Dig it kats and kittens: Alle and I’s review blog info, pose set postponed, and some RL stuff.
Review Blog:
I was talking to Moo Money on Saturday about machinima in SL for a number of hours. (Thanks Moo that was a nice diversion from working!) One of the many things we talked about is the lack of constructive critisim for machinima. Granted it’s like that for all SL arts. I’m not entirely sure how that can be. As artists the only way we grow is from bettering ourselves and one of the ways we learn is from critisim. Every art has a published venue of critisim, some more constructive then others.
Constantly what you see when someone posts a link to their film is replies on how wonderful it is and rarely a negative comment appears. Do we only make things for praise and anyone who doesn’t is just an asshole griefer? I know I sure don’t. It’s pretty damn clear that the current way isn’t working because the machinima hasn’t gotton much better. I don’t believe there is a lack of talent out there at all. It has more to do with the lack of skill that is overshadowing the inate talent and the limited amount of pushing eachother to do the very best machinima out there.
It’s not surpising that SL is the redheaded stepchild of the Machinima community. I’ve played many MMOs and I couldn’t imagine the amount of effort and planning it takes to make some of the films being done. Those games have so many limitations and they push themselves to bend the boundries of what someone can do with it. Conversly, in SL we have very little limitations. We can create, from scratch, ANY set we want. We can make the avies do anything we want. We have access to scripts that make the camera do smooth and fancy moves. We can even make our avies talk with software. No wonder people look down on the SL machinima community.
So after a lot of debate on the subject, Alle and I have decided that our reviewing will be machinima and other weird shit. The weird shit is really just so I can have a catagory called “luth’s treasure chest,” where I can talk about my collection of object of the piratical nature. Yarr! Pirates and Monkeys!
We have decided to play “fair” and will ask for submissions. So those who aren’t comfortable with public constructive critisim can atuomatically opt-out. Three reasons for this. 1. I hate drama. I don’t want to spend anytime dealing with large egos who automatically assume its a personal attack. Just like any critisim it’s about the content, to be used as a learning tool and taken with a grain of salt. 2. This will also help take away the FICness aspect of me choosing of who gets reviewed or not. 3. The most important reason is that it saves me time searching for films to review so I can spend more time actually doing the reviewing.
At least at first, it will be a sort of Siskel and Ebert type of style. Alle and I will both contribute to each review, which will make it more balanced. With me you have the seasoned editor with a vast understanding the language of film. On the other hand, Alle’s background is in critical writing with a very good instinctual understanding in film.
Ok yes, critisim is quite scary. Someone basically saying “I liked it or I didn’t” isn’t going to help you much. Instead I am going to lay it out how I was taught to. First you start with what worked. These are the parts of the film that well.. worked. I will the give detailed reasons why it worked. Next up will be what didn’t work with detailed reasons why. This is the tricky thing, you give 100 editors the exact same footage and script you will end up with 100 different films. It’s not maths, there is no right answer. I don’t want everyone to create just like me and neither do you. Instead what it does is give you another set of eyes who will think about why you made the decisions that you did. Which it’s supposed to help you think about it for yourself. Another reasoning for it is that you know why you made it a certain way and you want your audience to “get” it. That is the entire point of any sort of film no matter the subject. You have something to say and you want people to hear it. It is impossible for a filmmaker to know for sure if people will get it. After time and practice you do get pretty good at guessing.
But Luth, people don’t sit there an think films when they are watching it! Nope, most people don’t. It’s all down to psychology. Their concious mind doesn’t pick up on what’s in the medicine cabniet, but the unconcious does. Even if it’s on screen for a split second, what’s in there will register with us and tell alot about the personality of the character. If it doesn’t match up with what we already know about them, it will feel off. Most people also don’t pick up on the little tells we put in, such as: person A is talking or thinking about person B. You are cutting back and forth between them, if you cut on person A looking in the direction of the frame that person B will be (even if they are not in the same room), the mind will pick up on that and enforce the idea that person A is talking/thinking about person B. While the audience doesn’t have to think about it, we do.
The more you know, understand, and think about these types of things the more full your film becomes. The easier it is for your audience to suspend disbelief.
