Sisch's Reflections

If you've been wondering what I'm doing.....

2010-02-17T09:39:00.002+01:00

It's been a while since I updated this blog! One of the many reasons is that life got very hectic around christmas and New Year, with a lot of rl work which sapped my strength considerably.

Then I've been thinking a lot recently, and though I've got a script lying here, ready to film (and I still think it's a very good script), I'm not ready to make the movie, and have no idea when I will be, or if I I'll ever be. It's a long, complicated to film story, it would need loads of mods; and I would have to make a lot of compromises to make it happen at all.

I'm just not up to it.

So what do I do when I'm fed up and undecided about something? I learn something new - and that's creating fashion for Second Life!
Currently I'm happily grappling with Photoshop; brushes, pen tool, layers; making textures... it's great fun, and I've opened a little shop where I sell my creations:
Koo-Koo.

I've also blogging about my shop here!

I have to admit I've grown very fond of the look of SL - in my opinion, it is very, very beautiful! And maybe (just maybe) I'll one day start filming here - something small, and uncomplicated..... but not now.

So, I'm taking a "sabbatical" from machinima!

For those of you who would like to offer me roles in their movies - though I'm not around much on any of the forums at the moment, you can still reach me via e-mail; and I will take on roles - just, I will be picky about what I do. But don't hesitate to ask!

Until then! :)

Pigeon: Impossible

2009-11-14T23:31:00.004+01:00

Just saw this today and loved every minute of it!
It took 5 years to make it - read all about it on the website!

Enjoy the film and watch it on Youtube HD - it's sooo worth it! :)

Atopic, Machinima Expo, graphic cards and smoke-signs...

2009-10-29T22:56:00.005+01:00

It has been a bit quiet here for some time now... but that doesn't mean that there isn't a lot happening!

The Atopic festival is in full swing - I'm so proud that my film Saving Grace is being shown there, and I wish I would be able to attend - but alas, I have to work... :(
I'm looking forward to IceAxe's adventures in Paris though, I'm sure he will have a lot to tell! And hopefully we'll get to see some pictures, too! :)

I'm also looking very much forward to Machinima Expo - so many wonderful films have been chosen for the consideration of the jury - quite a few of my personal all-time favourites! and I'm very happy, and again proud, that two of my films are among those - both Saving Grace and :transient:, the latter being one of my not so widely known movies of which I personally always have been very fond of. :)
I will also be on the panel of 'Women in Machinima' this year - looking very much forward to get to talk to the machinimatoresses (what a word... lol).

My own movie making is on full hold at the moment - my graphic cards have been causing more and more troubles in the last few month; an update of the drivers made Moviestorm nearly unworkable for me, though it helped with some of the other problems... and iClone is playing sluggishly, too. I know which new graphic card and system I want, but at the moment, all the components I'd like to have are sold out in germany.... so it's more waiting. Which isn't that bad - I'm doing more singing and voice overs in the meantime... :)

I am also waiting for iClone 4 to appear in the german version - which will hopefully be at the end of november. I have high hopes for the facial animation features and the motion-pathing - I never made a secret of it that I'm slightly disappointed in the facial /motion capabilities of iClone 3, and I hope version 4 will make a big difference.

In other news, I've quit smoking - wednesday, 21st october. It's going surprisingly well so far - I'm only slightly more agressive than usual, haven't gained weight yet (and doing my best so that it stays that way), plus I already can feel that my voice is better.... so, singing will get better. Which is the reward for having to give up my one and only vice!
Gah, I'm so boring now........... :D

Online Voting for the Cinemanila Machinima Festival has started!

2009-10-13T18:47:00.005+02:00

The excitement doesn't stop - so shortly after the First Ollies Award Show, which left me overwhelmed and very happy about the support the TMU community has shown me - I'd like to say 'Thank you!' once again! :) - the online voting on the First Cinemanila Machinima Film Festival has started!

I am very proud that Kate Lee's "The Afflicted" has been chosen to be voted on! If you'd like to vote for me (or any of the other wonderful movies in their selection), please visit their website:

Cinemanila Machinima

You will have to register to be able to vote!

There are two categories: Short Film and Music Video.

Among the selections for Short Film are also IceAxe's 'Clockwork', Lainy Voom's 'The Stolen Child', Russel Boyd's/Pooky Amsterdam's 'Shrink Wrapped'... (just to name a few!) loads of great films to vote upon!

Voting will be possible until October, 16th!

Good News!

2009-10-05T23:24:00.006+02:00

I'm happy to announce that two of my films have been selected for film festivals -

"Saving Grace" will be shown at the Atopic Machinima Film Festival in France (a big thankyou to Phil Rice!), and "Kate Lee's The Afflicted" at the 1st Cinemanila Machinima Film Festival in the Philippines!

I'm very happy and excited about this, as you can imagine! :)

And of course I'm also looking very much forward to TMUnderground's First Annual OLLIES Award show, which will take place on the Ken & Roger show this coming sunday, october 11th!

Don't forget to tune into the show and join the merry crowd in the chatroom!

The first time singing live on stage!

2009-09-21T23:18:00.006+02:00

As those of you who regularly talk to and meet me in several forums already know, september 18th was a very special day for me - the first time I sang on a small stage live for an audience!

The group of ladies I do acting classes with - we perform a play once a year, directed by our acting teacher David - was asked if we would like to take part in a small festival here in Bonn, which is called "Lesereise" - it could be roughly translated as "Reading journey". The special thing about it is, the readings are performed in shops all over the city of Bonn. In our case, the hairdresser of one of our group members asked us if we would like to perform in her beauty salon.

We did a short, funny play, read some excerpts of books - all centered around women, beauty and beauty craze, and solidarity between women - we chose texts by Vicky Baum and Dorothy Parker - we sang a song together (I got to be sort of a choir leader, too!) and I sang 4 songs.
The "Sleeping Beauties" were born, and we practised roughly 4 month for the event. The program we put together was about an hour long.

Of course, I just had to catch a cold on the monday before the performance - stayed in bed until friday, and up until friday morning I wasn't even sure if I would be able to sing - you don't even want to imagine how I felt, let alone here the rants .... :p

Anyway, despite my stuffed nose, I was able to sing - and for just one slip of the lyrics (I've never in my life had such a feeling of an "empty" head before, and would prefer to never feel that way again!!!), everything went just fine. I managed to find the words again after just one missed sentence, and though I was nervous as hell all through the 4 songs, I had fun, and was delighted and overwhelmed by the response I got from the audience (around 35 people), who congratulated me, praised my voice and even asked me if I would sing on family celebrations...
There's nothing like standing in the midst (literally, because the audience was all around me) of raucous applause... a very heady feeling! :)

As a group, we got asked if we would think about doing our program on stage at another festival, so it was a big success.

