This weekend ONLY: use coupon code MARMAX to get 50% off your purchase of Moviestorm Max.
That buys you the full Moviestorm animation suite, plus 39 content packs, plus the Modder’s Workshop, and you’ll get a saving of over $110 on the regular price (or £75 / €100)!
Offer valid today, Saturday & Sunday (and if you’re quick, Monday morning before we get into work).
(Does not apply to rentals - only to purchase.)
Our third Filters Pack contains a collection of dynamic effects to really bring your films to life. Distort your footage with the Glassy Distortion or Frosted Glass effects, or increase the sense of depth with the Fish-eye and Radial Blur filters. In addition, four lens vignettes allow you to really close in on your action (binoculars and sniper sights) and you can stylise your shots with the Psychedelia and Emboss presets. Finally, you can now overexpose your clips or add a subtle gradient tint and there’s even a ‘Toon filter that you can drop straight into the timeline.
Now only 200 MSP instead of 500 MSP: offer lasts today only!
There are now two new educational editions of Moviestorm, including new packs and updated application code.
Moviestorm Unlimited is designed for older students, while Moviestorm Junior is intended for students under 13. The Junior edition excludes mature content such as drugs and violence.
For more information see the education section of the Web site.
It’s not often that machinima creators get the chance to win big prizes, but this year’s 48 Hour Film Project has finally recognized how important this medium is. The top prize of $3000 will go to the best film completely created in a single weekend. Moviestorm films have won twice before, so we’re hoping for a good showing once again.
This year’s contest is being held in partnership with Australia’s Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre and JMC Academy in March, and there’s an additional local prize of $1000, open exclusively to the South Western Sydney Region Machinima filmmakers. In another great coup for the contest, Tony Dyson, creator of Star Wars iconic robot R2-D2, will be heading the judging team.
Here’s how it works.
On Friday, March 30 at 7pm teams will get a character, a prop, a line of dialogue and a genre, that must be included in there film. By Sunday, April 1, the movie must be complete and uploaded by 7pm.
Each completed film is guaranteed a screening at Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre, on Saturday 14 and Sunday 15 April 2012 in Australia, and in Second Life in the following week.
The best films will also be screened at the International Championships held in the USA, and the winner of that gets to have their film screened at the Cannes Film Festival.
Registration for the competition is $48, Screening session admission is FREE. More details on www.48machinima.com
Good luck, everyone!
Over the next week, we’re hoping to bring you a new upgrade to Moviestorm called 1.5.2, which has a host of fixes and features that we hope will enhance your Moviestorm experience.
Firstly, we have found and fixed a few performance issues, which means that Moviestorm can be used harder and for longer. These improvements have affected the entire program, right from loading your movies to set design, right through directing, camerawork, the cutting room and publishing.
We’ve also added some extra functionality to the shadows, so that you can specify a 2048 shadow map or even a 4096 map (up from the original 1024), meaning sharper, more accurate shadows for those of you with supporting hardware. Also, there are a few user interface tweaks, that will help you find and edit your commands with greater ease.
Most notably, new characters don’t appear in the Dressing Room in their underwear anymore. While we originally thought that this was the ideal starting point when defining a character, we’ve had a few disapproving comments made about how inappropriate this was for our younger users. These costumes are still available, but the user has to consciously select them – default characters now appear in jeans and t-shirts.
Another little “tweak” that has been added is a “Centre View” command, so that if you get lost navigating around the virtual environment, you can quickly return to the centre of the stage. For seasoned Moviestormer’s we know this isn’t that great an issue, but we really think it will help users that are new to the program.
All in all, 1.5.2 will be more stable, more user friendly, and more robust than the previous version – and did I mention that the update will be coming next week?! Keep your eyes and ears peeled for a new message of the day in your launcher, and please let us know how you get on with 1.5.2!
“The Movies FR” - the French-speaking community for Moviestorm, The Movies and Muvizu - proudly presents “Palms of the Year 2011”!
