In the Mind's Eyes of the Black Cats

3D movies. 3D cinema?

2011-12-02T14:59:00.000-08:00

By K.

Yet another round of discussion about 3D films in the machinima circle of Facebook reminded me to finally write up what I thought of writing many months ago when I saw Roger Ebert’s blogpost presenting Walter Murch’s point of view on 3D films. (Link)

Murch, one of the most famed and respected film editors and sound designers of modern cinema (Apocalypse Now, Amadeus, The English Patient, etc.), lists a number of problems inherent to the current 3D technology (“dark, small, stroby” in his summary). He goes further in arguing that 3D cinema cannot succeed because it forces human visual system to operate in an unnatural way*, and thereby strains our vision and requires slower pacing of film editing as well.

But in any case, Murch’s most interesting remark by far is on the notion of immersion and perspective:

“3D films remind the audience that they are in a certain "perspective" relationship to the image. It is almost a Brechtian trick. Whereas if the film story has really gripped an audience they are "in" the picture in a kind of dreamlike "spaceless" space. So a good story will give you more dimensionality than you can ever cope with” (emphasis added by myself).

For a the last couple of years, I have been interested in how we -- as the reader or viewer -- participate in the world of fiction, and have been reading psychological literature on this topic whenever I get a chance**. I have reached a tentative yet convincing conclusion that the maintenance of double-perspectives and/or aesthetic distance is an essential element of our appreciation of (extended) narrative arts. In reading a novel or viewing a film, we take neither the complete first person perspective of our protagonist nor the complete third person observer’s perspective. We are simultaneously “her” and “I” (and even “me”). Like Murch, I believe that the very process and experience of composing an ambiguous perspective -- that combines and layers various point of views -- is a crucial part of satisfying experience of cinema and literature.

I am skeptical about the potential of 3D as an artistic medium of narratives because 3D forces the viewer into a particular visual perspective in a very directly imitative way and allows the viewer less room for constructing his/her own experience. Written language and two-dimensional images may be particularly good mediums to induce multiple perspectives and aesthetic distance*** because they do not perfectly replicate, but approximate, a personal experience embedded in a particular viewpoint****.

3D may open up a brand new area of art. It may continue to deliver competitive entertainment by spectacle. But will 3D develop into a fully actualized narrative art form? My short answer (in the form of a question) is this: with all due respect to, and admiration for, the craft and creativity involved in the culinary art, isn't culinary art considered art only in a limited sense?

Footnotes:

*Murch says that, in watching 3D movies, our eyes have to focus on the screen (say, 60 feet away) while converging on the object at various distances (say, at the face only 5 feet away), which is quite different from what we do in our natural state. We are built to focus and converge to the same distance. While I’m not sure whether processing 3D video involves actual physical ocular convergence, Murch’s general point still stands as our brain, in perceiving 3D images, does have to process two different images that would have been captured by the two converging eyes.

** I come from psychology (and have credentials that can look good on paper), and was a strong believer that the "scientific" approach of psychology was the most productive way to study any topic related to the human mind. Recently though, after doing my share of readings on psychology of literature and film, I grew rather skeptical about the possibility for this discipline offering a productive approach to this particular subject.

*** "Aesthetic distance" is an compound concept. In this particular context, I mean by this the distance between the character and self, and between the material and self.

**** Added on 12/4: What about stage play then? It suddenly occurred to me that I completely missed stage play in thinking about this matter. However, it is still true that stage plays are not 3D the way 3D films are. You are not placed in the middle of the action and the characters don't jump at you. (A stage play can possibly incorporate such elements, but I suspect doing so may not really add much to the play.) I'm tempted to see the stage play as a form of narrative art that combines language and quasi-2D (or call it 2.5D) presentation bound by the physical stage.

The Gifted Cast of The Gift - Part 2

2011-09-22T15:15:00.001-07:00

By K

It has been a while since we blogged. It's time to return to our series about the cast of The Gift!

