Completely Machinima: January in History with Ben Grussi

Ben reviews some of the major happenings during the month of January in the early days of machinima. Starting with 1997 there's Operation Bay-Shield. 1998 has the First Quake 2 movie - The Mad Bomber. Rematic a machinima tool by Anthony Baily is released in 1999. Also in this year Phil Rice released his notable film, Father Frags Best - a machinima classic. 2000 sees Machinnima.com founded and Quad God film was released along with several other notable films. 2002 saw the Reel-Time Challenge contest along with Psyk's Popcorn Jungle retiring (a big machinima review site). 2003 Anachronox the Movie Part 1 was released. 2004 Red vs Blue second season launched. In 2005 the first noveletta about machinima was written by Mike Hoefflinger called Moving Pictures. In 2006, Hugh Hancock, founder of Machinima.com stepped away from the site to focus on his filmmaking.

SUMMARY KEYWORDS
machinima, notable, released, film, quake, contest, people, interesting, called, collaboration, game, movies, community, announced, january, movie, world, project, fountainhead, chrysler

SPEAKERS
Ben Grussi

Ben Grussi 00:08
Okay, so greetings everyone, this is the first time on video. So bear with it. But other than that everything's fine over here. So for January, quite a busy month, as Tracy has mentioned in a previous podcast that definitely things accelerated as things got more well known in the community at large and even in the real world. And so, let's get started because I'd like to cover.

Ben Grussi 00:37
So in 1997, we have Operation Bay Shield was released to the masses, that is one of those iconic Quake movie films that really left their mark because of their parodies and humour, and just very good production values. Also in next year 1998 we have the first Quake 2 movie entitled The Mad Bomber. And then, Echaton Darkness Twilight, Strange Company's first major project. They released a teaser for that film in January, and then a year after that, quite a few important notes. The Quake Done Quick team's, Anthony Bailey released a tool called Rematic. It's a very interesting tool that allowed people to reshoot existing Quake one, playback demos. From new perspective. It's kind of like recamming, like Phil Rice did with his earlier videos before he started making films proper. Also a very significant Phil Rice note as well in 1999. In January, he released Father's Frags Best - his most notable before Male Restroom Etiquette became more popular than that. So that's quite notable. Also, Hugh Hancock also announced the production start of Echaton Nightfall that is the second to Darkness Twilight, which he did in Quake 2 game engine with some tweaks with manual animations, facial animations, and all that good stuff.

Ben Grussi 02:12
And then in 2000, quite notable, we have Machinima dot comms founded and activated. That's when the whole community was able to coalesce into something under one roof. And it is survived until just until last year, where they shut down. But basically, this is the start of a very big community that has touched many people in many different ways. And all our lives are different because of it. So we definitely owe a lot to that. With that, we also had the first release for our Quake 3 Arena film called Quad God that was released by Tritin Films by Joe Goss and Company. Quite a very interesting film. Check it out if you can. Also Doc Nemesis, who is also another veteran of the community, one of his first production companies was called Sudden Death Productions. Quite an interesting group of characters and the film's created. So quite a notable mark in history is that also Ranger Gone Bad 3, we thought it was dead, but it's actually alive. It was released in January of 2000. The popular response to it was so overwhelming that they actually pulled it the demo and redid it again, to make it more polished. After the response was quite interesting, to say the least. Also A Warrior's Life by Donovan was released. That is the feature length film that he did in regards to the life's journey of a warrior character, dealing with isolation and then into the real world and having to process that as well. And then in the end of 2000 section for January we have Strange Company's on Ozymandias was released. That was a demo film that they did to show off the power of Lithtech film producer technology that they they were developing with Monolith Productions, the makers of Shogo and No One Lives Forever franchises. And then shockingly enough, except for the anniversary for machinery comm its first year. I don't have anything for the year 2001 shocking as it may,

Ben Grussi 04:22
in 2002 Machinima.com posted a teaser for a quite popular at the time contest called the Reeltime, spelled r e e l time challenge contest. We had a teaser poster that was posted. And just to quite interesting that was sort of like the 30 second films that they did years later, just to see what people could do in quick production of films, slapped together and see what would stick. Also a notable in 2002 was Pysk's Popcorn Jungle one of the review sites like Jagged Cineplex retires, he stopped updating to his site. But he definitely left a mark and what he did for the community.

Ben Grussi 05:07
In 2003, quite a few things. The Militia 2 Team, which was very prominent in HalfLife Counter Strike filmmaking, with a lot of after effects added to their films to make it more cinematic. They won an award from File Planets Best of 2002 User Created Game Movies. They won out out of nine other nominees. So that's quite an interesting feat in itself. Also, Ken '3d Filmmaker' Thain, he released his project that I've never let him live down because it's this kind of a funny product called Rebel versus Thug. It was done in collaboration with Chuck D of Public Enemy. It was a commercial project. And it was just to promote a music track for Chuck D's side project called Fine Arts Militia. And it's quite an interesting music video done in Quake two, and quite an interesting track if you get a chance to hear it.