This is our annual celebration of the best French movies directed in 2011. The concept changed a bit since our previous “Palms of 20”. We had 3 seasonal contests (winter was too hard^^) in 2011 with ten prizes each (so 3x10=30 nominations), therefore our special jury had to select the very best movie for each category:
Best 2011 scenery and costumes : Arbalète - from YÄLROK
Best 2011 direction : Arbalète - from YÄLROK
Best 2011 editing : Limbo - from Tarantineur
Best 2011 soundtrack : Flow - from Laviv42
Best 2011 script : Eldorado - from Gilga
Best 2011 character : Huit petits gags - from Code52
Best 2011 dialogues : Huit petits gags - from Code52
Best 2011 voice performance : Huit petits gags - from Code52
2011 special prize of the public : Hatred - from Johnny Striker
Best 2011 movie : Limbo - from Tarantineur
We also directed (with Moviestorm) a one hour show (split into two parts) with several directors as guests which revealed the winners. Tons of gifts were offered, such as 5000 MSP (thanks to our partner Moviestorm), unique and exclusive mods for Moviestorm and the Movies, DVDs, movie tickets, a Smartbox (travel voucher), etc.
What a great year it was!
Watch the winning entries and more:
Video show (2 parts, in French only)
Awards ceremony on The Movies FR
Winning movie, Limbo, from director Tarantineur, (partly made with Moviestorm, an experimental film about soul)
Jorge Campos, better known to the machinima community as act3scene24, was born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area. He’s of Mexican descent, and has an amazing array of voices, which he uses to get freelance voice acting work. He also writes and makes short films, when he’s not helping out with his father’s watch and jewelry repair shop.
Although he started a university course in Information Technology, Business and Communications, Jorge’s real passion is story-telling. “After growing up to want to be a ninja and a baseball player,” he grins, “my passion was always story-telling. I wanted to write and direct in Hollywood. I got serious about it when I was about 15 years old and started writing stories in play-format because I didn’t know the screenplay format. When I was about 16, I started buying How-To books to learn writing screenplays and story format even though storytelling for me, was natural. One of my favorite memories growing up was about 3rd or 4th grade. An assignment was to write a book report about a certain book. I didn’t know what the term “book report” was so I tried to write a book instead, assuming that’s what it was, so I wrote about a 9-page story. Even though I did the completely wrong thing, the teacher gave me an A anyway!”
Jorge started making films in his teenage years. “The first things I made that I was serious about were with my brother. I saved up money to buy a G5 Canon video camera before HD was out - it cost me thousands but it was my passion. A couple years later, I saved up for a more professional Canon XL1 camera with a steady cam and a pretty cool lens yellow-tinted filter. We did a short film I did called “Domino, Foo’!” inspired by the Pixar short “Geri’s Game”. It was about a gangster in a suit and cane and slicked back hair playing chess with a seemingly crazy person with a Cat-In-The-Hat type hat and a dirty stained shirt and it turned out that by the end, it was the same guy playing dominoes with himself. I liked that one. Next we shot a black and white mockumentary inspired by a mockumentary called “Where’s Marlowe”. It was completely improvised and my brother was the star. I was the camera man and also the interviewer, so you heard my voice throughout asking him questions and commenting. Although it was coming out very well, we didn’t get to finish it because it got late in the day and my brother had to go back to college the next day in Santa Cruz where he lived at the time. I edited what we had together though, and it was fun, though seemingly headed nowhere and incomplete - the problem with improv, I guess!”
Even at this stage, Jorge was yearning to find his own unique forms of expression. “I hate the word “format” because it restricts creativity to me, because the “format” is always in the back of your mind and you start thinking things like, ‘oh no, I need to change it up now because the books and lecturers say so!’ That’s why I chose my username - act3scene24. The format says there should be something like 12 to 16 scenes in a screenplay’s 3rd act. I wanted to create a username as kind of an ‘F you’ to the Hollywood people!”
(Warning: adult language)
In about 2004, Jorge experimented with the game “The Movies” as a filmmaking medium. “I was hoping I’d be able to have creative freedom to make whatever I wanted. Unfortunately, that wasn’t true.” A few years later, he was idly looking for movie-making programs, and ended up on tmunderground.com. “They showed movies made with The Movies (which I knew I didn’t want anymore), iClone, Moviestorm, and some programs that don’t exist anymore. iClone cost money which I didn’t have, bit I saw that the base version of Moviestorm was free. I started making these little Christmas shorts, and my series The Clarks was born.”
Since then, he’s made over 50 movies with Moviestorm. “I love the creative freedom you have with the program. I love how quick it is to work with and learn. I’m a big writer of dialogue, always have been, so it’s perfect for me. I started with characters just standing and talking and using the Moviestorm’s audio recording, to having my own mic, using the footage from Moviestorm and using After Effects to make it look how I want.”
