Next time you start Moviestorm, you should see a screen that looks like this. Go on, press that little update button, and enjoy the goodness!
Important: after you do the update, if you press Start, Moviestorm will close and you will need to restart it. THIS IS NOT A BUG. Close Moviestorm manually (or press Start), and then start Moviestorm again, and all should be fine.
Most of what’s in the update is support for the upcoming pyros, hairstyles and music packs, and there’s an improved modder’s workshop, plus a load of bug fixes.
Moviestorm 1.1.6
After this update has finished, you will need to restart the Launcher prior to pressing the Start button.
New features
The Moviestorm EULA has been updated, and a new EULA covering the user of the Modders Workshop has been added.
Held Props are now customisable. When your character is holding a held prop (in the Director’s View), either click on the character and select Customise Prop from the ring menu, or click on the held prop activity on the timeline, and select Customise [Name of Prop].
Cutting Room View: When adding audio, you may now select any of the audio within Moviestorm’s content packs, by using the Insert Audio from: Content Pack tab.
You can now replace a stock set you have created by saving a new stock set with the same name.
Modders workshop - added Wizard to retexture template-based objects.
Modders workshop - added Wizard to create wall, ceiling or floor materials.
Modders workshop (PC only) - replaced sketchup import with Import Wizard for sketchup 6. This now allows interactive resizing and correctly creates thumbnails for the newly imported props.
Support for upcoming content packs - morphable hairstyles and particle effects.
New hair colour variations.
Resolved issues
Tintable materials with emissive or specular textures no longer lose their emissives and speculars after being tinted, saved and reloaded.
Changing face expression sliders in the Advanced Mood Customiser now provides direct visual feedback if the timeline marker is after the Mood Change activity.
The sound system now works better, allowing multiple occurrences of the same sound playing at the same time. This was previously causing significant problems with Police Cars.
Looping 3D Sound on mobile objects (such as Police Cars) now works when playing from part-way through the motion.
Characters aiming a gun at an object below or above the normal horizontal aim should no longer stop aiming prior to firing.
Depth-of-field should no longer cause crashes.
Modders workshop - Renaming materials now works correctly.
Modders workshop now has a Close button.
Tinting objects or changing images on objects should now only affect the object being edited.
Only the static version of the mobile phone can be placed on set; the version which sat part way into tables can now only be used as a held prop.
Known issues
No more support for pre-1.1 walk activities. Movies created prior to Moviestorm version 1.1 will not work with 1.1.6. Prior to updating you might be able to convert the Movie to use the updated walk system by going to the setting tab of the Script Editor, and selecting the ‘Convert to new walks’ button.
When running Moviestorm on an Apple Mac Mini, the program will sometimes crash while being started.
Targeted camera shots can produce inconsistent results when targeted at characters.
The undo/redo functionality does not work with character or vehicle movement commands, when one changes the curve being followed by the character or vehicle.
Gestures or Improvisations can stop the Handcuffing activities from starting. If you encounter problems with trying to put in a Handcuff animation, try stopping the prisoner from improvising (using change mood, or by turning off improvisation for the whole scene via the script editor > settings tab).
Reordering dutch tilt camera keyframes causes problems.
Movies rendered directly from Moviestorm will play back without sound if played through Quicktime on a Mac.
It’s always nice to hear from our customers about the varied ways they find to use Moviestorm. This popped into our inbox this morning.
Hey everyone, allow me to introduce myself. I’m James Twyman. I own a small film company here in England moonlighting as a freelance Director as well as making my own films. My latest, “Reparation”, was in fact storyboarded using Moviestorm and I found it a compelling experience that really helped the flow of the production.
But that’s not what I’m here to talk to you about, I’m here to talk about something way more exciting. Something revolutionary that could change the way we teach and learn forever. Put away your note books, throw your pens in the bin, you won’t be needing them anymore, because this could be something very powerful for you.
