Impressionable young minds

I've been getting more and more involved with education over the last few years. First there was the games design course at NSAD (now NUCA), where I helped to design the syllabus and was an examiner, then Short Fuze got involved with NESTA Futurelab, and were invited to consult on various aspects of using technology in schools, and now we're doing Moviestorm workshops in schools and colleges, and I'm actually finding myself teaching. This, of course, is something I promised I'd never do. My mum was a teacher (and still is), and I decided that I really didn't want to do the same.

But - and please pardon the cliche - it really is a rewarding job. As I wrote over in the official Moviestorm blog yesterday, there comes a moment in every session when the students suddenly "get it". As Johnnie so neatly puts it (and he's done more of these and is a better teacher than me):

"During every workshop, and for every single user, there was always a moment when they moved from an attitude of “Talk slower – I'm trying to take all this on board” to “Would you shut up for a second? I'm trying to make a movie here!”. The moment that the user realises that Moviestorm will let them tell whatever story they wish is the moment that the concept is sold to them. Although different users reached this moment at different points, every user got there."

It's not like we're trying to teach these people geography or the history of the Suez crisis. Learning Moviestorm genuinely is fun, and within an hour, our students get a skill that most of them never believed they would ever have. When you see that moment, it feels good. And you know you've made a difference to someone's life. It was the same when I was coaching rugby at Castle Cary RFC: when you watch a child finally learn to catch a ball, and then become part of a team, you know you're doing something that matters. I still don't want to be a teacher, but every so often it's good to get out of the business environment and see the effect that you can have on real people.

Which got me thinking about all the teachers who made me who I am. Most of them won't ever read this. Half of them are probably dead. And these names won't mean a damn thing to most of you either. But I wanted to say thanks to them anyway. Teachers don't get nearly enough respect in this country. They work bloody hard, they do a vital job, and our government knows it can get away with paying them crap because most teachers do the job out of love. Teachers, not politicians, priests, celebrities, journalists or businessmen, are the people who are shaping the next generation. The knowledge and the values they pass on to our children is what will determine who they become. I was lucky. I had a lot of good teachers. And I never appreciated that at the time.

So, thanks to you all, in particular: Geoffrey and Charlotte Wass, Don Clarke and Simon Ransome, Peter Yerburgh, John Thorn, Martin Scott, Nick Fennell, Peter Partner, John Durran, and Alan MacFarlane. And most especially to Stephan Hopkinson, the kindest and most caring man I have ever known, who taught me how to subvert the system without malice, and how to think from other people's points of view.

Man Bites God video comp

Aussie band Man Bites God are "bribing aspiring film makers with a chance to win AU$500 by making a music video featuring a Man Bites God song of your choice." They're keen to see something different:

You don’t need to follow the storyline of the song, we’re interested in kick-arse clips, not narratives. Surreal or logical, bizarre or literal, live-action, machinema or animation - we’re interested in your original and creative approach.

OK, they're only offering $500, but what the hell. What else were you going to do before October 31?

Who? No, I hadn't heard of them either. Thanks to James over at Alterati for this one.

Man Bites God is an upbeat, fun, busker-rock band from Melbourne. Their music is catchy and melodious and their lyrics are funny and clever. Their songs are a mix of pop/punk/rock, with cool harmonies and lush arrangements

(P.S. Do you think we should tell them it's spelt "machinima" these days?

The cinema is a harsh mistress

Taking machinima from the computer to the big screen is an unforgiving experience. Every pixel is magnified enormously, and every visual glitch screams out at you. The encoding artifacts that you can hide on a monitor are suddenly much larger. Every dropped frame or jump in animation looks like a broken film. And whatever the problems with the images, the problems with sound are worse. Once you put the audio through a THX cinema system, you can hear every little thing. The tiny buzzes and clicks that you will never hear through a typical home computer set-up suddenly jump out at you. Every rustle of clothing in the dialogue becomes obvious. And if your sound balance is a tiny bit muddy, you end up with a cinema full of audio sludge. If you’ve ever thought to yourself when doing the final render for the fifth time, “what the hell, they’ll never notice,” just get your film shown in a cinema and see for yourself. They will notice. And you’ll wish you’d fixed it.

On the other hand, it was a very pleasant surprise to see how many of the 50-odd films we showed in the last two days worked really well. Yes, there were some visual issues we couldn’t address, particularly when upscaling some of the older or low-res films to 720p, but those films that started life as high-def were quite amazing. I particularly remember the smile on Jim Thorpe’s face as he sat in on the tech test for Zero Budget, Big Audience and he saw his Marillion video up there. At the end, he turned to me and grinned. “You can see the stars,” he said. And you could. They weren’t just tiny pixels, and possible encoding errors in a tiny window. It transformed the final sequence from pretty good to amazing. If you do ever hope to see your movie on the big screen (and let me assure you, that experience alone is like nothing else for a film-maker), do spend the time to make the highest quality render you can possibly manage. The difference is worth it.

Set-up for first screening in screen 3. That's my laptop with Monad on down there in the midst of that.

Much of the credit for how well everything turned out has to go to three people, Joe, Claire and John, our projectionists. I’d never realised how complicated it is running a projection booth. They really got things looking at their best, and drove the sound system to make the best of the audio I gave them, swapping in different amps, different patches, different filters and different combinations of speakers.

However, their finest moment came when we blew up the analog to digital converter with a rather loud explosion (at the end of No Licence, wouldn’t you know it), and we lost all the sound. I sprinted to the projection booth, and within 30 seconds they’d swapped the blown one out, replugged the entire sound system, and had us back up and running by the start of the next film. Apparently the audience provided their own sound effects and music during the silence – I wish I’d been there to see it! Still, 98% of films screened without a hitch – not bad for a first festival.