For me, this is a dream come true, and it gives me even more incentive to work on my skills as a singer and performer. What can be better than doing what you love and bring joy to others while doing it? (and maybe even making a small amount of money, if all goes well?) :)

I'm going to go step after step now - designing a flyer, working on a repertoire of more songs... this is so exciting, and so much fun!

Hopefully I'll have one or two vids to show off soon - the brother of my man filmed the whole event.

The second round of voting for the TMUnderground OLLIES has started!

2009-09-07T09:33:00.004+02:00

The first round of voting for the first annual TMU OLLIES is over - the community has chosen their favourite films, musicians, actors, modders, sound designers....etc. from all the movies uploaded or embedded on the TMU movie site in the last year!

A very big thank you to both Killian and T om Foster, who organise the OLLIES, you're doing stellar work! :)

Now it's time for round 2 - if you aren't a member of the TMU community yet, now is the time to join our forums and cast your vote!
The nominees for the 43 categories can be found here - please watch all the nominated films before making any decisions! You have until September 27 2009 to vote on the nominees.

I'd like to thank everyone who voted for me - I'm overwhelmed and very happy about all the support I'm getting! :)

Animating with iClone

2009-08-31T23:11:00.006+02:00

Work on my first iClone short is in full swing; the title is "Let the Fun begin" and it's about.... nah, I'm not sayin' - you didn't really expect that, did you? :p I'm just extremely superstitious about talking too much about my stories before I release them - and always afraid I'd give away too much...

Currently, I'm trying to bend the iClone animations features, especially pre-formed or collected moves and fiddling with bones; to my will. That's not easy - every bone-move change you make has an influence on everthing that comes thereafter... with results which sometimes have me giggling, at other times pulling my hair in frustration... and I still haven't found out how to make a character shake his head in a simple "no" movement. Nodding is no problem, but shaking? I'd be grateful for any hint as to how accomplish that!

Another thing that I find hard to get rid of is the foot-sliding, or "moonwalking". Maybe that will be easier to get rid off once I have more experience with the program - at the moment I am able, with a lot of fiddling and trial and error, to get rid of most of it - but not all..... thank the goddess that I'm not a foot-shot fetishist.. :D (at least not for this movie!)

Despite the extra time spent on these things, work is progressing nicely. I have always been a fan of learning by doing, and it has always been easier for me to try to make scenes fit to a definite vision I have in mind, instead of just playing around for learning purposes. Besides I think the story will be fun to watch - it's back to the roots, so to speak... ;)

Below is a screenie of a scene which I think came out very well. More news soon!

Exciting times!

2009-08-21T12:40:00.007+02:00

This month so far had a lot of exciting things happening:

The MachinExpo 2009 is accepting submissions now - don't forget to submit your movies! I'm looking very much forward to the event in Second Life in November - hopefully it will be at a time when I can attend (sometimes it sucks to be on a european timezone.. :p).

Trace Sanderson and Kate Fosk have created a fascinating new site for grown-up Machinima - visit Fallopian, were you'll find movies and directors showcased who are as far away from the general Machinima clichés - lots of guns, explosions, game-related jokes - as you can imagine... and maybe even farther! :) Thank you Trace and Kate!

There's also a new group on Vimeo - Women in Machinima - also created by Trace and Kate - every female Machinima creator is invited to add their films to it, regardless of the engine it was created with! To quote Trace: "Let's celebrate women in machinima!" And there's a lot to celebrate, I think. :)

I'm also really excited that Chat Noir - Kate Lee and Sherwin Liu - are back in the machinima making 'business' - they have gotten their teeth into Moviestorm and released a wonderful one-minute film (made for the Filminute 2009) called Darren, and are currently working on a big project - I can hardly wait to see it!
They also have a brand-new blog 'In the Mind's Eyes of the Black Cats', where, apart from posting about their filming process, interesting, mind-stimulating discussions can be joined. Love it! :)

Me, I'm enjoying my holiday - and I finally got iClone 3 Pro, which means I'm trying to learn everything I can about it. Which is quite a lot - iClone offers loads of possibilities and because of that, has quite a learning curve. For me, it isn't really intuitive, so I do a lot of reading and watching tutorials, hoping to get into it a bit before iClone 4 hits the market - the new features that are being revealed right now are what decided me to try the program again and though my progress is slow (compared to the ease with which Moviestorm came to me), I'm glad I did.
I've even begun to work on an iClone shortie - but it will take me some time to finish that yet... it still needs some more hair-pulling, set-building, learning and ranting. ;)
I'm looking forward to at some time combining iClone and Moviestorm material....

Anyway, here's the set I'm building right now...

Exciting times!

The secret project is ready for take-off!

2009-07-29T23:53:00.007+02:00

Or should I say, ready to be read by someone who knows about modding, and I'm ready to be asked if I'm crazy... *insert nervous-smiley here*

24 pages, 21 characters, the first time I will need not one, not two, no! - a whole bunch of mods to be made especially for a project.... I'm excited and still dread the verdict of those who will (hopefully) work with me on this.

I'd like to thank both Norrie and Kate Lee, who have read, proofed, suggested, read again, suggested some more... without both of you, the script wouldn't be as it is now! Thanks for all the time you invested in this - I just hope I'll be able to bring it to the screen!

Finding the 21 actors to voice the characters seems comparatively easy in contrast to the mod work - as always, a lot of the roles are already taken by what I call my 'dream-cast' in my mind - but I will worry about that once I'm a bit more sure if the project can be realised in Moviestorm as the only engine, or if I have to consider mixing again.

Oh well.... :)

For the moment, I refuse to be disheartened, and present to you the name of the project.... keep your fingers crossed!

Wow! 'Alarm' - an animation by Mesai

2009-07-15T20:49:00.006+02:00

Sometimes, you find real gems by accident - my friend found this video on Youtube today and sent me the link, saying that he'd be sure I would love it.

And wow, this is so good! It was made by an independent animation team from Korea (they give a link to their website, which is in korean only, but you can download the film there!)

Enjoy - I just fell in love with the details and the story immediately. :)

A Sense of Community

2009-07-12T12:57:00.009+02:00

Over at TMUnderground, there are some discussions going on right now which make me think about that elusive thing that is a community.

As maybe most of you know, TMUnderground was started by Ken when The Movies Online crashed and didn't come back up for a month - despite Lionhead's assurances that there were no plans to discontinue the service, most of us felt the end was nigh - and ultimately, we were proven right shortly afterwards.

From the start, Ken planned TMU to be a platform for all kinds of machinima movie makers - a place for discussion, promoting your films, getting feedback, finding people to work with, sharing and learning. I was (and still am!) so excited about this!