During the day I teach. And I specialise in something called accelerated learning. This is a form of learning that can help anyone, regardless of their perceived intelligence, learn anything quickly, easily and permanently. Before I go into how you use Moviestorm for this, I’m going to introduce you to the science behind learning. This is important for understanding just why Moviestorm can really help you learn anything.
The Sciency bit.
You may have heard that the brain is split in two. One side (usually the right) deals with memory and intelligence and the other (generally the left) deals with creativity. In order to learn effectively, you have to use both at the same time. Here’s why.
Remember high school? I bet there were plenty of lessons where you can remember someone falling over or doing something funny, but can’t remember what the teacher was going on about. That’s because the funny thing had an emotional reaction to it, so we remember it better. You see, in your brain you’re constantly making connections with what’s happening and the emotions attached to it, and the stronger the emotion, the more vividly you will remember.
Simply put, being creative (making fun images, painting or movie-making) creates emotion. If you’re learning whilst being creative, your brain creates a strong link between the thing you learn and a good emotion, meaning you remember the information because doing so makes you feel good.
What kind of learner are you?
There are three kinds of learner:
1) Visual (you like bright colourful visual things)
2) Auditory (sound is what makes you tick, you love it)
3) Kinesthetic (you can’t sit still doing nothing, you have to keep moving)
Moviestorm caters to all three. For a visual person, it’s all about creating visually interesting content that you will remember. For auditory, it’s the sound design of your films that’ll be most important, and for kinesthetic, just the fact you are actively being creative is enough. But just for your own future use, let’s find out which one you are. This will help you because if you’re learning against your brain’s preferred way, you’ll learn far less.
If I asked you to learn to mend a bike how would you best learn to do it?
A) If I showed you
B) If I told you how
C) If you just tried it.
If you choose A, then you’re visual, if you chose B, then you’re auditory, and if C, you’re kinesthetic. Use this information wisely, it’ll help you out.
What on earth does this have to do with Moviestorm?
It has everything to do with it. Moviestorm is a creative outlet that combines all three learning styles perfectly. You can take any subject and apply it to your movies to create dynamic study materials for yourself. Not only that, but your brain will retain information as you create. Let’s use some specific examples.
English
So you have this poem to learn and contextualize but it doesn’t interest you or you don’t get it. Simple - write a script that incorporates the poem and then make a visual representation of the poem, maybe you can narrate the poem over the top or have a character saying it as the story unfolds. Use interesting cinematography to bring what’s on the page to life and think about your use of sound and music. You’ll quickly find your knowledge of the poem grows. Same with books. Which chapters do you need to study… adapt them into a film to help you understand them better.
Maths
What I would do here is create an interview. I would make myself in character creation and a host to a TV show called Geniuses. I would then act out being an expert at the subject and explain to the “dumb” audience the concepts I’m trying to learn. It really will help.
Languages
So you’re learning French and the unit is “in the restaurant”. build a restaurant set, make some characters and make a film of them having the conversation you need to learn. Maybe add subtitles for extra effect.
History
You’re studying the battle of Hastings. Why not re-enact it with Moviestorm. OK, there are no arrows but hey… use your imagination!
The list goes on. I can’t even begin to imagine the great ways you could use Moviestorm to aid your learning, and I’m excited to see what you come up with.
Thank you so much for your time and I really hope you found this piece both interesting and useful.
Shameless Plug: As I mentioned before I am making a no budget film called “Reparation”. We have a trailer and a load of pictures on our facebook group. I would be so grateful if you could join the group, check out the trailer, leave a comment and pass it on to friends to help support the six months hard work we’ve done.
We’ve been working away in the background for a little while on new ways to integrate Moviestorm with other bits of the social Web, and looking for new ways to promote and distribute the very best of your Moviestorm films.