Virginia "Dulci" Maddy as Marie

What a journey it was to find Marie, the ghost of a muse and the woman who closes the door on Phil. We heard many versions of Marie through the audition process, and while many of them were very impressive, they were different from the Marie we had imagined. So in the end we went to the actor who we knew could play Marie from the beginning. We are very grateful Dulci accepted the role.

Her website

Ricky Grove as Keith Mandelbrot

Ricky Grove of Machinima Expo and Renderosity, also well known for his sound design work for Machinima (watch his sound design tutorial, and voice acting recording tips), is a professionally trained actor. We’d been long hoping to have an opportunity to work with Ricky. Listening to his delivery is a treat. We listen to it like we’d listen to an opera singer.

His website/imdb page

Lauren Weyland as Alex

Our favorite Second Life cross dresser, Lauren is something of a celebrity in the virtual world. He has a show called “Tuesday with Lauren.” His edgy and masculine voice fits Alex very well, and his characterization of Alex is perfect to a T. We thank Lauren to be part of The Gift. Lauren often does voice acting for machinima movies. You can hear him narrating at Chantal Harvey’s Joy of Music.

His website

Robert S. Benjamin as Wilson (the artist/lawyer)

Scarlotte as Stacy (Phil’s assistant)

Kera Hildebrandt as Parrot

Edwyn Tiong as Co-worker #1

Brandon as Co-worker #2

Holding auditions for your movie can be a daunting prospect for many reasons. It’s actually substantial work to publicize auditions and to sort through the responses. (The worst part is that you have to write "rejection" letters to somebody.) But auditions have been worth our while. We are very happy to have met Robert, Scarlotte, Kera, Edwyn, and Brandon through auditions.

Robert does a lot of voice acting for machinima and video games, and will be starring in the highly anticipated machinima flick The Grey People. Check out his website.

Scarlotte has a very distinct clear voice that rings like a bell. See her Voice Actors' Alliance page.

One of most fun lines in The Gift belongs to the Larry the Parrot: “I love you Larry.” Kera, a film school student and machinima maker, also does quite a lot of voice work for other machinima directors. Visit her Vimeo page

Edwyn and Brandon played Phil’s co-worker who shouts “Surprise” at his office birthday party. Nice and generous guys, who are great to work with.

Paul Carr as Coffee Shop Customer

Paul is a well-known machinima director who creates fantastic pieces. We had him for a cameo role in The Gift—he plays the British gentleman who buys small coffee to go from the coffee shop (although what he really wanted was a large cappuccino.)

Visit his Vimeo site.

The Gifted Cast of The Gift - Part 1

2011-08-17T19:10:00.001-07:00

By K

As many viewers recognized, The Gift has a fantastic cast. In this series of blog posts, les chats noir celebrate the talented actors of The Gift. We’re very lucky to have had an opportunity to work with all of them.

In order of appearance (with one exception):

Marc "GP" Cholette as Phil Carey

GP requires no introduction. He has played countless roles in over 150 Machinima movies, ranging from a horny bottle of beer, a serious elf, a comic Latin playboy, a charismatic (and semi-comic) French playboy, beasts, aliens, and numerous leading men of varying temperaments. His enormous range often makes him unrecognizable from movie to movie. I used to spot him by picking an exceptional voice actor on whose voice I don’t seem to be able to put a name.

GP is also a professional musical composer, and wrote soundtrack for a number of Machinima pieces as well as movies and TV productions.

His composer website / His voice actor page

Sonya Cross as Emily

Sonya is another voice actor in extreme high demand. It's no surprise. She has a voice clear as spring water, sweet as an apple, and crisp as Brut Champagne. But the real surprise and delight comes when you hear all the different personalities and emotions coming alive through that lovely voice. Sonya has quite an impressive voice acting résumé outside machinima as well, appearing in various mediums such as radio plays, video games, and advertisements.

Her website

Melanie Greaves (AfterThought) as Zinnie

It wasn’t easy to find a perfect Zinnie, the no-nonsense older-sister-figure for Emily, but we found one in AT’s rendition. Her Zinnie is playful, feisty, sexy and warm all at the same time. I am very much attracted to her Zinnie and wish I will be able to write a bigger role for AT one day. Check out her movies at the link below, if you haven’t seen them yet.

