Machinimoo

Many apologies to those eagerly checking the Alt-Zoom Studios site for the winners. Ben and I were in New York for the AMAS Machinima Festival. The good news is that they’re up now! You can go here to check out all the entries, or just browse the participant list below:

Thank you to everyone that participated! I had so much fun waiting to see what you guys came up with. I wasn’t disappointed.

When Ben put out the call for machinimists to participate in the Ed Wood Festival, he wanted to open it up to anyone. He sent notices to several of the bigger gaming news sites. I don’t know if he anticipated a negative reaction, but he certainly got one on Kotaku.

It started off with a writer calling SL residents incompetent:

Ed Wood and Second Life go together like chocolate and peanut butter. After all, Ed was a director of inspired incompetence; Second Life is an entire virtual world filled with that incompetence.

Then it progressed to comment flaming, with readers speculating that it must be a slow news week and that they might actually HAVE TO WORK. Ben had the perfect response, though:

;.; My news was better. And I have to take issue with the statement that SL is filled with incompetence – unlike most VWs, competence is not measured by how long you are logged in, killing rats, but rather, how good you are. I understand it is hard to get used to a world that is mostly built by the untrained, but having been a part of that community for over 4 years now, it is amazing how competent those same untrained users have become as time progresses.

That is kind of the crux of the problem – those who are infatuated with SL (like myself) see it for it’s potential, and are investing in that by contributing to the community early. Those who hate on SL, like all the previous commentors and many of Kotaku’s authors, see it how it is today, and are unwilling to invest in it when there seem to be so many more “complete” worlds, even if they are unlikely to grow to be more.

Oh well, it’s still a fun time, and it does draw on many of SL’s strengths – so I hope some folks may want to participate in this years festival.

You rock, Ben! Keep up the good work and thank you for caring about the community.

Machinimists ended up getting an extra hour for their machinima due to the clocks rolling back this morning. I won’t tell Ben if you won’t!.

There’s been some great response so far regarding the Ed Wood Festival. A couple of people new to machinima entirely contacted me on how to make it, citing Ed Wood as a hero. I’m really excited to see what people come up with.

Last night, Rhiannon Chatnoir and Frans Charming put out a call for extras for their bad machinima. When I arrived, I received a starfish head and joined the crowd. It was super laggy in Midnight City with 41 people trying to move about. Nothing rezzed, people ran into each other, and it seemed like everything was in slo-mo. Luckily, Aimee Weber was there to save us! Or shoot us down. :O It was a lot of fun!

Are you as excited about the 2nd Annual Ed Wood Festival as I am? What a title! “A Zombie Stole My Heart“. There’s endless bad potential here, guys.

Here’s the drill. The title’s been announced, so now you have roughly 47 and 1/2 hours to make and edit your machinima. Given that the goal is for it to be bad, it shouldn’t take long to make.

If you need any help, feel free to IM moo Money. You can upload your links to blip.tv. When you’re done, you can give me the URL or email it to edwood@alt-zoom.com.

The official rules can be found here.

This little tidbit is hot off the presses! I just got done speaking with BuhBuhCuh Fairchild, who updated the Alt-Zoom Studios page for the 2nd Annual Ed Wood Festival.

• Ed Wood made films so bad, they were good. This weekend, Second Life residents have 48 hours to make a movie in the spirit of Ed Wood.
• Halloween Night, 7pm SL time, we will screen these movies IN Second Life at our theatre in Lukanida.
• Last year, the Ed Wood Festival was Alt-Zoom’s first ever machinima festival, and so we are celebrating our first birthday as well by giving out L$60,000 in prize money for Worst Film, Worst Story, Worst Acting, Worst Costumes, and Most Disturbing Film!
• On Friday, at midnight, we will announce a title for all the films on this webpage here. You will have the next two days to make it, good or bad.
• To submit a movie, email a file or URL to edwood@alt-zoom.com, or give a link to Buhbuhcuh Fairchild or Moo Money in Second Life by Midnight, Sunday (pacific time).
• Submissions need to be in a downloadable format – Quicktime, WMV, or AVI is reccomended – NO FLASH!