When a lot of us started using new engines and getting involved in the respective communities, we also invited people over to TMU - to upload their films, discuss and promote their work on our forums; in short, get involved, and in the process widen all our horizons.

Since then, I have learned the hard way how difficult that seems to be.

Yes, some people followed the invitation and joined - but on the whole, they are far and few between; and what's more, there's even some discussion about 'loyalty' to the engine you use - meaning you can't feel at home in a community that uses diverse means to express it's creativity.

What a load of (excuse me) bull!
Is it true? Can there only be a true sense of community when everyone uses the same engine to make films? Can't we discuss topics that apply to machinima in general and still feel a sense of community? Are we all wearing blinders, only ever able to see what's on our plate, so to speak?

Are we watching films because of the engine they were made with, or do we watch them for the story, for the visual artistry?

Seems that a lot of people lose interest the moment the story isn't told using the engine of their choice - which personally makes me sad and angry, because it's doing the machinima/anymation genre - however you choose to call it - a disservice. I really feel we shouldn't squander our time with discussion about iClone versus Moviestorm versus The Movies versus WoW.. and is machinima made with a program purposely designed for it machinima at all' - I even feel that's the reason that machinima isn't taken seriously by a lot of people.

Do we really need to categorise everything in little compartments, is there not a chance that people can meet and talk, and get a sense of community without the limited, 'you either use the same engine I do or we won't ever see eye to eye' view? Do we fear to venture out of the places were we know the viewer knows every little quirk of the program we use? Is it really necessary to feel compelled to defend your engine of choice the whole time?

I sincerly hope not, and thankfully there are people around who do watch and comment without prejudice, but they are still too few.

Your thoughts?

/rant

What's in a Name?

2009-07-09T09:54:00.007+02:00

Do you agonise about a movietitle as much as I do?

I prefer a title do do several things:

it has to grab my interest - there's nothing better than a title that makes me want to watch even if I know nothing about the content yet!
I love hidden meanings which manifest themselves only after I watched the film
double-entendres (sp?), wordplays - get me every time!
I like 'em either short (often prefer just one word) - or, very seldomly, ridiculously long :p

As a result, I often spend a large amount of time on agonising about a title.
'Saving Grace' for example went through several different ones - among them 'Parted', 'Disconnected' (both got scrapped immediately), 'Headway' (not good either); I looked up definitions, quotations.... until the scripting reached the stage where her husband sends his message, and the wordplay popped into my mind - bingo! From that moment on, there was never a doubt in my mind that 'Saving Grace' it would be. It ticked all my preferences - short, lots of double meaning...

For other films, titling was easy - :transient:, for example was a given from the first images that flodded my mind upon hearing the music for the film... I also like to use things like slashes or colons in my titles - don't ask me why, but they're a part of the name, not an addendum; without them, the title wouldn't have the same meaning for me (and it always makes me very unhappy when I can't add them to the upload title of the film; some sites don't allow them).

'Secret project' has finally been titled - it had a working title, of course, in fact, actually two working titles, that I didn't like. Both didn't really tickle my interest - one would have probably made people think about a TV series the film has no connection whatsoever to, the other was just - lame... short, which I usually like, but not encompassing everything I wanted it to say.

Thankfully, my friend Norrie, who always proof-reads my scripts and is the bouncing-board for my ideas (thank you so much for that! :)) came up with the perfect title (yay!) - it has the right flow, the right length, it hits home; and no, I won't write it down here - yet. ;)

So - how do you title your films, and do you think the viewer places as much importance on it as I (or maybe we, we'll see about that) do?

Lethal Entertainment

2009-07-02T21:21:00.005+02:00

I've already planned to have a site for my films when I worked on the Creative Voice website - now it's online!

Lethal Entertainment is the home of everything 'sisch' - anymation/machinima related - as of now, it features Kate Lee's 'The Afflicted' with detailed background information, a films archive where you'll find everything you ever wanted to know about my older films, homages to voice-actors and modders.... and in the future it will have quite an extensive production diary - yeah, yeah, I'm talking 'bout that secret project again... ;)

Hope you'll enjoy visiting the site! There's also a new link added to the navigation bar of this blog!

The Afflicted is online!

2009-06-24T09:04:00.002+02:00

Little did I know that this would be such an ordeal - Vimeo took about 15 hours to convert the movie (I uploaded yesterday) - that has never happened to me before...

The Moviestorm version is visually nice, but there's a sound-synch problem due to flash converting. Nonetheless I thank all those who already watched, and hope you'll watch it again in HD, now on Vimeo (also for download)! It's also up on TMUnderground now, and I'm happy to say that it's the featured film on the Moviestorm page!

I hope you'll enjoy the movie - I'm very glad that both Kate and Sherwin seem to like it!

It's done when it's done.....

2009-06-21T23:03:00.003+02:00

.... and it is done!

After countless problems, The Afflicted is finally rendered now - until the last this film was very stubborn - filters didn't work, Vegas produced countless crashes even though I had pre-rendered every little scene (with a heavy heart, but my computer just isn't up to handling files of this complexity, so I have to live with the quality loss) and decided it didn't want to render in .wmv, which is normally my preferred format - so I tried loads of different things, none worked until I found this tutorial by Eugenia.

So now I have a very nice looking mp4 version of the movie - I think it looks even better than .wmv, and the file is astonishingly small - only 311 MB at high definition!

As you can imagine, I'm very, very happy. :)

Was there anything else? Mhm? Oh yeah, release date.... :D

Either coming tuesday or wednesday... so stay tuned!

Hurray!

2009-06-17T15:43:00.005+02:00

Back in business, baby -

I've got my vo re-takes for The Afflicted, already re-shot and re-composited (is that a word? Oh bugger), and now it won't take that much longer to finish the movie!

Sound design is coming along fine, too - I've reverted to my old working style, doing it scene by scene.

So all's well in sisch-topia. :)

On another note, I just saw a film that blew me away -
Mellowhardy's Cafe Insomniac ep. 2 - just wow!
I strongly recommend you watch it, and if you haven't seen ep. 1 (shame on you!), do that first!
It's a great story, professionally filmed - the camera work is to die for, and pure inspiration to me!

Until soon!

When nothing works as you want it to

2009-06-07T20:57:00.006+02:00

A two weeks holiday for which I had so many plans - and now I've spent most of the first week lying flat on my back and accomplishing next to nothing ... must be some cosmic thing that makes me come down with a very nasty bout of stomach-flu during my holiday!

