The Machinima Expo is a 3-day, virtual film festival devoted to screening and celebrating machinima, a form of 3D animation that grew out of the video game and hacking community back in the late 1990's. This the 5^th year of the Expo.

The festival, which takes place live in Second Life, has expanded to 3 days and will feature over 12 hours of film screenings and 10 hours of machinima-related panels, discussions, tutorials and an awards ceremony on Sunday, November 18^th.

150 films were submitted this year from filmmakers all over the world. The Expo received films from as far away as Taiwan and Kenya this year. From those 150 films, the Expo screening team selected 10 to compete for the Jury prizes and 51 films screening 24/7 in Second Life and via our LiveStream channel.

You can watch all of the films chosen for the Expo this year (except for the Jury nominated films which start this weekend) right now at the Machinima Expo LiveStream channel.

http://www.livestream.com/themachinimaexpo

Manhattan Reverie Pix

Sunday, November 18^th, is awards day. We'll be giving out 3 Jury prizes, 1 Grand Jury prize, a special Open This End award, The Peter Rasmussen Award for service to the machinima community and an audience choice award at the end of the day. The schedule starts at 9am (pacific) and runs to about 1pm. We will screen each film right after the award has been announced and will feature short Q&A's with each director. They'll also be a virtual Busby Berkeley dance number by the Tiny Sold Gold Dancers just before we announce the big Grand Prize.

And we are very proud to present game designer, Will Wright, who will give a closing Lock Note to end this year's Machinima Expo.

Expo Pix

You can access the full Machinima Expo schedule here and a complete list of films being screened here.

Those interested in attending this virtual film festival can visit the Main Expo website at www.machinima-expo.com to watch the LiveStream or you can come to Second Life and watch the show live onscreen. The Second Life slurl is:

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Virtual%20Reverie/227/31/23

If you've never been to Second Life you can start by downloading the free software and go through their orientation. Then come on over to the Expo!

[Video Link] In 2007, We Are the Strange opened at the Sundance Film Festival. It was self-taught, underground animator, M dot Strange's first feature-length 3D animated film. Half of the midnight Sundance audience walked out, but the half that stayed were treated to one of the most original, disturbing 3D animated films ever made (seriously). That film went on to win several awards and provide M dot with opportunities to tour around the world giving lectures and workshops and screening his strange film.

Now, after 5 years of intense work in his computer-stuffed San Jose basement, professional weirdo, M dot Strange, is releasing his second feature-length 3D animated film, Heart String Marionette, on June 15, 2012. The obsessed director has been chronicling every step of production on his popular YouTube channel and his very frank blog. Collaborating with experimental musician ENDIKA lengthened the production process a bit, so while he was waiting he created 8 episodes of his “BADassery” series, wrote several books about his DIY film philosophy and started a new animated sex series, Darksided.

Heart String Marionette is M dot's ode to his favorite Anime and Samurai films. Internet Movie Databas describes it as “A tale about a kid, a samurai mime, and a stripper who all try to defeat a warlord and an evil clown who have successfully turned the countryside into a never ending nightmare filled with horrible monsters.”

Heart String Marionette was created entirely from scratch inside of MAXON's Cinema 4D and features M dot's signature obsessions with power, innocence and twisted love. And, of course, it's presented in a very strange and original style borrowed partially from Samurai films like Sword of Doom and Japanese Noh Theater. The film has an international cast drawn largely from outsider bands. JP Anderson (band Rabbit Junk) is Samhaine, Jimmy Urine (band Mindless Self Indulgence) plays The Body, Peter Mohamed (band Sweet Noise) plays The Devil, and Rakel Musicbox is The Wasp Woman.

Dissatisfied with the festival circuit and unwilling to compromise, M dot decided to release the film himself via its own website and offer interested fans the opportunity to become “affiliates” by allowing them to sell Heart String Marionette on their own website and share the profit. He has documented the entire distribution process on his blog in a nine part series (Selling Digital Downloads of Your Film) along with lots of production tutorials on his filmmaking style and philosophy at his YouTube channel.

Heart String Marionette will premiere officially on June 15th, 2012. You can watch the entire film for free in Standard Definition or shell out $5 for a HD version, plus the very cool soundtrack and additional “making of” features. It's worth every penny, believe me.

Heart String Marionette website

Siouxsie barks a command to Samhaine in Heart String Marionette

Machinima (real-time animation in a 3D engine) grew out of the gamer-hacking community who, back in the mid-'90s, took games like Quake and figured out how to hack the game's pod camera to create a new 3rd person perspective camera. Death matches and speed-runs were some of the early “films” using this 3rd person camera hack. Quickly, aspiring animation filmmakers realized they could create films using the new camera hack. They created real-time videos with stories and characters, using the assets of the game and some judicious scripting.

The flood of film-making since early machinima efforts like “Diary of a Camper” and “Father Frags Best” hasn't stopped. Now, game companies such as Rock Star Games and Bioware are releasing impressive machinima tools with their games and stand-alone machinima applications like iClone and Moviestorm have become very popular. In fact, there's never been a better time to create machinima (the term coined for this new art form) than the present.

Although a good deal of machinima is still filmed gaming, there is a growing international community of filmmakers who are using this real-time film-making technique to create artfully-crafted personal narratives. There is even an element of the avant-garde in current machinima as seen in some amazing visual poems created in virtual world of Second Life this year.

The 4th annual Machinima Expo is a festival devoted to screening and celebrating these well-crafted, personal machinima films and their creators. Sixty-one machinima films from around the world (out of 185 submitted) will be screened at the Expo (with 2 world premieres). And 11 films will compete for a Grand Prize and 3 Jury prizes, which will be awarded at the Machinima Expo this coming weekend.

The Expo kicks off on Monday, November 14th, with screenings of all films 24/7 at our machinima-expo.com site. Then on Friday, November 18th, at 12pm (Pacific time) the Expo will continue with special Second Life film screenings and a master class on how to create machinima using Second Life. (This opening event is Second Life only. You can attend by visiting the Expo Hub within Second Life.)

Then on Saturday, November 19th, the main Expo events will stream live through our machinima-expo website. Starting at 10am (pacific time) there will be a screening of all 11 jury finalists and present awards along with a keynote address by machinima scholar Henry Lowood. On Sunday, November 20th, also starting at 10am (pacific time) and streaming live, the Expo will feature panels, discussions, presentations and debate on current machinima practice, plus talks on machinima in education and new media. Current machinima programs like iClone, Moviestorm and Second Life will be featured as well.

Those interested in attending this virtual film festival can visit the Main Expo website at www.machinima-expo.com for the programming schedule, list of films to be screened (and timings) along with an Expo FAQ and a link to the main Expo blog and FB page.

The Machinima Expo will screen live via the machinima-expo site and also from within the virtual world of Second Life itself. Here's the main slurp for Expo events in Second Life. ]]> http://boingboing.net/2011/11/15/4th-annual-machinima-expo-sat.html/feed 2