 6th, the documentary "Welcome to Macintosh" premiered at the Wisconsin Film Festival in Madison, WI to a packed theater of about 275 festival goers. Josh Rizzo and Rob Baca, who co-directed and produced the film, were in attendance. Before the film began, attendees could be seen checking email on their MacBooks, MacBook Pros, and iPhones. Even a Newton or two was in the crowd. One audience member even used the iSight on his MacBook Pro to snap a picture of the audience. To the attendees, this was not just a documentary, this was an Apple event.Rizzo and Baca's goal is to tell the story of the Macintosh experience. "In order to do the Mac experience, you've got to put it in context of the Mac history," notes Baca. Rizzo added, "You can't appreciate where it is today without knowing some of the past and the fact that there is a sprit, a personality. There is a flame that lives in Apple, that lives through some of the products that is dispersed though the creativity of the people that make them."
ESPN2 makes Tuesday movie night starting April 22
ESPN2 HD is following up its well received Black Magic documentary (the network's most viewed doc ever) with four more, starting April 22 each Tuesday gets a little more inspirational. Hellfighters and The Streak tell the story of Harlem football team and a Florida wrestling squad holding onto a 30+ year winning streak when they debut at the end of the month, while May brings Bud Greenspan: The Heart of the Games and The Zen of Bobby V. Expect to see more HD content on the way from the ESPN Film initiative, especially in light of Black Magic's ratings wins.
WoW Moviewatch: Second Skin Trailer and SXSW
With my move to Austin complete, all that's left is to dominate South by Southwest (SXSW) this weekend. Pure West will be premiering their MMO documentary, Second Skin, on Friday, March 7th. Yours truly will be there to get the goods on all the WoW action.Tune in this weekend for SXSW tips on video editing, sound formatting, and a slew of other fascinating topics. In the meantime, check out the high resolution version of the trailer.Previously on Moviewatch ...