There’s a huge diversity in Jorge’s work. So far, he’s done comedies, Westerns, and movies tackling social issues. He’s reluctant to talk too much about his own work, but when pushed, he admits to some favorites. “I like “anonymous” because it gets personal with people with drug and/or alcohol problems and “Thawing In December” because it closely resembles how I feel like my near future would be. But I also like “The Big Event”, “Ad Hominem Attack” because the writer of the original short story personally let me make it and posted it on his website after it was done. His name is Jordan Harper and he’s a writer for the TV show “The Mentalist” which I love. Another I like a lot is “The Bone Orchard” because I liked the atmosphere I was able to make without having much for western movies in Moviestorm. Making a lot of movies is just like anything in life. Practice makes you better, learn more things, makes you want to be better, and you learn your limits. I know what I can do. I’m not patient enough to be a Phil Rice - everything he makes is so professional and he pays great attention to detail with everything within it. But I’m me, I have my own style. I like the look I’ve made in things like “The Big Event”, “The Bone Orchard”, and even “Truth & Lovers”, written and co-starring the very talented Allie Manasco, which was the first and only Moviestorm movie I made using the cel shader.”
Jorge is a regular in the various 48-hour film challenges, and has become an expert at turning out finished films in record speed - often despite major hardware or software disasters! “I love doing those because when I was making movies the first year, I was making things very fast and I knew I could, because Moviestorm is the perfect tool for it. They give me motivation with the pressure and it makes me feel good. Also, I’ve suffered from insomnia for years, so it makes it that much easier for me!”
Jorge’s been quiet for a while, but he’s got several projects in development. “What I’ve been writing lately is a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure type Clarks movie. I plan on making all the scenes. And whenever someone has a choice to make, they click on the video link of their choice and so on. I’m also working on a crime drama called “California Soul” that follows the stories of several people in different dilemmas that end up being connected in some ways, inspired by 70’s soul music and crime movies.”
More info
Jorge on Vimeo | Twitter | Tumblr | Flickr | YouTube | Moviestorm
Eduardo Soto-Falcon is an award-winning filmmaker and scriptwriter currently based in Toronto. Before graduating summa cum laude in the Cinema department of Ithaca College, NY, he worked on Like Water for Chocolate (1992), one of the most successful Mexican films of all time, and then went on to work on several major films, including Clear and Present Danger (1994) as well as the self-financed film El Paje (1999). His cult short movie Dhampira (2001) has been cited by critics as one of the most innovative Mexican horror films, alongside Guillermo de Toro’s Cronos. Recently, he has been developing content for Web distribution and low-budget films while continuing to work on the ideas in Dhampira.
He initially planned to write a novel to expand the story, and then decided instead to write two feature-length screenplays and submit them to Amazon Studios with the aim of getting them picked up for a big budget production. He was attracted by their idea of a “test movie” – basically a rough version of the movie that would get people interested in a way that a script or a trailer couldn’t. For what he had in mind, live action was outside his budget, so Eduardo looked into animation as an alternative.
Eduardo is no stranger to animation. “In college I took 2 animation classes, where we collaborated on several projects and all sorts of traditional animation, such as punched paper, stop motion, and collage. My thesis used a combination of those and was shot in 16mm. It won an award at the Chicago International Film Festival. El Paje has 2 parallel stories, one live action, the other done with graphics. For that one I had originally hired a Russian artist to do the drawings, but I didn’t like the terms he wanted so I had to do it myself. A friend of mine, an architect, did the sets in 3D and I did the characters and composited both things. My characters were drawn on paper, then scanned, coloured and textured with Photoshop.”
For Dhampira, though, he needed something better. “Someone in the Amazon Studios forums was talking about machinima software and suggested several names, one of which was Moviestorm. The 14-day free trial was critical, because I couldn’t invest in something without knowing if I could use it. I used those 14 days to design the characters and play around, and decided to go for it. It was sort of easy, but sometimes I would stumble for a few hours trying to do something new. I needed all my focus to learn as I produced the movie, but found the program quite motivating to make you want to try more things. Actually my mother helped me a lot with this project, as she was visiting me at the time. She won’t even touch a computer, but she would give me her opinion on the sets and the sequences. Her feminine touch helped me a lot designing the sets. When I was trying to do the very first set by myself, I was blocked, didn’t know where to put the walls or anything, so her help was crucial.”