Ben Grussi 06:07
Also Fountainhead was also founded. Again, like I said in the 2000s. But here's an announcement where they had a collaboration between the music group Zero 7, and a game project as well. At this point, it's not announced to what it is. That comes later, but just wanted to note the press release that came out. Also Futuremark which is been a very popular software suite for people who are gamers that needed a benchmark for gamers. They are former members of the Future Crew demoscene that you've heard me talk about before, and it's also covered in the book, Machinima Pioneers. They released some teaser movies for their latest edition of 3d Mark for 2003. Quite amazing video sets that showed off the power of their 3d engine that they were creating to show off, do you really tax in computer hardware at the time.

Ben Grussi 07:06
Then moving on to 2000 for quite interesting notes. The Red vs Blue team was able to release their very first episode of season two of their award winning machinima series to a packed house at the New York Lincoln Centre. Quite an amazing feat considering just coming from the humble beginnings in Texas. Also Strange company which was Hugh Hancock's company also had a big contract to work with the British Academy of Film and Television Arts for their upcoming Interactive Awards, which they set up the bumpers. So the introductions between for the awards. That was quite an interesting project as well. And a very interesting collaboration that occurred with Summer Camp people in who in the states were able to if they wanted to take a six week summer camp course, for teenagers and younger, to have a six week course to be taught how to learn to make machinima and the kids we're very lucky to have one of our alumni Brian from Dead On Que productions, he was able to be a teacher for that course for two seasons, so for two years, and he did a very wonderful job. So that's definitely noteworthy in history. And then another and also the class was also sponsored by Nvidia. So also another bit of very interesting reinforcement.

Ben Grussi 08:38
Another note was the Ill Clan released a video excerpt of their premiere performance of Lenny and Larry Lumberjack on the Campaign trail that they did at the Void in New York City at the previous Machinima Film Festival that we all attended last year in November. Quite an interesting evening that was. And then another interesting thing from the Stanford Humanities Laboratory and the Cantor Centre for Visual Arts at the Stanford University - they created an exhibition that addressed the perverse influence of computer game culture. It showed off so well machinima films, and also in the description it's the game scenes exhibition includes a machinima movie series curated by Galen Davis and Henry Lowood. Machinima are made and best viewed with the same software that's used to produce and play 3d action games using first person shooters like Quake and Unreal. This is game developers use software called game engines to produce the sophisticated graphics, lightning and camera views in their games. Machinima makers take advantage of this sophisticated software as a found technology that can be applied to making animated movies. This exhibition ran from January 17 to April 4 of 2004.

Ben Grussi 09:53
2005 is quite interesting as well. One of the very first notables is a novella that was released by Packet Switch Press that was a novella that was written by Mike Hoefflinger. I'm probably mispronouncing it. That was a very, very interesting novel novella that I actually really took a lot of pride in. And really, he hit the mark on trying to explain what it would be like if you were trying to do a machinima or film in the real world with big name talent and trying to do it in a commercial setting. And it's quite an interesting read and a has kind of like that Michael Bay feel to it as well, but definitely something worth reading. If you can find it. It's entitled Moving Pictures, and again, it's written by Mike Hoefflinger.

Ben Grussi 10:41
Another anniversary Sims 99, one of the biggest repositories for Sims movies done by Nova. Quite a few people I've met through the community have started there, started there, and it was great, really good repository for movies of the like, and was quite a mainstay for the years that it was open, but definitely this is when they started. Another notable is that a World of Warcraft movie that was done by Tristan Pope, who used to work for Blizzard as part of their cinematics team, one of his very first popular films, called I Surrender - it was a music video using Celine Dion's I surrender. It became so popular on YouTube that Blizzard actually put it on their main page, which is unheard of back then because it was just getting machinima for for Warcraft that was just getting started. So quite an interesting mark. Also in January, Paul Marino, he was headed to the Sundance Film Festival to head a panel on the discussion of machinima with the help of Burnie Burns, and the Rooster Teeth team. So again, notable because Sundance is the premier place in the United States to check it out.

Ben Grussi 11:57
So the next thing is quite interesting an untold thing where the Los Angeles Machinima Collective also known as the LA MC, announced their first machinima production, William Shakespeare's Mechbeth. But what's interesting is that it never really came to fruition, but they did have a poster made up which will hopefully add to the the links in the blog. But I think Ricky was actually part of this, if I remember correctly, he might not remember and I might be wrong, but it's quite interesting to see if he was attached to that because all the stars seem to align in that.