Chief projectionist Joe setting up the sound system on screen 2. That huge thing on his left is the 1080p digital projector.

Spending several days in the projection booth has been a fascinating experience. That place is hot*, airless, noisy, and full of exciting toys. They seem to have every kind of projector and sound device known to man. Reels of film are everywhere. (Happiest moment: holding a huge reel which contained a print of the 1933 Frankenstein.) And into the middle of that lot went my little laptop.

The projection room: on my right, screen 2, on the left, screen 1 and its monster 70mm projector, and screen 3 in the far distance.

Connecting the laptop wasn’t straightforward either. Everything was temperamental. After the first screening, we set everything up ready for the second one, then powered down the laptop. 25 minutes before, we fired it up again, and then discovered that the aspect ratio was all wrong, and the digital projector no longer recognised the preset we’d put in place.** So we got it running properly again, tested it again, and everything was OK. Next we got the mics in the cinema working so Saint could do his intro, and then, just in a moment of paranoia, rechecked the video, and to our horror discovered that we had no sound. More panic replumbing of the sound system ensued, more kit swapped in and out, but we had no way to tell Saint we had a problem, and the screening started. And literally as Saint said the words, “OK, roll the films”, John said, “we’re good to go,” Joe brought down the house lights, switched over the projector to the laptop output, I hit the play button, and everything worked perfectly. Nobody knew except us. It’s non-stop seat of your pants stuff, and these guys just coped. Awesomely.

Proper film: Bicycle Thieves showing on Screen 1.

After several days of this, I’m now thoroughly exhausted, but very, very happy. The films looked good, and I'm extremely proud of what we all did. We got good reactions from the audiences, and the screenings and workshops all got 5-star reviews. We got coverage for machinima in the national press, television, and specialist film & animation press, and we've made a lot of new people take notice of machinima and want to get involved. Most importantly, we changed a lot of people's minds. On Friday, nobody knew who we were or what we were doing. By yesterday, we'd earned their respect by showing them that machinima is a serious form of animation, and that machinimators are just as talented, dedicated and creative as any of the other film-makers there. A lot of people became genuinely interested in what we in the machinima community are all about and how we have the potential to change things from grass-roots level, and they want to get involved. That, for me, has made the Cambridge Film Festival a huge personal success.

But I tell you this. I swear I’m never, ever going to do this again.

Until next time.

* It didn't help that one of th air-con units died at the start of the Festival, and shutting the projection room for half a day to fix is simply isn't an option. So we baked.
** To all you Linux/Mac fan-boys, nope, you can't blame it on the fact that I'm running XP. According to Joe, this just happens when you run things off computers, and next time would I please burn everything onto a standard digital format so he can just play it off their kit.

Antics competition demonstrates film rules

Antics3D have just launched a really nifty competition for students which requires entrants to show a real understanding of cinematic composition and grammar. The challenge is to produce a short clip showing a filmmaking concept, such as the rule of thirds, the 180 degree rule, a shot-reverse-shot, etc.

This is a great idea, forcing people to think about the structure of the film rather than just the content, and could be the start of a really useful resource for all budding film-makers. Given how useful machinima is as a tool for learning how to make films, as well as a tool for making films, it will be extremely interesting to see what comes out of this.

Aaarrhhh!

It's Talk Like A Pirate Day.

Will I be able to resist after a day at the bar?

Short Fuze Sci-Fi winners

At long last, we've announced the winners of the Short Fuze Sci-Fi competition.
Best Clip (under 3 minutes)

• Winner: Untitled : Prologue
• Runner-up: Cut and Shut

Best Short (3 to 10 minutes)

• Winner: Marillion - Whatever is Wrong With You
• Runner-up: Mistaken Identity

Best Full-length (10 minutes and over)

• Winner: P7 From Outer Space
• Runner-up: Nova Centuria

The overall winner, which we'll be showing on a big screen at the Cambridge Film Festival, was James Thorpe (aka RAFBlackAce) with his superb music video Marillion - Whatever is Wrong With You.

It was an absolute pleasure to be one of the judges for this competition. The standard was, quite honestly, breathtaking. There are people out there doing things with Moviestorm that I didn't believe possible, and their work is an inspiration to me and to others. Your imagination and ingenuity is astonishing, and the stylistic range covered by the different entries was completely unexpected.

Thank you to everyone who entered, and congratulations to the winners and runners up.

Huzzah!

It's exciting times in Mongoose World right now.

I just got back from the Picturehouse, where we did the final tests of the Cambridge Film Festival machinima stuff. Damn, it looks good on a big screen. Really, seriously, good. Even though I've seen all the films at least half a dozen times now, I'm going to be right there in the audience just to get the experience of watching machine cinema writ large. The festival kicks off in a few hours, and I'm going to set up home in the Picturehouse for a few days, hoping to meet as many of you as possible.

And yesterday was just unbelievable. I've had people I haven't heard from in years contacting me to tell me they'd seen me on BBC news, on ITV news, and on the BBC Web site. I spent all day being swamped by investors, technology partners, media companies and journalists enthusing about Moviestorm, wanting to know more, and itching to get home and try it for themselves. Now I'm being asked to go all over the place and talk about Moviestorm, from schools to TV companies, major corporations, and indie film groups.

It's like my little baby is growing up. Personally and professionally, I've never felt more excited or fulfilled. I can see a huge future for machinima, and a huge future for Moviestorm within that.

And at the same time, I'm somehow finding the time to write my own films, even if I haven't got around to shooting them, which is an immense source of pleasure. The knowledge that I could shoot them gives me encouragement. When the frenzy dies down a bit, I'll move out of Celtx and back into Moviestorm.

To everyone who's helped, encouraged, criticised, nagged, or just cheered from the sidelines: thanks for making this happen. Let's carry on changing the world of film.