Tuesday 20 July 2010

Seven Sins is live!

Harb40's annual Passion contest has kicked off, and this time I'm on the judging panel! The challenge this time is create a movie which references at least two of the Seven Deadly Sins. What fun! I don't really have a favourite sin... they're all good!
I'll be looking for originality, believable dialogue, and good technical execution, among other things. Movies are not limited to any specific platform, and they don't even have to be machinima - live action is accepted too, so come on get filming!
Speaking on behalf of the judges I know we're all expecting some terrific entries, and for good reason - there's some killer prizes available.
To enter the competition and check the submission rules (and see the prizes on offer), see the official thread on the TMUnderground forums here.
Good luck to all entrants.
On another topic... following my visit to Bracknell Film Society last week, Julia (who organised the screening) sent me some of the comments that the attendees wrote on their feedback forms. I love getting feedback (good and bad) on my movies, but these ones were very interesting for me because the audience were previously completely unaware of machinima. Here are the comments;
  • Unusual and very worthwhile showing
  • Good and very well made
  • Interesting technique; I enjoyed the story
  • Interesting storyline and a technique well worth exploring further
  • A stimulating introduction to an original aspect of the cinema art form
  • Chilling
  • Film equivalent of 1984
  • An interesting technique - but can it catch on?
  • A technique that gives the man in the street the chance to tell a tale
  • The medium, and the talk about how the film was made, were fascinating
  • Strange! Did not enjoy the film, but found the talk interesting
  • An excellent view of a dystopian world
  • Compares well with "proper" films of the genre
  • Sorry - I didn't understand it
  • Didn't really understand it, but congratulations to the enthusiastic film maker, hope he works on a positive machinima film next time

The overall score came out at about 7 (the main feature "The Swenkas" got 8), so I'm pretty pleased with that. But what I was really pleased about was the fact that these comments described machinima as a technique. I'm pretty sure I didn't say that in my little talk, but it's something I feel quite strongly about - machinima is a technique, it is not a genre in itself. I'm not even sure that I'd consider it to be an artform. But it is definately a film making technique, and I think that over time it will be a technique which will increasingly be combined with other techniques so that the final form will no longer be machinima as such, just a film which comprises machinima and a variety of other techniques.

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