Her Vimeo site

Tyre McAllister as Greg

Before we posted invitations for open auditions on TMU and Voice Acting Alliance site , we were worried that we might not be able to get enough people willing to try out for Greg, the attempted date rapist. Not only have we had an opportunity to hear many different actors creating various excellent versions of Greg, we also got to meet Tyre's voice during the audition process. What I particularly love about his performance is his perfect timing for comic effect. S, who had already read the script, cracked up every time I played the last few lines of the coffee shop scene (which I did over and over again while shooting). Those lines did not strike him as being funny until Tyre added his magic touch.

Kid Millions as Child

Pedigree brought Kid Millions to the spotlight early in his life. After his 2010 debut as a little kid in Surfs Up! directed by his father (theBiz), Kid Millions took up an even more challenging role this year in Ethyl Merman Lies Beneath. In The Gift, he plays the child of Phil and Emily, causing lots of coos and "aw"s in the audience.

Music and Meaning in The Gift

2011-08-09T17:21:00.000-07:00

By S

I always found "Howard's End" to be a wonderful example of how music is employed effectively in a movie, and interwoven into the story. Leonard and Helen are attending a lecture entitled "Music and Meaning", while the lecturer is dissecting the second movement of Beethoven's Fifth. After leaving the lecture hall Helen takes poor Leonard's umbrella by accident as the rain pours down, prompting Leonard to follow her to her home and he is invited up for a tea. This chance meeting drives the rest of the story, but what always strikes me as so effective is the recurrence of these themes, both the music and the lecture. Beethoven's music reappears in Leonard's nightmare sequence, where the rain pours and the crowd and an iron gate separates him from Helen. The "Music and Meaning" lecture recurs many times, first as part of the intrigue as Leonard's wife gets suspicious of his whereabouts, and again much later in an exchange between a despondent Leonard and Helen:

LEONARD: "I didn't think people like you existed except in books. And books aren't real."

HELEN: "They're more real than anything! When people fail you, there's still 'music and meaning'".

The deliberate and effective recurrence of themes, in the visuals, the dialogue, and the music, was also one of the key ingredients in "The Gift", and one of the reasons why this is now my favorite of our machinima movies since "Dignity of Men"*. Much like in classical music composition, the structure of the movie can be built from a few fundamental themes and the contrast between the different themes - some opposing and some related - can be used to build into a satisfactory climax and conclusion.

When we started off, a few of those themes were clear to me. But not until much later, resulting from lots of helpful discussions with K and after the visuals of the movies were almost completed, did all the musical themes outlined below present themselves as strong elements in the movie. Here is a guide to the musical themes in The Gift:

"The Struggling Artist"

For obvious reasons, good old Ludwig van Beethoven was a leading candidate to highlight this element in the movie. Among the classical composers Beethoven has always provided the ultimate image of the struggling artist - his deafness and his increasing isolation in real life, and his documented struggle to find the right music. In "The Gift" we picked a familiar theme from the last movement of the Moonlight Sonata to accompany the beginning W.H. Auden quote and the black-and-white dream sequence, while the protagonist Phil plays the fiery introduction of that movement (not that well since he is drunk and I lack the technique) while his phone is ringing.

"The Machine"

This theme accompanies the main character's daily routine, as he carries on with his role as a part of the "big machine": wake up, jog along the freeway, put on a suit, go to work.

"The Imaginary Song"

This is first introduced in the opening scene, when Phil stops for a moment after jogging and has a vision. Marie's ghost reintroduces the theme with the words "isn't there music?". So, as you can guess, this theme is about Music itself in the protagonist's life. Much like what Helen Schlegel was talking about in Howard's End, there is something mysterious about Music that elevates it to an almost religious level. It is part of the mystery of being alive.

