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The Academy of Machinima Arts and Sciences has announced the 2005, not so annual, Machinima Film Festival. The festival will once again be held at the American Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria, New York.

Machinima in general has grown in popularity and commercial success since the last festival in 2003 with such recent work as Paul Marino's Half Life 2 music video, "I'm Still Seeing Breen" appearing on MTV2's Video Mods, Rooster Teeth's recent series of shorts for IFC, the Nisha Chronicles for GMD Studios' latest A.R.G. promoting the Audi A3, and The ILL Clan's "Gamer Gags" for SpikeTV.

In all it's been a good year for Machinima, and it's only August.

Actually, you've got it wrong on both counts.

The economy is usually the biggest factor in any given election (remember Bush the elder's plummet from 90% approval ratings after Gulf War I due to a recession?), out of all proportion to the actual "power" that a president does have. Probably the most important single person in terms of the monetary policy and the US economy is Alan Greenspan, chairman of the Federal Reserve (yes, he's appointed by the president, but for a 4-year term that staggers the presidential one). In terms of fiscal policy, the main power lies with Congress, which approves budgets. The president has very little formal power in that area, but uses political influence to push proposals into law.

I'll go ahead and stick up for PowerPoint. As a university instructor, I use plenty of interactive stuff like simulation exercises and group discussions. Nevertheless, sometimes a lecture is the way to go, particularly when dealing with a complex and unfamiliar body of material.

What is the alternative to PowerPoint (or other slide-show programs) in academia? Hmmm... I remember chalkboard lectures that were hard to read (and I know my handwriting is awful) and often a confusing mess of arrows, half-erased comments, and lists without bullet points to mazke it clear when each item begins. Then there was the time involved in writing the material on the chalkboard/whiteboard and the annoying frequency with with the lecturer (myself included) would talk while writing, thus addressing his/her comments to the board instead of the class.

Then there were overheads. These lost the spontaneity of chalkboard comments, but dramatically improved legibility. Unfortunately, they were also (usually) monochrome -- even when I printed color overheads, I had to be careful since I was paying for my own color ink. Moreover, they lost the ability to change a diagram easily, adding and removing elements to illustrate one's point. Finally, they made it difficult to integrate video or animation, since the overhead projector was likely to be in the way of the film projector or TV.

Enter PowerPoint. Now I have the ability to include video, so when I talk about patterns of voting, I can play campaign commercials that sought to appeal to particular blocs of voters. Saying the economy matters is one thing. Putting up a graph comparing economic performance to vote share in elections is better (but can be confusing without color). Doing both and then watching Reagan's Morning in America ads is best. Powerpoint makes it simpler (though not exactly easy, given its hostility to non-Microsoft video formats) to do this sort of thing.

I disagree with many suggestions made by other comments. My advice:

1. Use color, but try to use style as well and don't rely on red/green differences. Remember, 10% of males in your audience are color-blind.

2. Use text, but not more than six or seven words per subpoint. This is enough to communicate just about any conclusion, and then further subpoints can walk through each element of your argument if needed.

3. Never use anything less than 14 points, preferably at least 18. People in the back of the room and people with less-than-perfect vision need to be able to see.

4. DO NOT MEMORIZE YOUR TALK! I coached speech and debate for years, and while the formal memorized speech has its place, that place is almost never in the type of presentation where you'll be using PowerPoint. Practice your speech until you have an extemporaneous but fairly efficient style.

5. Writing your points is the easy part. Decorating then with visual geegaws is only moderately more taxing. The really hard part is coming up with a real-world example of what your talking about. Once you have the example, use PowerPoint to communicate it with some amount of pizazz. After all, you don't need your audience to remember the particulars of the example (so little text is neeeded); rather, you want them to understand the meaning of whatever point they just wrote down. This is the place for audiovisual dazzle, not your main points...

6. Don't let the flash distract from your points. The key is to follow rule # 5 for examples, but to keep the points themselves distinct and consistent. Don't mix the visual style with which you present text. Don't use distracting animation for anything you want the audience to copy down.

7. Get to the room early and TEST YOUR PRESENTATION on the available equipment. Perhaps the fonts and software on the presentation machine are different from your own. Perhaps the equipment isn't working (see # 8). Perhaps the resolution of the scre

Although that exhibit is no longer in place, much of the content still exists in the form of a web page.

Although that exhibit is no longer in place, much of the content still exists in the form of a web page.

I saw his Trash Mirror at the American Museum of the Moving Image in Queens. Very cool installation, and a wonderful geek-friendly museum, worth the visit if your from or in NYC.

They have a little exhibit on that at the American Museum of the Moving Image, where they let you pan and scan a movie yourself. It instilled me a deep contempt for non-letterbox movies.