The Machinima Filmfest, probably the most significant festival in the world for machinima films, has announced the 2008 nominees.

http://festival.machinima.org/wordpress/?p=19

It's disappointing that no flight sim movies made it, especially Faith Hope and Charity.

I've only watched a few of these so far, and while there is some really creative work I still think FH&C deserved a place especially after our nominations at the Europe Machinima Festival and our best film award at the Online Machinima Film Festival.

Admittedly, our audience for pure flight sim movies is very limited and it may be naïve to hope that they will ever be much hope for significant recognition out there. Either we continue as we are and be content with our potential audience, or we break the mould and develop pure flight sim movies into something more "machinima" like. Therein lies a dilemma for the purists and the revolutionists.

We break out and develop more mainstream content.

Not the WOWC, Second life and Half life rubbish we see up for awards. But films like The Apology by overman, an excellent short, done in Moviestorm and shown by the BBC.

If you don't believe me that this is not reflective of the creativeness of those out there, watch Snacky's Journal episode 3, then tell me you understood it (or any WOWC film for that matter).

Anyway Joe. I have my moviestorm modders licence now, so I can add any content we want, uniforms, guns, flying helmets, you name it.

hi blackace,

i must say, that i found many of the nominees highly creative. the chosing is obviously widerspread, but i also found the snacky's episode highly amusing and - within it's purpose - excellent timed and put together.

i agree with the (too) many pieces of 'funny' soldier's action, mostly the accumulation done with 'halo'. the more the 'snacky' adventures are refreshing.

'half-life'/'unreal tournament' though seem to be an appropriate base for some tries to achieve even more serious attempts, which eventually also get rid of the past times self-ridiculing by unfitting facial expressions and movements.
'monad' and 'ship', although in their final meaning disputable, are impressive examples of acting, resp. atmospheric settings.
i can't see any rubbish in there.

in my opinion, a very fundamental criterium for 'machinima'-like production and their acceptance by an audience is in the featured length of the video. same as in cinematic releases, scripting, story, timing and acting gets more and more important, the longer the piece is done. artful photographing and editing alone can't keep the viewer's interest up high for long, if he is not an enthusiast.
in commercial movies, a 2-hour-entertainment is (too) often achieved by either action-load or visual effects.
in machinima, visual effects are most times in the used game only. however, any out-game animation can do better, so game-visuals are just good for a short time of 'ooh how neat'-effect. so, machinima goes often for shorts... or for the concepts of humour and contradiction or unexpected. by that, many only create 'cheap' results, but some find the right way of using the game's limits to fit to the subject of the video.
convincing machinimas have often atmospheric, experimental, humouristic, surrealistic/expressionistic or innovational/surprising content. those, who rely too much on dramaturgical storyline, have it much harder. and when entirely based on grafical realism and character animation/action, it often ends up in those unimpressive 'crysis'-soldierstories... fancy on the first, but not for longer than 3 minutes.
which doesn't mean, those game-engines couldn't be used - examples above, imo.

however, i find the results more and more interesting - just harder to find, because there is also more output.
i think, it is probably most difficult to produce a machinima of long duration. as much as one can use game-scripting for one's own creative ideas, it will get harder and harder to keep the audience from noticing the limitations of game-scripting.

after all, it comes down to the producer's intention. could be targetting a huge audience, artistic expression or expriming ideas and thoughts.

hi joe,

in addition to what i replied above...

in case of FH&C the first decision had been to use 'pacific fighters', i guess. which, of course, limited the subject strongly to vehicles in air. by that, a documentation-like story was a good choice, and the duration in that regard a necessarity.
but, as i see it, the content is rather conventional and by that, the audience will compare it to conventional releases. which probably means, that the lack of characters and some real-life effects causes low identification for the spectator, together with environmental shortcomes and perhaps issues with visual time-structure.
however, the result was most impressive. this goes for technical and productional aspects, for scripting and creating emotional response, for editing, composing and photographing - in short, all what concerns conventional movie-making.
a truly masterpiece, if there were no cinemas.

in that regard, as said in other threads, FH&C doesn't fit to 'machinima' for me at all. it is probably amongst the nearest to cinema one can get without a studio.
i don't know, where FH&C would have to look for the well earned acknowledgement, but not necessarily at the 'machinima festival'.
i also wouldn't bother too much about audience. i realise, that being watched is the main purpose of a movie, but then again not all that is watched by many is worth it. by what i said above, FH&C has counterparts in conventional releases, which it can't compete with. not by means of quality of outcome, but it's destined limitations.

sorry for the long reply, as you already said it much shorter, joe.
but you didn't sound to feel very well within your post and i just wanted to give my opinion, that there shouldn't be a dilemma.
what i see in 'machinima', there are remarkable releases. however, it has still issues with it's own identification and not all what is said to be representative is worth to be listed.
FH&C was outstanding, but for itself and not related to a genre. i strongly hope, you and others will go on with what you do, but won't consider category and audience first.

Cheers, Deepo. I guess we all at Wingmen Productions hoped FH&C would have made a bigger impact, hence the tone of disappointment. Well, That's Entertainment

I've watched a few more of the nominations now and I'm even more unclear as to what "machinima" is ... in a good way! There really are some creative, professional and entertaining films nominated.

I am very pleased to see the festival has picked films that are the antithesis of the majority of what we see at www.machinima.com

It's a shame that the most popular machinima web site is a misrepresentation of all that, in my opinion, is good machinima. However, there is a huge fan base from the gaming communities for movies, and if they enjoy what they see there, good for them.

Nevertheless, the dilemma is still there. Anyone of us who intends to put many many hours into a film will want to know we have a large enough potential audience. Except for the purists who do art for art's sake, we get our payback by numbers of viewers and to know that they appreciate our movies.

Well, I do still support the Machinfest and hope that it all goes well.