Today, we’re launching the first of our MovieGifts apps on Facebook. This one features the ten winners of the 30-second movies competition we ran a couple of months ago. Just pick one of these superb little movies, pick some Facebook friends, and send it to them. If you’ve been on Facebook for any length of time, you know how these things work by now!
Future MovieGifts collections, to be launched in the next few weeks, will include comedy, Sci-Fi, and music.
So, if you’re on Facebook, please send a movie, tell your friends, make the creators famous, and promote Moviestorm, all with just a few clicks. Thanks, and many congratulations to our worthy winners!
UK TV Channel E4 is once again launching a competition to make a 10-second sting and get it shown on TV.
They say, “we want you to chuck us your funnest, funniest, weirdyest, mischievous-est, cool-est, dumbest, cleverest, randomest, most nonsensical-est Telly stuff that yer got,” which seems like suitable territory for some of you guys. Even shorter than our 30-second competition, this should really give you a chance to show what you can do in next to no time. Entries must be submitted by 4pm on Tuesday 25th August 2009.
This weekend is the summer solstice, which means that we’ll all be out in our gardens celebrating the longest day of the year with BBQ and beer. Or, equally likely, sitting indoors hoping the rain will stop. So, as we reach the half-way point of the year, where have we got to since our last update?
Test movie showcasing some experimental pyro code, by Johnnie.
As well as all that good stuff, we’ve announced several new features in development. On the dev blog, we’ve been running a series of previews of some visual effects filters we’re working on. So far, we’ve shown off nine out of the eleven we’ve got in prototype: night vision, sepia, black & white, red boost, half-tone, negative, glow, bloom and everyone’s favourite, camera shake. Come back next week to see the last two!
We also showed you a first look at some new styling for Moviestorm, more in keeping with the way we’re presenting the Web site, and much less Sims-y. CEO Jeff Zie has been taking a break from paperwork (and answering the phones) and has reverted to his roots in graphic design. And, while we were at it, we gave our MySpace and YouTube sites a bit of a make-over as well, so they at least use the same colours as the Moviestorm Web site.
We’ve also welcomed more new people to the Moviestorm team: Dave Holloway joins the ranks of Daves, replacing Daves Pajak and Thatcher in the QA department, and Paul Kelley is now working alongside Chris in the Art Department. We’ve also had more work experience students experiencing the joy of regular office hours with us, which is, we hope, fun for them and useful for us. We also have James Barlow stepping into the role of finance officer. However, we’ve had to bid a fond farewell to our long-serving receptionist, secretary, PA and general all-round useful person Tiffany, which means we have to answer the phones ourselves, and we keep running out of milk because we forget to go to the shops.
Best videos
If you enjoy Sci-FI, have a look at the Sci-Fi playlist we’ve created. We also kicked off a playlist featuring the first episodes of several Moviestorm series, so you can sample them and see which ones you like. We’re currently seeking nominations for the Best Comedy playlist - come and tell us what you want to see on the forums!
The three standout videos of the last month are:
Cafe Insomniac - episode 2
As always,the camerawork, editing and lighting are first-rate, and the look mellowhardy gets out of Moviestorm is quite incredible. On top of that, there’s great voice acting, amazing sound, and he’s squeezed strong emotional performances out of the characters. And, of course, it’s a great story and a great script. This raises the bar yet again. (If you haven’t seen it, watch Episode 1 first, though.)
Melvin meets a Girl
This is the start of what promises to be an entertaining comedy series aimed primarily at World of Warcraft players, by Moviestorm newcomer myrtheus. In this opening ep, Melvin, a WoW Vlogger meets a girl online and talks about it. If you enjoy this, catch the followup, Melvin Joins a Raid.
The Devil Made Me Twitter Twitter seems to be flavour of the month amongst journalists, bloggers, celebrities, marketing gurus and just everyone else. Jim Stedman‘s Moviestorm debut piece catches it perfectly. Essential viewing for all those who love or loathe twitter!
