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Red vs. Blue Makes Green
Allen Varney writes in this week's edition of The Escapist about the beauty of Rooster Teeth's machinima, why Red vs. Blue is as good as it is, and why there is money to be made in this burgeoning art form. From the article: "Often, by the time we hear of fortunes being made in a new way, it's already too late to get in. But in machinima, the barrier to entry remains absurdly low, the need for professionalism desperate. If you're funny or interesting, can voice-act well, and produce reliably over the medium term - and you don't quit - there's absolutely nothing blocking you from success." I'm rather fond of some of the supremely odd Machinima based in World of Warcraft - such as Illegal Danish -Super Snacks or the Switcher videos. Any machinima you'd like to recommend to your fellow users?
Here's the nominees for this year's "Mackies," at the Machinima Film Festival in November. Most of the nominees are up on GameVideos.com. I would definitely suggest "Bill et John." http://festival.machinima.org/mackies.html (Shameless self-plug: My productions got three nominations) http://www.themureview.com/
I'll give the cliffs:
;P), and I imagine there will be more. Companies have also gone to machinima producers to create content without joining the company.
- Game companies don't care if you make the machinima..heck, it's even free advertising for them.
- Some productions, like Tra5hta1k by the ILL Clan, use cheap engines (Torque) that you can afford to buy the rights
- Red vs. Blue was found by Bungie, and they arranged for Rooster Teeth to get the rights to their product, so they can sell t-shirts, DVDs, etc. This so far is a unique case. Other Halo machinimas have been turned down by M$, most likely thanks to the upcoming movie.
- Most machinima can't make money directly, but there's an increasing potential for careers in the industry. Recently both Blizzard and BioWare have hired from the machinima community (I'm one of the hires
Double Cliffs:
- Is it legal to take any game, make machinima out of it, and sell it? NO! Has there been any lawsuits yet? No. Has there been cease/desist requests? Yes, a couple that I know of. Asking the legal questions regarding machinima don't get solid answers because there are no solid answers yet. We're still in its infancy.
South Park did an episode where they were playing WoW and much of the episode was Machinima. As usual with Matt and Trey, it was great.
"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible, make violent revolution inevitable" - JFK
Illegal Danish was first featured on Xfire's WoW Machinima Contest. The second WoW Machinima contest is just now wrapping up. Winners will be announced friday, but you can see all the finalists here. We'll be hosting a free event at Stanford University on Thursday evening with a panel of Machinima movie makers including Ezra from Rufus Cubed (who did the Machinima in South Park's WoW episode) and the guys from Myndflame (who did Illegal Danish) will be there as well!
/end shameless plug
Militant Agnostic: "I don't know, and damn it, neither do you!"
www.machinima.com
;)
www.mprem.com (Machinima Premiere)
www.sims99.com
www.warcraftmovies.com
These are some of the larger community sites. Or you could try finding productions you like, and contacting the producers themselves. At this stage, machinima is above no one