"Death Wish"

The "Death Wish" theme is a dangerous variation on "The Imaginary Song". We first hear it on one of the recurring highway jogging sequences, when we see the close up of the fast approaching car. This is where the protagonist's death wish is made visually and aurally much more explicit, but not yet in words. This theme is later further developed as the despondent protagonist wanders about the dark streets.

"The Sad Song"

For this we used the slow movement of Sergei Prokofiev's Second Sonata, a twentieth-century piece that contains a lot of pathos. The theme itself appears twice and is at the very conclusion of the movie as well. It encompasses the sadness of life that is full of unfulfilled potential and the resignation to the human condition in which we all have to continue on.

* Kate, however, says that carefully arranged repetitions and variations have been the key ingredient of many of her previous screenplays, and that such repetition is a prominent and important element of Incubus, for example.

Psychology of Sorrow

2011-03-23T12:20:00.000-07:00

In my previous post, I brooded over the curious penchant of people seeking fear and terror in theater. Equally bizarre is their willingness to watch movies that make them cry. Isn't crying, almost by definition, the most negative experience a person can have? So how is it possible that tearjerkers sell tickets?

What is even more curious is that the strangest things make people tear up. For example, one of the movies that made me cry is Hilary and Jackie.

This bio-pic about the cellist Jacqueline du Pré and her sister Hilary opens with two little girls frolicking about a rocky coast, reciting nursery rhymes, oblivious to the treacherous rocks and cliffs that surround them. Suddenly the sisters freeze in their spots as they see a beautiful woman walk toward them. The woman steps to Jackie and whispers something in her ear before walking away. Hilary asks Jackie, "What did she say?" Jackie, who seems quite shaken, answers, "That everything will be alright." The two girls seem terrified. "Why would somebody say something like that," protests Hilary.

From there, the story unfolds as Jackie slowly grows into the world-famous cellist and Hilary a happy mother and wife. It follows the two sisters' hopes and dreams, fears and triumphs, and adventures and falls. By the end of the movie (*Here comes a spoiler*), Jackie is afflicted with multiple sclerosis, and loses her ability to play music and even the affection to her husband, Daniel Barenboim.

Debilitated and bed-ridden, Jacqueline recalls her childhood and the playful frolics in the rocky coast. A beautiful grown woman approaches the little Hilary and Jackie and whispers something in Jackie's ear. "What did she say," asks Hilary. "That everything will be alright," answers Jackie. And that opens a floodgate in my eyes.

In this blogpost, I'll mull over this strange phenomena, that is crying at the movies, reviewing very interesting and insightful responses I received from a quick and dirty survey I had posted in this online forum, as well as some relevant literature in psychology.

I received eight sets of responses for the survey, seven from men and one from a woman. Six responses were posted on the forum and two were sent to me through personal messages.

Q1: Do you sometimes actively seek sad movies?

4 people plainly said no, and 1 person said yes but just to prove them wrong

1 said rarely

1 said, "Sort of" (the one woman respondent)

1 said, "sure do."

In summary, while the majority of respondents answered that they don’t actively seek sad movies, some people actually said they do. Personally, I don't suppose I look for sad movies. As one of the respondents put it, I look for a good movie. As it happens, many good movies do have sad moments.

Q2: Do you feel good or bad after crying at the movies?

A few people said they feel bad after crying at the movies, especially if the crying happens in public. (Words such as “cheap”, “manipulative,” "depressed," and “embarrassed” were mentioned in the responses.) While nobody said they always enjoy crying, the majority indicated that crying can be a positive experience depending on the circumstance. Two people specifically said crying can make one feel better when done in private. (One of them mentioned the word “cleansed.”).

Here I might note that research findings offer conflicting evidence regarding the outcome of crying. Some studies suggest crying improves moods and has long term health benefits (Borgquist, 1906; Bindra, 1972; Cornelius, 1981; Frey et al., 1983; Lombardo et al., 1983; Crepeau, 1980; Hastrup, 1986; Vingerhoets & Betcht, 1997, all as reported in Cornelius, 2001), while others indicate just the opposite (Gross et al., 1994; Labott & Martin, 1990; Vingerhoets et al. 1993, all as reported in Cornelius, 2001).