Ben Grussi 12:34
Matt Kelland, who you may know from Short Fuse, the creators of Moviestorm, he announced his second his book that he created called Machinima. It's the coffee table book that had all those really nice pictures with Ruby on the front. He announced his book in this month. So it was about it was going to come out in July. So definitely notable because again, the second book to be to be announced and hopefully released in the year of 2005.

Ben Grussi 13:08
The other one is Epic Games, finally released the grand finals of the Make Something Unreal Contest, but the non interactive movie category. These five films were notable in their own rights for all the different things they brought to the table. The winners, The Journey, won first place that was very exceptional, it really deserved the $25,000 cash prize, and the others were Bot second place, Sparked Memory third place, Scrap fourth place and Damnation in fifth place. So definitely well earned. The movies in this category were very well done. And the cream of the crop really did show in this this list. Also another notable as well. And another year, Paul Marino and team from the Fountainhead entertainment had a collaboration with RoosterTeeth. And they put on a machinima film discussion at Sundance again. So quite another notable where it's expanding again, getting more people involved into the discussion at one of the premier places to do it in.

Ben Grussi 14:16
This is kind of a disappointment, but it's still notable that he Fountainhead Entertainment tried to convert their Machinimation tool. They were going to do version two and actually have it work with Doom three, you know, with its cinematic splendour at the time, but unfortunately, it didn't happen. But still, it was good to dream and the possibility, you know that it could have happened, but it didn't, unfortunately.

Ben Grussi 14:40
2006 we have notables. Sims 99 celebrates its first anniversary with a month long party stuffed with interviews, contests and retrospectives. So, definitely that was quite an interesting feat to make it and at the time, it was its biggest archive Sims biggest movie archive on the interweb Another release that's quite an important is Decorgal released her first episode and her multi episode series Adventures in Dating. It was one of those film series that definitely took the childness out of the filmmaking where it definitely dealt with serious subjects of the real world, about relationships and dealing with you know, the different personalities that people have in trying to understand each other and how they're comfortable ability to, you know, how people's personalities react and all that and how going through that process is growth, growth and also two steps forward and two steps backward. Definitely a worthy series that actually did well over 15 episodes. So definitely take a look at it if you're interested. Another notable is that Britanicca Dreams, Michelle, who has a lot of accolades for doing Snow Witch she actually did a short unfortunately don't have a copy of it, but she won a Xbox 360 of all things by winning the Global Gaming first annual Holiday Movie Contest with her film Santa Says so definitely that's reinforcing, you know, machinima as a important tool. Also expressing stories in a holiday setting and getting a really good prize for the effort. Another thing with Xbox, a UK site by the name of Xbox World 360 has partnered with Halo.Bungi.Org that is the premium site for all things fan, community run say that, as you know, in a previous history, they discovered You're Fired. That little short that was quite an interesting clip of you know, a Spartan fricassing or well done cooking of a sim, but anywho I digress. They are doing a collaboration where they will hold a machinima contest have people submit their films to be included in their cover discs every month. So that's again, reinforcement of you know, machinima getting to the point of being in the real world more and more.

Ben Grussi 17:07
And another real world event as well. According to the the publication, the Hollywood Reporter, which is the primo publication for people all things Hollywood, they were announcing a virtual making filmmaking contest that was using Lionhead's The Movies, in collaboration with Chrysler, the automotive automaker, and will be launching this contest at the Sundance Sundance Film Festival. It's being sponsored by Chrysler and it's basically they want to make a short film. And the only requirement that I'm aware of is that a Chrysler vehicle has to make an appearance in the movie. So that's not too hard, but quite an interesting collaboration.

Ben Grussi 17:51
Another no is Wired magazine also released an article on the movies and its current impact on the public, due to the movies that have been created from it, such as the press attention of The French Democracy, as probably a lot of you know, we cover this pretty much in depth on the Machinima Pioneers and the impact that the French for accuracy had, in terms of, you know, combining machinima techniques and whatnot and dealing with a real world ramifications of certain events in history, and how people process it and whatnot, sort of again, like Decorgal did with Adventures of Dating but a subject a little bit more serious and impactful to no fault to her, but basically, real world ramifications.

Ben Grussi 18:36
And finally, Hugh Hancock steps down from Machinery.com, he's devoting more time to his feature length progress project, which is Bloodspell, and he wants to let the young uns have some fun with the site and whatnot. So I'm changing of the guard. And as some of you are known as well, that was when I stepped down as well, the next month after that, but again, notable the changing of the guard, but you know, things change, and things have to grow and move on and so forth. So that's about it. All right, Tracy and company enjoy the rest of the month and I will see you next month! Tata.