How do I know constructive critisim works? Because it did for me. I like to talk very often about film school, the reason being it was probably the best 5 years of my life. See, my favourite moments in life are the ones where I learn the most, not just about things but about myself. Plus it was also the most important part because of how much I grew as a person. It started out as the scariest experiece I’d ever imagined - moving from the midwest alone to SF and then a very close friend commiting sucide a few months after I started - then changed to the hardest work I’ve ever done and ended up being a large box of really good memories. Because it was an art school, most of our classes were just film based and the classes were small so there was a very strong community feel to it. They constantly made us group up and work together each having the standard separate jobs. The entire thing sort of mirrored the real world, but there were so many differences that made it so much better. Let me tell you, I have yet to have so much fun working on a “real” film. I’d give anything to have another c-47 battle. C-47s are the nickname for closepins with many rumours on why that is, one of which is that on some film it was to try to mask the order for more clothespins in the budget list. Anyway, a bunch of us had a 4 year long battle of trying to sneakily attach one to someone. The best trick was seeing one of the group randomly walking down the street and pin them. Ok, you may just had to have been there.
While on one hand it was this strange type of euphoria, they made it interesting by pitting us against eachother. So, we’d have to choose our own groups, make a film, then the entire class would critique it. This started the very first day. It was a three hour class. First hour had introductions and some basic instruction, 2nd hour we were handed a camera and told to go out and shoot, 3rd hour we watched them and critiqued. Talk about painful! Some classes were structured like that, where as most we’d have to do the shooting on our own time. Every single editing class I took was in the following: Every week you’d have to bring in a new project. Rough cut one week and final cut the next. The class itself would be 1 1/2 hours instruction on tools and techniques, smoke break, then 1 1/2 hours of watching projects and critiques. Your grade then was always based on your standing in the class.
What this did for me personally was make me push myself. Yeah it was degrading at times and it sure can make a person very insecure but if you are going to be an artist you have to get over that sort of thing. But in the end it made me a better person. The biggest reason for this is that I have a very instinctual natural talent for editing. Since the community was quite small, the best of each field would emerge. I’m not talking about the people who constantly tell you they are the best. In editing the most known editor as the “best” was my friend Adam. We had a very very strange friendship because of the competition factor. At the time, I was pretty damn insecure about my work and I just kept pushing myself to be as good as him. At first I really hated this entire aspect. I had met Adam in our first year and we could have been much better friends. I can’t remember when it was exactally, we were pretty drunk, but somehow we both let it slip that we were eachother’s toughest competition. After that, things just sort of changed for the better. If it wasn’t for that, I would not be 1/2 as good as I am today.
*a few hours later*
Ok.. done with that nostalgia and sent off a load of emails heh.
I don’t know. Maybe this will work and maybe it won’t. I guess only time will tell. Moo has offered herself up to be the first one reviewed (thanks!). We are working out some of the specifics and trying to find a name for it. But, it shouldn’t be too terribly long until everything is up and running. If anyone out there would like to be reviewed, send a link to your film to: luth(at)reelgeek.co.uk. I’ll post more information later.
Pose Set Delayed
I know I said saturday. It’s now 8pm Monday and I’m not much closer to being finished. It’s a rather demanding pose set and there are a number of things going on IRL that just hasn’t given me the time needed. Partly I’m burnt out creativly. As you might have noticed, a few weeks ago I steped up the production considerbly. It’s because I found out that as of April 1st Parliment raised the price of my visa by 95%. You have a window of 28 days in which to renew and for me it starts at the end of this month. The price used to be around £500, which is what I had planned on. The raise to £950 was a large shock and made me work my ass off. For me, animating doesn’t work like that. Part of it really is my fault for choosing such a difficult set.
I’m hoping to finish it by the end of this week. *fingers crossed* But I have a lot of things I need to do outside of SL. On wed I need to take a test called “life in the UK.” It’s madatory in order to renew my visa, another unwelcomed surpise. While I’ve heard it’s pretty easy, I still need to read the book lol.
Sunday was spent mostly drunk, as we went to the Do Make Say Think show, which was brilliant. But I have a rather large hangover today which is the reason for all the typing. Thur is another gig, Shellac, who is my hubbies favourite band. For those who don’t know, I’m married to a musican who’s in 3 different Math Rock bands. Most rock music is in 4/4 time, where as math rock is usually odd timing and changes time within a song. Being in 3 bands means lots of gigs I must attend - Tue is in Oxford and Saturday is in South London. A lot more night life this week then usual.
Another force working against me is Maya. In my last post I mentioned that I’m switching over to Maya for animating. I had recently said that I was going to go with houdini but with sculpties export from Maya only, I decided to just do the one program. Not to mention someone has already made a SL model for Maya and a working bvh export script. It’s years since I’ve played with Maya and lots of things have changed. I’m a bit obsessive when it comes to learning things and now whenever I’m in Poser all I can bloody think about is Maya. Its really sad.
Cheers
Luth