Q3: What makes (or has made) you cry at the movies?

A few respondents mentioned grave situations, such as death, in a movie make them cry. One person emphasized investment to a character. That is, in my interpretation, we cry in sympathy for the character. Three people mentioned that they cried when a movie reminded them of their own personal memories.

Most interestingly though, cute snuggly things were frequently mentioned as something that triggers the tear reaction. At least four people (all male) mentioned animal or animation as something that induces tears somewhere in their responses. Many Pixar and animal movies were referred to. Even a fabric softener commercials with a teddy bear in it was brought up!! No literature research prepared me for this, although I should have known better, because, don't these manipulative bastards at Pixar always do the trick on me? But how on earth can you explain this bizarre phenomenon of cuddly things making adult men tear up?

Indulge me if you will and let me compose a wild theory of my own:

Prolactin is a hormone best known for its influence on lactation after birth. This hormone is generally found in higher levels in women than in men, and in high concentrations in tears and the tear gland. According to this online article, "in the mother, prolactin is released in response to suckling, promoting milk production as well as maternal behaviors. Prolactin relaxes the mother, and in the early months, creates a bit of fatigue during a nursing session so she has no strong desire to hop up and do other things. Prolactin promotes caregiving behaviors and, over time, directs brain reorganization to favor these behaviors . Father's prolactin levels begin to elevate during mother's pregnancy, but most of the rise in the male occurs after many days of cohabitation with the infant. ... it is generally considered a stress hormone. In parents, it serves as a parenting hormone."

It has been reported that lowering the prolactin level by administration of a drug reduces pathological crying, and that injecting prolactin in ducks increase secretions of a gland equivalent to the human lacrimal gland that produces tear (Vingerhoets et al. 2000).

Can it be that the baby-looking mascot in fabric softener commercial and Pixar characters trigger some sort of parental instinct in our very masculine respondents and causes their prolactin level shoot up, and thereby making them susceptible to crying? Given that some psychologists suggest crying means "giving up" in a stressful situation (Frijda, 1986; Miceli & Castelfranchi, 2003), the link between crying and proactin, which is also a stress hormone that promotes relaxation, seems particularly noteworthy.

As for my own crying episode mentioned earlier, I don't know why I cried so much at the end of Hilary and Jackie. I don't think it was completely out of sympathy for Hilary or Jackie although there should have been some of that. Nothing in this movie really brought me any concrete personal memories back either, although I did have a long childhood in which I was always wondering rather painfully what the future might bring and whether my life would turn out to be alright. What made me cry was the line "everything will be alright" whispered to little Jackie's ear by the older Jackie who went though all the turmoil of her life and witnessed Hilary making peace with her situation. The truth was, everything was 'not alright' for them. But then, in a sense, indeed it was, if only because accepting so is the only way we can cope with the monster called life.

Q4: What's your own theory about crying?

Quite interesting (and extremely well-informed, I have to suspect) ideas have been expressed in response to this question.

One person mentioned "helplessness and loss" is a reason for crying. This is exactly what some psychologist say about crying. According to them, crying in its core is a sign of giving up something, be it a struggle for a goal, resistance to suffering, attempt to express one's feeling, or endeavor to explain something (Frijda, 1986; Miceli & Castelfranchi, 2003). The question is, what are we giving up when we cry in the theater?

Two respondents also mentioned that people may have a need to express their emotions. I guess this falls along the line with Aristotle's catharsis. One very interesting theory brought up by a respondent was that a person who is experiencing depression may want to watch a sad movie and cry at something concrete rather than staying in the vague feeling of sadness.

Another response I got was: "I think there is a similar principle at work like what drives us to watch stuff that scares us, it’s about the pleasure of experiencing all the thrills while sharing non of the dangers. And sad movies allow us to work through negative feelings, in a safe and controlled environment." In a study Goldstein (2009) asked her participants to rate their emotional responses while watching a sad movie and while recalling their past sad experiences. She found that people reported significantly higher levels of anxiety in the latter condition, while reporting similar levels of sadness in both. Goldstein speculated that "pure sadness that is not mixed with anxiety is not so unpleasurable" but may help us better understand and prepare for the real life (Goldstein, 2009, p. 237).