Haven't been able to do any of the vo's I promised people, The Afflicted is lying around unfinished, haven't been able to export Saving Grace in two parts to a format that the uploader on bitfilms will accept... haven't been able to work on an idea for a music vid that struck me; or sing any of the songs I wanted to practise on.

The only good news is that the script for my not-yet-to-be-named- project is slowly growing - in fact, is nearly written in it's entirety, but a whole new bunch of questions have arisen... I'm not at all sure that I'll be capable of doing it any time soon. As of now, it has about 18 characters who just need to have distinct faces - I'm not sure I can pull that off with Moviestorm at the moment.
Just as well that I planned on a break after The Afflicted - I'll have to do some serious brain-storming, asking a lot of modders for help - but that won't help the lack of faces, especially as I will need even more different characters for mass-scenes.

Of course it could work with incorporating The Movies characters - but I really want to make this film using MS only. *sigh*
Doesn't help either that I think this is the best script I've written so far, and that my perfectionistic streak insists on not making compromises.. or if I have to, the less, the better.

Oh well.

Off to bed now again - I'm sure everything will look brighter again once I've recovered fully.

/rant

My website is online!

2009-05-29T21:49:00.005+02:00

Finally, after leaving the domain lying around unused for over a year, I managed to put up my own website!

On Creative Voice, you'll find informations on all of the things I love doing, with pictures, voice-over demo and songs and some movies.

Hope you enjoy the visit! You'll also find a link to it on the top of this page!

A mistake I won't make again

2009-05-23T09:41:00.005+02:00

Ever wanted to smack yourself real hard? I do right now....

The Afflicted could be nearly finished right now. But it isn't, and it's entirely my fault, for thinking too much of my ability to clean vo's and get them to sound just right.

Having made a lot of machinima films, I'm used to working with different quality vo's. Everyone has a different set-up, different quality mic, room sounds etc. etc. etc.
So from the start, I tried to learn as much about quality and sound enhancement as I could, experimenting a lot - and though it often wasn't easy, I was able to get good results.

Now this time, I overestimated myself. And the worst part is, I only realised it now -when every scene is filmed, composited, ready.... at the stage when I add the original vo's and the sounds to the finished product. It just doesn't work. I do owe an apology to Goofparade, who told me from the start he thought I should ask for retakes after listening to a sample of my cleaning efforts.
I cleaned again instead, and thought this time I got it.

Apparently not - I have to admit that I made a mistake, asked for help (thank you, Ricky, for your time and efforts!) - and now re-takes it is. Which means I'll have to re-film all the scenes for which the new takes will be made, and go back to compositing and snippets-exporting...

Thankfully, the actor in question will do the vo's again - and by no means I want to lay any blame there - this is entirely my mistake, and one I will make never again.

And of course it means you'll have to wait a little longer for the movie...

Production update on "The Afflicted" or how I learn patience...

2009-05-02T22:23:00.007+02:00

Work on The Afflicted is in full swing again - or should I rather say, crawling progress? Since my clever idea of combing the .veg files doesn't work, I'm back to rendering scenes in bits and snippets again, and spent the better part of yesterday and today evening..... waiting.

As much as I love movie making, I could do very well - very well! - without the long waiting-on-something-to-render pauses. Very, very well. I'm not an impatient person at all - I spent hours fiddling on scenes to get them just so - but snippets rendering drives me crazy. Especially as I'm hardly able to watch what I put together beforehand - filming in 1280x720 has it's drawbacks, as my computer isn't even able to show me a preview even when the settings are set to lowest quality - well, it shows a preview, but skips a lot of frames.

Which means that I see imperfections after I have rendered... go back, fix them... render again... wait again.... rinse and repeat.

Sigh.

Nonetheless, I've made a lot of progress. Here's another screenie, with the great city MikeDBoing modded for me... minus one very cool detail I want to keep secret until the film is finally released. :)

More updates soon to come.... if (and that's a big if) I haven't fallen to lunacy while waiting...

Tweet tweet.... I succumbed ....

2009-04-26T14:14:00.004+02:00

to the "evil lure" :p of Twitter now, too....

so if you wanna be up to date on more randomness from me, here's the link.

Evil Ssss on Twitter

:)

The two things I like best!

2009-04-23T20:29:00.006+02:00

After my longish, enforced break, I had to do something to get back into movie-making mood... what could be better to do that than combining two of the things I like best?
Which are? Well, singing and movie-making, of course!

So here it is - my rendition of the Cole Porter classic "What is this thing called Love", accompanied by a video shot in Moviestorm.

Hope you enjoy! :)

The Thing called Love from sisch on Vimeo.

Costume frenzy - Stage acting

2009-04-16T21:01:00.008+02:00

As some of you know, I'm a member of a theatre group, and once a year, we stage a play. For over half a year, we have been working hard on our roles - and on May 14th, we will perform the play for a small audience made up mostly of friends and relatives.

I'm looking forward to it with equal measures of delight and dread - will I remember all my lines? Will the audience have fun? Will I get in and out of my costumes fast enough??

Because for the first time ever, each of us has to change costumes for every scene - most of us play several roles, and we all now carry suitcases to every rehearsal, taking time on how long it takes us to change...

Costumes, costumes, costumes!
Since I was a child, I loved dressing up, slipping into another skin with a new outfit, a new make-up, a new hair-do or wig. And it is amazing how much a costume helps you to invent a character, and fill it with life! I've been taking pictures of our group now (I'm trying to make a little "book" with pics and character descriptions for each of us); and seen through the cameras lense, became aware of how much postures and facial expressions change according to the role. I hope we came a long way since we started rehearsing in terms of making the roles unique... and sometimes I wish for the time when I was a child, when being someone else was so much easier.

Wish us luck!

New look! (Hey, it's spring.... )

2009-04-10T23:27:00.005+02:00

Did I say I wanted to learn how to design my own blogtemplate? Well, I did not much else over the last few days...

What you see now is what came out of it - I have to say a huge thanks to Blogger Buster and Tips for New Bloggers - both sites have an excellent range of tutorials and html to use, as well as links to great widgets like the picture and label cloud in my sidebar - if you're thinking about designing your own template and have no idea where to start (like me), these are the places to visit!

As it is I'm pretty happy with how the blog looks now, and it was a lot of fun. :)
I also learned a lot in the process, which will come in handy once I start on my long overdue website - the domain has been sitting dormant for ages because I'm lazy and scatterbrained (don't quote me on that :p)... I'm too easily distrac....

oh look, shiny things!

Enforced breaks.... well, semi-breaks

2009-04-07T12:24:00.012+02:00

I have been talking for quite some time now about the need to take a break.... and actually, the break was forced on me rather sooner than I wanted to.