3D set design ranged from simple interiors to more elaborate exteriors
It took Eduardo just over three months of solid work to create the test movie once the script was completed. “Yes, that was exactly my calculation. I approached this movie as a real movie. Pre-production was doing the characters, gathering the props and preparing the sets, which took about one and a half months. Then it took three weeks of production to actually shoot the scenes, and about a month in post-production. It’s about the same as an indie live-action movie. But I was hoping it would be 6 days a week, 8 to 10 hours per day, and it ended up being 7 days a week, 10 to 14 hours (16 when I was editing). I suppose now I could have a more humane schedule and keep it under three months!”
He started by recording all the voices, using a cast of just three people. “I had a previous project in the Amazon contest that was a hybrid between a table read and a first rehearsal, so for that I met a few local actors through other contacts I had. That project didn’t achieve anything, but I met the guy who plays Gaston. He’s actually a photographer, not an actor. The female voices were all done by Victoria Murdoch, a non-union actress with tremendous versatility. I did the rest of the male voices. At first, this dialogue track was supposed to be a rough draft just to help me out with making the movie, but the quality was good enough and I didn’t get a chance to re-record, so they are the final thing. In fact, it’s been a semi-finalist in the Amazon Studios dialogue track contest for the last 2 months.”
The test movie allowed Eduardo to experiment with using camera angles to convey both character and atmosphere more effectively than he could with just the screenplay.
The movie is shot using about 2,000 screenshots (1 per 2.5 seconds, or 24 frames per minute) with motion and effects added in post-production. Eduardo blended 3D sets and characters with stock footage and photographs to create something quickly that conveyed what he needed. He grins, “I had a program called ScreenHunter Free running in the background that takes snapshots when I hit the right key. I got trigger happy and actually produced 20,000 stills!” He opted for this method because this enabled him to do more in the time than he could have done with using pure animation. “Doing a fully animated feature working alone, with the visuals and narrative style I wanted, would take forever. Also, there are a ton of things that I needed my characters to do that are impossible with Moviestorm, things that I had to create with trick shots and could only be tricked with stills.”
The look of the sets in particular is quite extraordinary. Eduardo made use of as many mods as he could find, and then taught himself to create his own using Google Warehouse, Sketchup, and the Modder’s Workshop. “I got the look I wanted. It helps that the movie is set in New England with lots of Victorian sets, because Moviestorm is rich with that (being a British product). Regarding characters, for the most part I got exactly what I wanted. The Daniel Kellek / Revenant character has an uncanny resemblance to the actor that portrayed him in the short. I wish that when I was in Boston, doing research for the novel, I would have taken more photos, as I find one can do easy and nice things combining a photo backdrop with the 3D characters.”
Two shots showing blend of 3D work with photos or composited in post-production
Eduardo made several edits of the film, all of which are available on Amazon Studios. The first cut took a week, and had no music. He then spent a week adding music and sound effects, which transformed it from a simple animated storyboard into a true test movie. “For Dhampira the short, I worked with a Mexican composer called Alejandro Giacoman. He’s one of the top film composers in Mexico, and he’s won the Ariel (the Mexican Oscar). I used five pieces from that in the movie, but those 10 or so minutes of original music weren’t enough for a 90-minute film. I had no money or time to look for an original soundtrack, but Amazon Studios has a music library for the contestants’ use that is amazing. It has Ennio Morricone, for example! I used 8 of his pieces and a total of 35 songs. One of the songs, the only one with voice, is by a Toronto band, Twirl. I got in contact with them, and they were really pleased I used their work. Today I edited a music video using their song and images from Dhampira.”
Following initial feedback, Eduardo then spent another two weeks creating a third edit, adding in more motion and sound effects. “Editing was crazy. I forced Premiere Pro and my PC to their limits. It would take about 30 minutes just to load the project! The current version of the script does have a few differences in the dialogue, especially for Mara, but I just couldn’t re-record – if I could, I would! There are some parts at the beginning of the movie that I would like to re-shoot, since I was just learning the software at that stage and wasn’t using it at its full potential. There’s also a part or two where the characters talk about past events, where I wish I’d shot active images to go with that sound, but again, I probably won’t. I pretty much want to look at this as a finished product and try to lure Amazon or someone to make the real movie.”
Eduardo’s currently waiting to see what happens next. Amazon are due to announce the winner on February 7th, and are offering a grand prize of one million dollars.