And lastly, a friendly wave to our friends in the Wan Smolbag theatre in Vanuatu. We’re very proud to be supporting this worthy cause in such a remote and underdeveloped part of the world, and we look forward to seeing what they make of Moviestorm.
Earlier this week, we alluded somewhat cryptically to a mystery third content pack that we’d be releasing after Moviestorm 1.1.6 goes live. Now I have to hang my head in shame, and confess to you all that we lied.
We will, in fact, be releasing four additional content packs.
We’ve teamed up with award-winning musicians Bob and Barn, who’ve been providing music for games, film, television and multimedia projects for nearly ten years. They’ve done music for Broken Sword III, Medievil, Bionicle, Frogger, and Primal, as well as commercials for, among others, McDonalds.
If you’re new to the whole ‘Bob & Barn experience’, I wouldn’t be surprised if your first question was ‘just who the hell are Bob & Barn’ and maybe the second would be ‘just what kind of name of a company IS Bob & Barn’. Well, let me answer these 2 important issues. Bob & Barn are the nicknames of Paul ‘Bob’ Arnold and Andrew ‘Barn’ Barnabas, a couple of affable chaps who’ve been writing music professionally and involved in all manner of sound related paraphernalia since 1990. Formerly heads of audio, music directors etc. of various emminent institutions - Sony being one of them, they left the convenience of corporations and formed a ‘sound company for the new millennium’ in 2001. With a heady combination of passion, single mindedness in increasing recognition and importance of video game soundtracks, tech savvy, business acumen and a keen sense of fun and “not taking ourselves too seriously” they’ve managed to carve an egg shaped niche into the heart of the media world.
They’re providing four packs of music that you can use in your Moviestorm movies, completely royalty-free and fully licensed. The 275+ tracks range from full orchestral pieces to electronica, jazz, funk, TV jingles, and more, suitable for many different types of movie. We’ll be shipping these packs a few weeks after the release of Moviestorm 1.1.6, which is slated for the end of June. More details on exact release dates and pricing to follow.
Moviestorm helps island nation towards development goals.
Moviestorm is very proud to be supporting Wan Smolbag Theatre, based in the Pacific islands of Vanuatu. It’s always been one of our aims to bring moviemaking to kids who would otherwise never have the chance to experience this, and the youth centre there deals with some of the poorest kids in the world. Vanuatu is one of the UN’s least developed countries (LDCs), and most parents can’t afford to send their kids to school. The Wan Smolbag Theatre is a non-governmental organization which uses drama, film and radio to inform, raise awareness and encourage public discussion on a range of contemporary health, lifestyle, environment and governance issues. They’re supported by development organizations worldwide, including AusAID, NZAID, OXFAM, the International Women’s Development Agency, the United Nations Development Programme and the UK’s Department for International Development.
The youth centre has a computer training lab and they are about to start using Moviestorm to teach the kids to make movies. We’ve donated a number of content packs to help out. It’s only a small gesture, but it could make a huge difference.
Over the coming months, they’ll be showing us what they produce, and giving us an idea of what it’s like to live in such a far-flung part of the world. We wish them every success, and we look forward to seeing exciting stuff from them soon.
Dragon*Con will be running machinima screenings for the the third year running, and are looking for submissions. Dragon*Con is held in Atlanta, GA over the weekend of Labor Day (September 4-September 7, 2009).
Full submission guidelines are here. Christina, who’s running it, tells me they’re mainly looking for lightweight, funny and entertaining short films, rather than the more arty or serious pieces.
Submission guidelines for the machinima portion of the Dragon*Con Film Festival
- You do not need to be present for your video to be selected and shown.
- Please submit videos that are 15 minutes or less in length. Though longer ones may be included, they will face stiffer competition (a single 15 minute piece would have to win out against three very good five minute pieces, for example). An engaging first episode of a series (or, if it would make sense to the audience, even a mid-series episode) is a perfectly acceptable submission.