The safe distance that a drama places between its viewer and the object of their emotion is sometimes called, "aesthetic distance." Scheff (2007) suggested that painful emotions can be pleasurable at an optimal distance, and this is why catharsis, or crying at the movies, might be a satisfying experience. He contended that the essence of catharsis involves "the re-experiencing of past emotional crises in a context of complete security" (Scheff, 2007, p.101).

I'm not sure if what I seek is "the pleasure of unadulterated sadness" as Goldstein puts it (very aptly I might add), although I can certainly see this might be one of the reasons why some people watch sad movies.

Personally, what I appreciate greatly in some movies is the way they illustrate certain truths about life. A work of fiction or music can materialize complex and abstract ideas into something very concrete -- a personal story or a physical sound, not just to be acknowledged, but to be felt acutely.

When the adult Jackie whispers into the young Jackie's ear that everything will be alright at the end of the movie, an acknowledgement is made that, in spite of all our anxieties, struggles, and sufferings, in a sense, everything is just alright in the end. Crying at that moment was like thinking this thought, not with my mind, but with my whole body.

Reference

Cornelius, J. J. (2001). Crying and catharsis. In J.A. Kottler & M. J. Montgomery (Eds.). Adult Crying: A Biopsychosocial Approach. Philadephia, PA: Bruner-Routlege.

Frijda, N. (1986). Emotions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Goldstein, T. R. (2009). The pleasure of unadulterated sadness: experiencing sorrow in fiction, nonfiction, and "in person." Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, 3 (4), 232-237.

Miceli, M. & Castelfranchi, C. (2003). Crying: discussing its basic reasons and uses. New Ideas in Psychology, 21, 247-273.

Scheff, T. J. (2007). Catharsis and other heresies: a theory of emotion. Journal of Social, Evolutionary, and Cultural Psychology, 1 (3), 98-113.

Vingerhoets, A. J. J. M., Cornelius, R. R., Van Heck, G. L., & Becht, M. C. (2000). Adult crying: a model and review of the literature. Review of General Psychology, 4 (4), 354-377.

Philosophy of Horror

2011-02-26T08:38:00.001-08:00

Fear and horror is one of the most negative emotions we can experience, something we want to avoid. Yet, horror is one of the most popular genre of fiction, for audiences and writers alike. Why?

In The Philosophy of Horror: Or, Paradoxes of the Heart, the well known philosopher and film theorist Noel Carroll argues that our perverse desire to be terrified by horror films has its root in our sense of awe toward the unknown. Being scared by horror films inspire this kind of awe according to him.

This explanation, while making sense, never fully satisfied me. My own theory has been something that can be called a masturbation theory of fiction. It goes like this:

(1) We as a species developed through evolution a host of emotions that are functional for our survival and therefore for procreation (despite their potential for backfiring, especially in the modern world). Anger provides us with a surge of energy for a (necessary) fight. Sadness keeps us from wasting precious energy in futile efforts. Fear and disgust drive us to adopt protective behaviors (running away, ducking down, turning way, throwing up, keeping distance, etc.).

(2) Any systems, once in place, need to be activated on a regular basis. So do emotions. In early days of the human species, there were plenty of immediate and "legitimate" triggers for these basic emotions. In the modern world, we don't have to worry about lions attacking us or wolves stealing our food. In the modern world, our emotions work largely on the plane of the social and psychological rather than that of the physical. I also suspect that they are not exercised in enough frequencies and intensities. Therefore, we invented a gym for exercising our underused emotional muscles, which is the genre fiction.

But then, we are a more complicated species than just that. More often than not, horror films do much more than just stimulating our fear circuits, but tie our reptilian experience with what might be called the cerebral. The result is a fatal concoction of the conceptual and the primordial -- the idea felt urgently in your gut.