Truth is, for the last two weeks, I have been doing nothing on The Afflicted, haven't taken much part in the community (no listening to TMOA, no chatroom, next to no watching films)... simply because I have been slapped down by the worst cold I've had in ages. Maybe it wouldn't have come out this bad if I had done the sensible thing and stayed away from work, but it's just typical me to refuse to go see a doctor... and crawl to work no matter what.

Well, I've got what I deserved - I'm still not feeling my usual self, my nose and voice still don't sound good (after two weeks!); though it's getting better slowly now, and I'm starting to pick up where I left off. And of course it was only a semi-break - I'm just not able to stay away from my computer totally, so I redesigned the look of this blog last weekend (using a template by Our blog templates - I really want to learn to do them myself - another thing on my list... ), and... (enough whining now)
... wrote the largest part of the script to the idea the Muse hit me with - after long consideration (I'm lying) I couldn't really make myself believe that to be "work" .... :p

Strange thing about that script - it wrote itself almost by itself so far, which is kind of spooky - because it's so very different from the sripts I wrote before - I had to go the 'Matt Way' with this, because of the story being..... (no, I won't tell :p).
Right now it's in the hands of Norrie, and I'm anxiously awaiting his feedback and suggestions.

In other news; a whole bunch of people are waiting for me to do urgently needed vo's for them... and I will do them this week, stuffed nose or not. I'm very sorry for the hassle I caused!

Work on The Afflicted will be taken up again after Easter - man, am I glad the deadline for the competition was taken off....

Oh, and while you're still here, I highly recommend you'll watch this - I just did this morning, and was totally blown away:

Lizards Coming Home

I can't embed it here, because it's in the 18+ category. It's a sci-fi dystopia with a wonderful story, inspiring visuals, vo's, music - I've never seen iClone look this good! Go watch it now! :)

When the Muse visits you......

2009-03-28T22:57:00.006+01:00

... and you never can predict when, or why..... what do you do?

Exactly.

You grab a good hold on her - or in my case, wake up, shuffle around to find pen and paper and refuse to let her go until you have at least an outline of the new story idea she's whispering in your ear.... which was exactly what I had to do this morning.

The Muse was not amused -

but please don't worry or send a complaint about me to the Organisation Against Maltreatment of Muses; I let her go eventually - I have learned that if you don't, she won't be forthcoming with elaborations, so you (I) have to let her fly away, to return in the near future with more ideas to flesh out the story she just planted the seeds for in your (my) mind.

Nevertheless, I was able to pen down the rough outlines of something that I'm more than mildly excited about. Something I haven't done before. Something that I'll have to put on hold (I need a break, anyway; badly) until some addons for Moviestorm are appearing which are, as I understand it, being worked upon; something which would need the help of an experienced MS modder - something for which the images are already appearing thick and fast. Not since Dark Obsession have I felt this driven and on the edge of more ideas like now. The main characters are there. The outline, the beginning, the end - are there. Now the bones need flesh.

I hope the little Muse returns tonight! :)

Compositing problems.... or, more precisely, rendering problems

2009-03-27T20:45:00.006+01:00

Oookay, okay, maybe I'm overdoing things - maybe my poor old computer is just too slow to handle this....

I finally finished a 2:07 min scene for The Afflicted - with the following "ingredients"...

two colour gradients, one of these 3D manipulated
two green-screened events
two ProTypeTitler events
one integrated .veg file, into which another .veg file was integrated; made of numerous things: titles, video, still images with effects, 3D manipulations, green screening
one voice-over track
one music track

... the whole thing brought together, keyframed... yada, yada, yada..... (see picture below)

To cut a long story short - I tried to render it out yesterday, and it just won't. Not only does Vegas need about 3 hours to get it done (up to a point), it always crashes shortly before the end.... which pulls the plug on my dream of being able to skip the pre-renders for every little scene ... *sigh*.

If my computer isn't able to handle 2 minutes of composited film (AMD Athlon 64FX-60 Dual Core, 2 Radeon X1950 Crossfire graphic cards, 4 Gigs of RAM), then I can scrap the dream of just putting all the .veg files together for the final render .... now.
I won't even start thinking about how long it would take if it actually would work.... two; three days?!

So, it's back to rendering in little chunks.... calm thoughts, Simone, calm thoughts.... :p

And if you wanted to ask now - no, I never do things by halves. :D

Storyboard or no Storyboard.... or your way of working

2009-03-19T09:26:00.007+01:00

So, during my interview on the Machiniplex premiere of Saving Grace, the question came up if I do storyboards - and people seemed a bit astonished that I don't.

In fact, I never even write down how I want to film certain scenes - in my scripts, you won't find inserts like "slow camera pan from left to right" or "camera focuses on younamehim's face". I don't make notes concerning the camera, not even for myself.

I thought maybe that would have to change now I'm filming someone elses script - but found that I work this like I do one of my own.

I just read the script, and while I'm reading, the movie plays in my minds eye; at first some scenes are blurred, but the more often I read it, and the more I get into it, the more the vision clarifies.
When I start filming, each scene is complete in my head, and the "only" thing left to do is get it done.... of course, during the process, I sometimes change things - add a close-up here or a pan there - but not much. In the end, the scenes always come out pretty much as I "saw" them.

I realise that this would be a nightmare if I were doing machinima in the classical sense - with other people operating the characters for me while I'm filming - but I'm not sure I could change my ways - for one thing, I don't even know all those fancy correct terms for the camera movements! :p I also think this might be the reason why I can work only one project at a time - there's simply not enough room in my brain for more than one movie-vision (I admire people who can work on several films at the same time, and I'm somehow sure that's only possible because they're taking notes... or is it?).

I would love to hear how you work. Do you have a storyboard, or write down notes on how a scene should look? How's your workflow? When do you get your ideas? While writing the script, or afterwards? How much do you change while filming if you do have a storyboard?

Things coming together

2009-03-08T16:51:00.007+01:00

I received some of my special mods from MikeDBoing yesterday - just look at some of his TM mods here and you'll know how good he is!! Thank you, Mike!

So finally I'm able to put some things together, and get a feeling how it all will look in the end - up to now, a lot was only in my minds eye. I rendered a 30sec testscene today - for reference - and oh well, it took nearly an hour to get it done.....

Another thing that I like very much in Vegas is that you can combine .veg files - and the best thing - if you combine two or more of them, and have to change something in one of them, you're able to change the original .veg and the changes appear automatically in the combined one! (what a sentence) This is pure bliss for me - as every other scene is heavily chroma-keyed....

I hope that in the end, I'll be able to piece together the combined .veg files of all the scenes and render the whole film from there - before, I always had to make renders of every individual scene and piece those together, so it would be great to be able to skip that step.