- Please keep in mind that the audience may be unfamiliar with the game in which the machinima was made and there will be no opportunities to ‘introduce’ your video - it must stand on it’s own. Successful candidate videos will entertain and engage the audience without requiring knowledge of the game world in question (a clear and engaging story line, an entertaining music video, etc.). Videos made to show how quickly you and your friends can kill a boss and/or how effectively you have mastered the particular game’s mechanics are unlikely to be selected.
- Except in unusual circumstances, only one video per author will be selected for the main screening though you can submit more than one for review. It will simplify the process, however, if you submit the single video which you think is your best work.
- You may instead choose to officially submit your video to the Dragon*Con Film Festival proper, but then it MUST satisfy additional requirements (and be sure to review the FAQ).
- You are welcome to use an existing machinima video you have created OR you can create a machinima video specifically for the Con (though keep in mind submission does not automatically guarantee it will be shown - please see the previous suggestions for likely candidates as well as the links below for selections from prior years).
- The deadline for submissions is July 30th. You may nominate another machinima video but direct contact with the author will be required to obtain their permission before allowing it for submission.
I’m hoping to be there again myself, taking part in a Q&A about machinima, along with some other machinima stalwarts. They’re still looking for panellists, so feel free to put yourself forward!
Well, it’s been a surprisingly busy ten days since the new Web site went up. (Is it really only ten days? It feels like a month at least!) We’ve been fixing all sorts of little problems with it, and getting new features working. Some of them you’ll never see: for example, we can now make a movie into a featured movie with just a click of a button, not some complicated bit of HTML & database updating. That means we’ll be updating the featured movies much more often - every few days instead of every few weeks.
One of the new features we’ve been playing around with is the playlists. There’s still an annoying bug that means they don’t work right when you embed them on another Web site, but they work just fine on the Moviestorm site. We’ll be using those more and more, for example to pull together competition winners, or themes. So far, we have playlists for the very best of Moviestorm, old favourites, featured movies, and best music videos. Feel free to suggest more playlists, or additions to the existing ones - the best way to do it is to send a message to Moviestorm and we’ll follow it up.
Best videos
We’ve had some amazing new movies recently. If you haven’t seen them, have a look at the winners of the Keep It Snappy competition - ten films of 30 seconds or less. And here are four superb pieces from the last few days.
Education for Leisure, based on the controversial poem by newly appointed Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy, was made by a team of six film-makers from North-West England. The voice acting and sound in this powerful piece is first-rate.
Cafe Insomniac is the start of a new series, described as “The Sopranos meets the Twilight Zone”. If you’ve seen any of his previous work, such as Control Point, you’ll know that his filming and editing style is masterful. This promises to develop into something really quite intriguing.
There’s been quite a rash of science fiction appearing recently. Awaken is the trailer for an offbeat new series about a “change of consciousness of 2012: a battle against the fear and darkness to remember who we are in truth”. This is so well made that it’s hard to believe it’s the director’s first work with Moviestorm.
And, for a complete change of tone, here’s If Trains Were Planes, a mock safety broadcast.
Having new people in the office has also brought a welcome change of atmosphere. New programmer Paul Sumpner is settling in well, and we’ve had my son Rhys here doing work experience. Earlier this week we sent him out with Johnnie on a field trip to Ipswich, where the students on the computer games design course are taking a machinima module and using Moviestorm. We learned as much from them as they did from us!
Keep talking!
And finally, those of you who use Skype may be interested in an experimental open Moviestorm chat session being run by Lucinda McNary. If you want to join in, contact Lucinda via Moviestorm or via skype (user ID lucindamc123) and ask to be added. It can get quite noisy at times, but that’s part of the fun! (This is not an official Moviestorm chat, but some of us do pop in from time to time.)
Now we’re all off to enjoy a traditional wet holiday weekend here in England. We’ll be back on Tuesday.