In Dario Argento's Opera (*spoiler*), the young opera singer's plea not to be another version of her mother, but a person of her own, is expressed acutely through the horror story. Roman Polanski's The Tenant addresses the issue of identity. Even our ordinary vampire stories and zombie movies is about our fear of giving oneself up to a passion or preserving one's "soul."

(But then, some horror movies are hardly more than pornography of another kind.)

Finally the point: All this rambling is brought to you by my experience with a recently machinima piece called Destiny's Keeper by Keith Eiler (a.k.a. malletpropstudios, a.k.a. Gnasche). It is a well made movie with a Lynchian feel to it. The story can be a little bit cryptic at first view, especially if you're distracted (?) by the disturbing (by which I mean 'great') sounds and visuals. But once you get the story, the horror is elevated to a whole other level. Watch it here or below.

Reference

Careoll, N. (1990). The Philosophy of Horror: Or, Paradoxes of the Heart. New York: Routledge.

The novelist and the composer

2011-02-10T15:04:00.000-08:00

by Kate

The production of our next machinima project, The Gift, has taken off nicely and been steadily gaining altitude. This project is especially dear to me, although one may argue you feel just the same way for each and every project during the production.

Initially, the protagonist of The Gift was an aspiring novelist. Eventually, in a major revision, Phil (named after Philip Carey from Of Human Bondage) was re-born as a classical music composer.

I think changing Phil's medium of expression led to a great improvement. For one, I think it made the story more cinematically appealing by allowing music to take a more central role. It also helped me keep the script more compact. But one thing that strikes me after the fact is how music makes a perfect element of this story.

At this point, I would like to present excerpts from two poems by W. H. Auden, published right next to each other in a collection: The Novelist, and The Composer.

In the first poem, Auden says a novelist should:

among the Just
Be just, among the Filthy filthy too,
And in his own weak person, if he can,
Must suffer dully all the wrongs of Man.

I cannot claim I know exactly what Auden meant, but these lines resonate in me quite profoundly. The truth is I suspect I write because life is imperfect. In writing, I deal with all the injustice and filthiness of human existence, just as I do in life. In writing, however, I deal with them not as the object or as the agent but as a student and observer, and this enables me to cope with "all the wrongs of Man," or the wrongness of existence.

On the other hand, music can be, in my mind, a purer form of art. Music, at its best moment, completely transcends the human world and puts you in a radically different mode of being. Yes, music can tell a story, and music can mimic life, but music can also induce an experience of the purest joy, the highest pleasure, an aesthetic ecstasy, like a lightning that strikes directly at a mysterious spot in the brain without ever touching an earthly object.

Anyway, here is how Auden put it more accurately than I ever could:

Only your notes are pure contraption,
Only your song is an absolute gift.
...
You, alone, alone, O imaginary song,
Are unable to say an existence is wrong,
And pour out your forgiveness like a wine.

How to make your character more relatable?

2010-07-26T18:16:00.000-07:00

It was about a year ago that I first wrote about empathy and identification in relation to fiction in this blog. A year and many mega-bytes of downloaded articles later, the problem still captivates me. (That's the thing about being in school. You have access to research articles so that you can waste your non-school time on them.) I'm kinda making my way to my own view on this matter, and hopefully, I will write it all up in one neat paper someday... (I've learned recently that I'm an incorrigible dreamer. And I thought I was just young.) Until then, I'm jutting down some ideas in my other blog.

Anyways, just as I read and think about empathy and identification as an academic subject, I'm also dealing with the same problem as a practical matter in my writing. The question is how to make my character easier for the audience to relate to.

Maurice Field, the protagonist of my feature-length noir/sci-fi script, is a hard-to-know character by design. He is a repressed man shrouded in mystery. (The story is about his journey to discover his inner self). Especially because the story is about Maurice's personal and internal struggle, it is crucial that the viewer builds a strong bond with him from early on. So here is the conundrum: How do you get the viewer to connect with a character like Maurice, who lives in a shell within a shell?