Slowly, slowly, we're getting there! :)

Thank the deities, the deadline is off...... (about perfectionism)

2009-03-05T00:02:00.006+01:00

... for the Industry 101 competition - I can finish The Afflicted at my own, leasurely pace! :)

I was beginning to worry - the end of march is not that far away, and most likely I would not have been able to have the movie ready for release until then.

I consider that one of my faults - I don't work well under time constrictions. I hate to rush things to do with movie-making. It goes against my wish to do everything as perfectly as I can; against re-imagining scenes again and again... which is as such not a bad thing, but sometimes I wonder if I'm not too perfectionistic and thus loading on work I wouldn't have to do if I just could be a tiny bit more relaxed.... I mean does the viewer really see the little things that irk me so that I redo a whole scene again the 10th time? Does it really make a difference? It surely does for me - and in the end, it's me who has to be happy with the end result, I know that. And it takes a lot to make me happy with my own work.

Why is that? I'm much more lenient when it comes to other people's work - I tend to overlook things that I would never tolerate in one of my own movies (or at least, I won't let little things take away from the enjoyment I otherwise get out of the film). Is it that the same for everyone? To which extend is the critical eye concerning ones own work healthy, and when does it start to become an annoyance; hampering the flow of creativity?

Learning by doing

2009-02-22T19:31:00.006+01:00

Work on The Afflicted progresses - though I must admit I took a little "holiday" this week, and did less than I intended to.
As the special mods that are made for me by MikeDeBoing for the TM content are still in the works, I'm shooting this film in bits and pieces, and almost all the stuff I've got right now is just scenes prepared to get the background footage implemented. So, not that much to show off via screenshots!

I'm happy to say that I'm slowly getting into the workflow of Vegas though - today, I pieced together a scene where the principle character, Terbing (played by Goofparade), stands in front of a mirror.

I finally found out how to resize and align footage I want to play in a mirror; or a viewscreen - and Vegas has a neat "Glow" feature, which enabled me to make it look more convincingly like an actual mirror surface. I think it looks nice as it is now - though if anyone wants to offer advanced tricks, I'm always listening!

I also found out how to place an overlay in a shot - the sign on the wall you'll see in the next screenie was actually made using Photoshop - and it was very easy to place it exactly where I wanted it. In case you're wondering about the black background - this is just another shot which is waiting for its background footage...

The one thing I'll need to do more experimenting with is the shadows function in Moviestorm. I'd love to have shadows - but I've tried all the different settings now, and still the shadows look - pixelated. I have some scenes which cry for shadows (in fact I think the mirror scene would look even better if it had them) - but at the moment I'm too perfectionistic to use them - seeing the ragged edges pulls me out of the mood of the film. Maybe my expectations are too high - I know realistic shadows are damned hard to do, and I know I could do them manually - I'm very grateful that Moviestorm has them (TM never did, not for actors) - but before I'll use them in a movie, I'll first have to find a way to make the edges appear softer. Oh well, things to keep me occupied... :)

Saving Grace premiere in Second Life!

2009-02-15T10:33:00.005+01:00

Tonight, at 10 AM pacific time, Saving Grace will be premiered at Second Life - in Overman's Z - Studios Theatre - many thanks to Ricky Grove for choosing my movie; I'm very excited about this! :)

The film is also featured at Machiniplex now; and details about the premiere can be found on the Machiniplex blog.

I'm a bit nervous about it all - just took my first steps in SL yesterday - at least I know how to move around and chat... :D

Hope to see you there!

Edit: pictures of the event are here!

Spotlight on - Nukester's "Temporary Night"

2009-02-13T22:25:00.007+01:00

In november 2007 my friend Nukester sent me the script for a movie he was planning to make using the "The Movies" software - Temporary Night.

From the first time I read it, I loved the story - and was daunted by the scope of it - what a project! I never once doubted though that Nukester would be able to translate his vision into images - and today, on the premiere day of "Temporary Night", I was transported into another world, into the streets of Neon City....

This is a masterpiece - part drama, part romance, part musical - yes, you read right, every piece of music for this wonderful film has been written by Nukester himself, and his vision comes alive through expert and ingenious use of the TM engine, mixed with dreamlike sequences and effects - and a story that is superbly written and will grab your heart. It doesn't get much better than this.... and I consider myself very lucky to have been part of his cast. Thank you, Nukey, for the wonderful experience of working with you and this exceptional, beautiful film! :)

Temporary Night from Nukester on Vimeo.

About getting used to new programs and the lamentable lack of documentation

2009-02-12T19:47:00.006+01:00

Okay, so I've been playing around with Vegas for nearly a week now - love it! So many advanced features, so many possibilities... I probably shouldn't do this while in the middle of working on a project, but I just can't stop myself from wanting to use it on the movie.

Which brings me to a thing that I'm not that happy about - I printed out the handbook that came with the program ( it seems nowadays nobody likes to waste paper on documentation anymore - I wonder why that is - okay, there's the cost factor, but with a program of this prize category... or maybe it's because I've got a "bundle-version" - or do the programmers naturally assume, as this is a technical product, that it will be purchased mostly by men who are bound to throw the handbook away at first sight anyway? :p).

Anyway - while the handbook is okay, giving details of general use and how to get started on a project, there's next to nothing on the advanced features on offer. You're forced to find out either by a) hours of fiddling around, not really knowing what you're doing and missing all the best things in the process; b) watching online tutorials - some good, some bad, and sometimes confusing things even more; c) pestering unsuspecting long-time-users you happen to know (thank you!); and/or d) buying a tutorial book.

I did that (haven't got it yet, unfortunately..)

So while I don't begrudge the people who write tutorial books their money, I still think a handbook coming with a software should have a comprehensive list of the things the program is able to do. Then such a simple thing as resizing a video you want to play on a viewscreen in another video wouldn't be so.... challenging.

Besides, I'm old fashioned - I like written documentation. I like to be able to look something up in written form, preferably with illustrations. Of course, I also like discovering things on my own, have to admit that - but if I'm not able to, the knowledge that it's there for me to read up is very comforting.

So yes, this is a plea for better documentation on software. Anyone with me? :)

Fun with new and updated programs!

2009-02-06T01:44:00.005+01:00

My Vegas arrived today - and just from playing with it for an hour, and testing the chroma keying abilities, I know I'll love this.... it's so incredibly much better than what I'm used to! :)

Only thing I need to find out about is which codec (?) to use for the sound of my Moviestorm renders - it definitely isn't the one I used before, 'cause there's no sound. But I'm sure I'll find out about that quickly...

Moviestorm got updated today - we now have a breathing function, and an advanced mood changer - I've been experimenting with that, too; the breathing is great! The rest will get tested over the next few days while working away on "The Afflicted".

