Ricky Grove

Shoot. The vid keeps coming up as "no longer available". Am I too late to the party?

Cool post, Moo. Very interesting piece of hardware. I'm going to check it out. Thanks!

I agree. With quality work like BEAST (and thanks for posting about it) using tools that are non-game related, I think we will see machinima moving in a different direction in the future.

I think the key to BEAST's success is in the animation; the detail, the quality, the simplicity all add up to a real stomach churner. In addition, the ideas behind the story are fully supported by the rest of the film. By that I mean the look and sound of the film are exactly right for what is being said. Leo Lucien-Bey's skill at creating lip-sync is a another huge factor in the film being so believable and true. Plus, the film has a stylized look that is unique to machinima. I don't think I've seen a film quite like it.

That this film was passed over at the European Machinima film festival is a huge error in judgement.

Correct pronounciation is "muh-SHEEN-uh-muh" (taken from machinima.org)

All good questions brought up by the panel. Commercialization is going to be a big topic at the upcoming Festival this week in New York. I suspect that it will depend on how useful machinima becomes to corporate America. This year we had at least 5 machinima filmmakers join major Game companies as cinematic directors. Jason Choi,the director of Edge of Remorse (the grand prize winner) was just hired by Shiney Entertainment to do cinimatics. The "brain drain" effect might come in to play if machinima really becomes hot in popular culture. However, there will always be filmmakers with the "punk" sensibility. They will keep machinima honest no matter what. Because insn't machinima really just a tool,after all?

"Glen and Randa (1971)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0067141/