The range of things Moviestorm is being used for never cease to amaze us. This morning, as we arrived for work, this piece arrived on the Moviestorm site. It’s a Moviestorm interpretation of a poem by the recently appointed Poet Laureate, Carol Ann Duffy. The poem caused controversy and was withdrawn from the GCSE curriculum for its alleged glorification of knife crime.
Here’s what the team had to say about it:
Today six North West film-makers have debuted online a short film using cutting-edge animation technology. “Education for Leisure” is an animation interpretation of a poem by the recently appointed Poet Laureate, Carol Ann Duffy. The poem caused controversy and was withdrawn from the GCSE curriculum for its alleged glorification of knife crime. The film is produced using Moviestorm, a new software still in early release, which enables film-makers to produce ‘machinima’ - computer games technology to make animated films.
The film uses Duffy’s poem to tell the story of the interweaving lives of two disenchantment characters: Michelle, a teenage girl who dreams of ‘X Factor’ stardom, and Mike, an Afro Caribbean man augmenting his dole money by working as a cleaner. Duffy said of her original poem and its subsequent media scandal: “It’s a pro-education, anti-violence poem written in the mid-1980s when Thatcher was in power and there were rising social problems and crime. It was written as a plea for education. How, 20 years later, it had been turned on itself and presented to mean the opposite I don’t know. You can’t say that it celebrates knife crime. What it does is the opposite.”
The film-makers are six gifted and experienced TV and film professionals with experiences as Directors, Editors and Producers whose production credits include Equinox and The One Show. Machinima has previously been a medium dominated by games enthusiasts. The group brings a unique Director’s visual approach to the emerging medium. North West actors speak the characters’ voices and Manchester musician David Fox composed an original grime inspired electronic soundtrack.
The group are joined by consultant Hugh Hancock, author of “Machinima For Dummies” and leading producer of machinima. Machinima took off in the late ‘90s when 3D computer games were released and fans worked out ways to produce video from the game play. Until now, machinima has remained a largely underground genre due to copyright issues in using games developer’s characters and sets. Moviestorm was launched as a free download in 2008 to legitimise machinima so producers can own copyright on their films. The software allows for new forms of character’s expressions and movements difficult to achieve using just computer games.
The film came about as a result of an innovative media skills programme. DMEX is a pilot project, funded by Northwest Vision and Media and delivered by Manchester consultancy The White Room, which up-skills media freelancers to work in digital production environments. To date the programme has offered 20 freelancers paid placements in digital agencies and production companies in the North West, mentoring, an online social network and master-classes on subjects including social networking for business and interactive drama production.
“The ‘Education for Leisure’ project really encapsulates what we wanted to achieve from the DMEX project”, said The White Room’s Director Andy Lovatt, “The film represents a coming together of talent, traditional media sensibilities and exciting new digital technologies, and this is exactly the kind of collaboration needed to drive growth and excellence in the region’s creative and digital economy.”
The film was established as a collaborative project for producers to learn about digital production techniques and how to work in digital environments. Unlike the typical location, set or office production environment, the group produced the film with just two workshops sessions and all other documentation and production was done with online team meetings using Skype and Huddle – a new project management web service. With the support of Hugh Hancock, the group went from novice to pros in months, learning many new skills in the process. Participant filmmaker Lee Emery said:
“I think everyone in the team felt a degree of trepidation about stepping out of their comfort zone and into an unknown field and wondered how well our skills would cross over into this world. But by sharing experiences, and with a fair amount of trial and error, we managed to use our newly acquired skills and our collective experience of good old-fashioned story-telling to work around these limitations”.
The film is released under a Creative Commons license and is available on Machinima.com, YouTube.com, Moviestorm.co.uk and Vimeo for anyone to embed in their website, download or re-use non-commercially.
You can find out more from Phil Birchenall, The White Room Tel: 0161 446 2991 email: (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
Submission guidelines for the machinima portion of the Dragon*Con Film Festival