So, generally a fun day in sisch's kitchen.... with lots of new spices.... :p

New screenshots and update on "The Afflicted"

2009-02-03T15:54:00.009+01:00

Work on "The Afflicted" progresses nicely - I've already completed (short of the background footage, which will be filmed in "The Movies") three of the many conversation scenes, started on the intro scene - which I'm still not sure if it will be kept as it is right now - it's a bit complicated, because I have to imagine how a TV scene in the future might look -
but so far I'm content with what I've shot.

Once again I'm very glad I've made the switch to Moviestorm - this film is very heavy (again) on dialogue; an intimate setting - I would feel incredibly constrained now if I had to shoot all that in TM.
With Moviestorm, I'm justing going "berserk" again in adding layers and layers of gestures, a feature I just love, love, love. Did I mention I love it? :)

Two more screenies taken from the film - I had an idea concerning the look, and I'm very curious how it will pay off in the finished movie.

I've also finally decided to switch editing programs - from Magix to Sony Vegas Pro 8 -
and I'm looking very much forward to immerse myself into learning how to use it.
Should be in the post tomorrow..... though I'm not sure I'll make the switch during filming this project - depends on how fast I feel comfortable with Vegas.

Voice acting vs. Stage acting ...

2009-01-31T00:40:00.009+01:00

As some of you already know, I've been taking acting classes for quite some time now. The course I'm doing right now is running about half a year (once a week, two hours) and will end with us, a group of eight women, performing the play we studied on stage on march 19th. The play will last about three quarters of an hour, and every one of us is performing multiple roles - I'm doing three characters (one big role, with a nice, overdone french accent, two small roles) - and it involves a lot of costumes, wigs.... Fun! :)

I find acting in sight of of others very different to acting in front of a mic - though of course the acting classes have helped me a lot with my voice acting.

For one thing, in voiceacting, like on stage, my whole body is involved. I'm actually changing expressions, ruffle my hair, avert my face when shy.. etc. when doing a voice role - and though I take great care to not change my position in relation to the mic, which would of course impair the quality of the recording, I'm constantly moving. Sometimes I have to do retakes because I forget about the sensitivity of the mic - when angry (for the role), I tend to bang my fist on the table... and almost always, just when I've got the sentence right, a bus goes by outside my window.... some people might have interesting things to say about the outtakes I sometimes send along. :p

Nevertheless, acting on stage is very different. For my current role, my acting teacher is constantly admonishing me: bigger, bigger, bigger!
Body language is so important. I found that I tend to be too subtle sometimes - which does work for the mic, which is very intimate, but not on stage. The audience is too far away, so your gestures have to be grander, and even your voice has to convey more urgency. That's one of the biggest challenges for me - if anything, I tend to underact, and get curiously shy as soon as I have to go all out.

One of my acting teachers once told me

When you come to class, leave all your inhibitions at the door.

She is absolutely right. Forget who you are - or at least, most of who you are - and be the character - don't just change your voice, change your body language, too. If the role demands you to be a serial killer, be cold. If it demands you to be a flirtatious person, go all out. Play. Try to forget about the reactions - it's not you, it's your character! Only then can you be believable, and that's were the demands for voice acting and theatre acting meet. I'm not saying this is easy - on the contrary - and I'm certainly not saying that I always succeed....
but I give it my best, and every little thing I learn, I try to incorporate in my voice acting.

A very nice exercise is about subtext - take a sentence like "The weather is fine today".
Now convey anger with that sentence.
Now flirt with someone.
Now be desperate.
Now say it in a way that takes the whole world in your arms.

Funny, isn't it?
You don't seem to hear the words anymore when doing this - you're conveying emotion, just by inflection, and to make it really work, you need body language, too.
This is one of the reasons why I always stand in front of the mic when I have to be angry for a role, for example.

Now where was I going with this?
Aaaah yes... :)
For anyone who really wants go into voice acting, acting classes are always a good investment. It helps you to loosen up, and teaches you valuable skills and exercises. The same goes for singing lessons!
Singing demands a certain body posture, which will have a very positive effect on your acting, plus a positve influence on the way you breathe, and your self-confidence.

More on that later!

Work on "The Afflicted" has started!

2009-01-25T13:05:00.014+01:00

As the end of january draws near, work on my new film, the re-imagining of Kate Lee's "The Afflicted" has finally started in earnest - there's so much to do and so little time!

Of course, that's what I always say - but in this case, as there's a deadline...

Most of the vo's are in, and I think I've found just the right actors to bring this to a new life - more on that later, at this moment I won't give away names yet. :)

Mike DeBoing has consented to do some special "The Movies" mods for me - thank you, Mike! - so some of the sets I built in Moviestorm have been tailored so that the TM footage can be green-screened into them at a later point. AngriBhuddist has done a special mod for Moviestorm for me - looks great! - and I'm having fun putting this film together!

This is the first time I actually asked modders to make content especially for one of my movies; so far I always used what was available to everyone, or put things together for TM with my very limited modding skills using Rileyman's excellent "set2prop" program and MED... so I'm very excited about this!

Finally, here are two screenshots of "The Afflicted" - they will give you an idea about the look of the film, and showcase one of the sets I built for it in Moviestorm.
As you can see, I went for a monochrome look, which fits the movie nicely, I think.

It also shows two of the characters of the movie:
Terbing, the male lead, and Treen, which is voiced by me.

More updates to come soon!

Saving Grace is featured on the Moviestorm frontpage!

2009-01-14T19:14:00.005+01:00

And in addition to that, Matt Kelland and David Bailey interviewed me - you can find the interview on the Moviestorm News!

I'm grateful the guys gave me the opportunity to talk about filmmaking - and I hope that Saving Grace will do a little bit to get more anymation/machinima makers interested in trying Moviestorm out - it's a great program; I find using it very intuitive, and there are new features added to it constantly!

In addition to this, the Moviestorm team is the most helpful I ever came across - wether it's driver problems, or great sites for soundeffects, special effects - you ask for help, and they are there!

I appreciate this kind of support very much - makes realising my visions much easier for me.

Thank you very much! :)

Endings and beginnings: about writing

2009-01-04T16:07:00.011+01:00

Norrie and I were talking yesterday - and among other things, wondered about some viewers expressing their interest in a sequel to Saving Grace - someone even asked flat out when part two would be coming!

Now on the one hand, this, of course, is flattering - it shows that the viewers like Grace enough to want to know more about her, see what will become of her... they got involved, the character grew to be real to them, which is a great compliment.

On the other hand, my reaction to this is just "No!"
To me, this story is told. Everything I wanted to touch upon with this movie is there. It is the end of what I wanted to tell about her.