He’s already planning his next project. “Definitely before the year ends, I plan to have another feature test movie. I’d like to use Moviestorm again soon, especially now that the new version has several things that I was wishing for. It was quite a trip those three months making a movie with virtual sets and virtual little people! This was a colossal endeavor for which I had to give myself fully artistically, physically, emotionally and financially. I’m happy to have created a feature-length work that is watchable and entertaining and that provides a very detailed idea of how the real movie could look and feel. It also gives an idea of the visual, narrative and cinematographic style I would use as a filmmaker for this or other similar projects. Thanks to Moviestorm, I was able to reproduce the images in my mind, which are impossible to explain in a script, and thus have a quite accurate representation of the movie that other people can see.”
Lighting was a crucial part of the test movie.
More info:
Eduardo’s Web site includes links to all his films
Dhampira test movie at Amazon Studios (90 mins)
More about test movies at Amazon Studios
We’re very pleased to announce the winners of the contest run by music blog Consequence of Sound to make the next official video for Chicago-based rock’n’roll chiptune band I Fight Dragons.
Lead singer Brian Mazzaferri was impressed with all the entries. “I think there’s something great about each of these even if they obviously are very different in overall finished-product quality. I’m amazed at how well the contestants re-created all of the band members in Moviestorm avatars!”
Consequence of Sound editor-in-chief Michael Roffman added: “It’s a very niche contest in that not everyone can do this. Some of the entries are exceptional, and I think they did admirably. I like the winner a lot.”
The four runners up are:
“A lot of work in a very short time. Wooo hoo! Had a lot of fun and I truly enjoy the song. Hope you enjoy. JXN”
“I find it a very nice song. It was a real challenge to create this video. I had a great time making this, based on my imaginary world.”
“This is a great song and I had a great time making this video to the song. I tried my best to make each character look exactly like the original band member. I actually feel like I know Brian, Bill, Packy, Hari, and Chad after doing this video. I had to check out their live performances and watch their movements to get it just right. And now after all this…I am a fan of I FIGHT DRAGONS!”
“It was a tough song to come up with something fitting for the group and their concept. I had a lot of fun creating this video even if it doesn’t win.”
And finally, our huge congratulations to the winner,
“‘Tis an old tale (older than the jokes in Duke Nukem Forever). Guy loves girl. Other girl loves guy. Then someone gets shot by an arrow. Feels SOOO good to stretch my wings again. Had fun and only one nervous breakdown making this!”
All five win a copy of Moviestorm Complete.
The fourth part of our free series of books on filmmaking is now published. It focuses on an area of filmmaking that’s easily overlooked, but is perhaps the most important part of the whole process - editing.
The popular perception of films is that they’re a creative collaboration between the director, the writer and the actors. It’s the director who always gets the credit for how a film turns out – or gets blamed if it’s a box office flop. Most aspiring filmmakers dream of being directors, because they want the creative control that directing seems to offer.
But it’s not the director who makes the film that the audience actually sees. The director decides what to shoot and tells his actors and crew what to do. It’s the editor who assembles everything into a completed movie – the footage, the sounds, the special effects, the titles and credits and anything else. In the editing stage, the pace of the story can be changed completely, and even the story-telling structure can be switched around to put emphasis on different characters or reveal key plot points in a different structure. Scenes can be removed to keep the story moving, and some of the director’s best work can end up as nothing more than a DVD extra. In extreme cases, editing can sometimes result in a film that’s very different to what the director intended – as a great example of what an editor can do with your carefully filmed footage, check out Scary Mary, the recut trailer for Disney’s Mary Poppins. Skilful editing turns this classic family movie into a horror movie.
As a director, you need to understand the editing process instinctively. Working closely with your editor is key to a successful creative team. You have to remember that everything you film is just raw material for your editor – it’s just a stage in the process. In pre-production, you need to think about how your film will be edited. If you can previsualize your film and make an animatic, this can help immensely. Not only can you plan out your shots, but you will also be in a position to check the timing, pacing, sound, movement, and more.
This volume covers a range of common editing techniques, and provides exercises which help you think about different ways of cutting the same film. They will help you develop a sense of what you as a director have to do to make the editor’s job easier, and to ensure that you are giving the editor what they need to create the film you envisage.
With live action film, you often find yourself making creative compromises when the footage you shot turns out not to be quite right. Reshoots are expensive, usually prohibitively so, and you’re forced to work with whatever you have. Using Moviestorm makes it easy to go back and forth between all stages of the film, so it’s easy to adjust anything that doesn’t work once it’s been in final edit. You can see how a scene turns out, and if you think you can do better, you can quickly make changes to the camerawork, the staging, or anything else, and try it again.