I remember I got quite a lot of queries about a sequel series when I did the four parts of Stolen Death , which ended in a wide open, too.

Which brings me further to musing about why I dislike so-called "happy endings" so much. As anyone familiar with my stories can probably agree upon, I'm perfectly fine with endings that revolve around death - I've killed off my "heroines" and "heros" so often, made me wonder about my state of mind sometimes... :p .. but honestly, a protagonist dying is not necessarily bad - sometimes, it is the only way a story can end.

It's probably because I see life as not having "happy endings" - at least not in the fashion that is implied in calling them that. At best the thing that we get sold as a happy ending in any given Hollywood movie is not an ending, but the beginning of something new. Too often endings seem to be manufactored so that the audience can go away "happy" - every string of the story caught up, everything tidied up to a neat, no room for own ideas, all's well that ends well, thing.
Everyone is happy, we can go home now. Oh bugger off, that's just - not real!

I don't want to have everything delivered on a silver platter. Life doesn't work that way. I want room for speculation, I want the sense of a new beginning. I want to have my own thoughts about what this new beginning could be all about - or not, if I choose it to be so. And quite often, I do choose the latter.

As Norrie said yesterday:

Acceptance and contentment are a wonderful thing.

Concerning the characters I write about, I accept that their story is told.
I let go of them. I accompanied them on a part of their way, and now they wander off into the unknown, and I am content to wave them fondly goodbye.

New things cooking in my kitchen!

2008-12-31T20:29:00.006+01:00

I've been talking to Kate about The Afflicted -and have got a go! from her on re-envisioning it!

This is very, very exciting - as mentioned earlier, I always loved the film, and right now miriad ideas are shooting through my head... I hope Jase180 and AnotherNewDawn, as the creators of the contest, will allow me to use the original music made by Sherwin Liu specially for this movie - it will be perfect for the images I see!

The next thing to think long and hard about is which actors to get into contact with.. we're not allowed to have the original ones, so this needs some serious thought. Although I can see myself taking one of the smaller roles, I'm not yet sure about whom to ask to embody the principle characters ... exciting times!

The second project on my plate is a little something for Ken, the founder of TMU - this will be short, and very funny - reading the script, I had to giggle quite inanely! It will be a lot of fun to bring this to life!

There's even a third pot stewing.... someone offered to write a script for me, and no, at the moment I'm not willing to say more... :)... but it seems this will be a busy kitchen for the next few month, with lots of experimenting and new ingredients.

Makes me happy!

Last but not least, I wish everyone a happy and successful 2009 - may all your dreams come true, and all your projects prosper!

Philosophising (some people call that rambling)

2008-12-30T11:08:00.010+01:00

So, I've been reading a lot of blogs and articles on machinima lately.. and found some very interesting discussions, especially about the meaning of the words "machinima" and "anymation" (a word I first read on the TMU blog, where Ricky Grove mentioned it.)

I liked the word immediately - and decided, after further reading, to use it in the title of this blog, rather than the word "machinima".

When I started out making movies with "The Movies", I didn't really spend time on how to classify those movies, but the more I got into it, and the more I started talking about it to my rl friends (boring some of them to death, no doubt) the more a need arose to give this child a name... so I started calling it "machinima" (well knowing that the purist machinima makers, who demand that every footage for such a film is shot in a game in real time; and really you are cheating, everything you use is pre-fabricated! would object very much to me calling my films that).

My, that did help a lot.

I ended up explaining just as much, or even more, than before - the reaction to the word "machinima" was all mildly interested, blank stares. So after a while, I just went back to saying that I make films on my computer, using engines built for that purpose... kind of like... animated films... but not really.... you know.... no......? (insert a rueful grin and a heartfelt sigh here)

I don't know if this is specific to Germany, or if I just know the "wrong" people or live in the wrong place, but nobody in rl I talked about it to so far had any idea about machinima at all. Which makes me very sad, because I've seen loads of anymation films which I would prefer watching to bad rl movies any time... but it's still not easy to get people around me interested in it (=take it seriously), or interested in the ability to make movies themselves if they're willing to spent time on learning how to. Which is for me the most exciting thing - being able to bring your stories to a visual life, without the need for a big bugdet!

So will me calling my films anymation from now on help me?

Not sure at all... especially not with people who have no idea about it in the first place - but I like the definitions that have been given.

Story oriented.
Using all the means you have available to tell that story.

As for me making movies is all about telling a story - yes I do like special effects and breathtaking graphics, but what are they worth if the story is bad? - only if it all comes together, works as a unit, it's what I call a good movie - so anymation is just what I want to make.

Thinking about a new challenge

2008-12-29T13:02:00.001+01:00

Sooo... now that "Saving Grace" is finished - and once I've got all those vo's for all those nice patient people done - I'm on it, promise!

.....I thought it could be the time for a new challenge... so far, every movie I've made has been based on one of my own stories. How well would I be able to bring someone else's vision to life? I've been thinking about this for quite a while now, and it's really something I would like to try. I haven't even collaborated with anyone yet - up until now, I always wanted total control.

I'm still not sure how to go about it - maybe I'll stage a script-writing contest on TMU - I'm almost sure I would want it to be something that hasn't been made into a machinima movie before...

Still thinking. :)

... and while I'm still thinking, I've read in the Industry 101 Remake Competition thread that Kate Lee is offering her movie The Afflicted to be remade.... this was the very first Chat Noir movie I watched, it made me an instant fan of their work, and I'm tempted, so tempted... :)
The original version was made with "The Movies", before we even had the "Stunts & Effects" addon - it's a classic, go watch it if you haven't seen it! and right now I'm trying to envision how it would look being remade using Moviestorm.

It would be an honour to direct a script by Kate - she's a wonderful writer!

"Saving Grace" online!

2008-12-29T12:29:00.001+01:00

Since the 26th, Saving Grace is online - and wow, what a reception it has got - makes me very happy!

I don't know if it's the plight of every film maker, but whenever I'm working on something, I go through phases of first: thinking it is a good concept and story, and confident that I can pull it off; second: working like a mad-woman on it, putting everything into it, new ideas every few moments, dreaming about it, spending too much time on the computer, being obsessed by little details; to third: nearing completion, getting more and more unsure - will this story grab the audience? Do they talk too much? Too little action?

Being creative is damn hard work (but oh how I love it!), and I would be lying if I would say that I'm not waiting for the audience reaction with bated breath...

So yeah, the feedback so far has made me very happy. I'd like to thank my voice actors AnotherNewDawn and Goofparade again - without their great work on their roles this wouldn't be half as good - and everyone who had input in this, from modders to friends who listened to me rant while making it. You're very much appreciated!