In the following, I go through some miscellanies and sundries in the attic of my mind in search of potential solutions to the problem of creating an "identifiable" character:

A popular trick - the puppy factor. Here is an old screenwriters' trick: Have your protagonist rescue a puppy (or do something to that effect) early in the story. The viewer goes "awwww..." and your protagonist will have an easy ride from then on. [[Note to self: Should I just get over with the feeling that this is a cheap trick and adopt the method?]]

An even cheaper trick - a desirable hero. According to psychoanalytic theories of cinema, the viewer wants to "identify" with a desirable character. They watch a film for that illusion of being the hero on the screen. I'm not a big fan of this theory. I think the presence of such an illusion is an illusion. But still, I can't deny there's something in this old adage. It is of no doubt easier to form a fast alliance with a handsome, intelligent, successful, and loved person than with somebody who is average, unpleasant and lonely. [[Note to self: True, my protagonist Maurice is not a hero, but a very much flawed character. Still, perhaps I can emphasize some of his attractive traits to charm the audience?]]

"Just like me." But here is yet another old adage: The viewer needs to feel the protagonist is "just like" him. This sounds contradictory to aforementioned psychoanalytic theories. Surprise... Perhaps the trick is to make viewers feel that the hero, while possessing highly desirable qualities, is still very much like them in a certain regards. Is that why Superman had to have an alter ego of an ordinary nerd and Spiderman needed to be an actual geek? [[Note to self: Is Maurice simply too different from the living people of the world? Is his problem something too esoteric for today's movie-goers? Let's just hope not. If they're not and the script is still salvageable, what I need to do might be to create a few moments in which the audience can see that Maurice is just like them in a certain very concrete and specific way. Hm, like what?]]

Identification fostered by its subcomponents. Gaut (1999) suggests that seeing what the character sees (perceptual identification) and knowing what the character knows (epistemic identification) help the viewer form a full-fledged identification with the character. According to this view (which lacks any type of proper support but sounds plausible), imposing the character's perceptual and epistemic point of view on the viewer will help him to connect with the character. (Is this how we formed a bond with the protagonist of Memento?) [[Note to self: My script probably is fairly strong on this front.]]

Empathy through sympathy. Gaut (1999) also suggests that sympathy (the emotional response to another people's suffering) and empathy (the emotional response to "identifying" with another person) enforce each other. This is another of Gaut's claims that was never properly supported but sounds reasonable. If you feel for somebody in distress, you are likely to align yourself with him, and that probably is a good position to initiate the process of "identification." If this is true, you might want to make your character suffer so that he would earn the viewer's sympathy. Pathetic, isn't it? [[Note to self: Maurice suffers plenty already. But in order to get the audience's sympathy, his suffering needs to be apparent and external. Maurice's internal suffering will appeal to viewers only after they have established a sufficient connection with him. Can sympathy be one way to get there?]]

Having the viewer invest their interest in the character. I'm thinking about the very first episode of Mad Men. You can see from the get-go that Don Draper is not a good man. But he is interesting enough to keep you watching to learn more about him. So you invest your time and attention on him. What a good film does is luring the viewer to invest more by rewarding him just enough at the just right times (Tan, 1997). I suspect such cognitive investments could translate to emotional ones. Wouldn't it be natural that we get attached to somebody on whom we had devoted our time and energy? [[Note to self: I tried make Maurice an attractive puzzle, but did I succeed?]]

A tricky trick. In a study by Davis, Conklin, Smith and Luce (1996), some college students were asked to take the perspective of the character while watching short movies (by imagining the perspective of the character, or imagining themselves to go through what the character is going through), while others were asked to just watch the character. The perspective-taking subjects were found to ascribe more of their own personal traits to the character (particularly the positive ones) compared to the non-perspective-taking subjects*. In interpreting their findings, Davis et al. suggested that the act of taking another person's perspective involves "repeatedly activat[ing] some or all of the observer's self-schema" (p. 722). They called this process "merging of self." If only a writer can find a way to lead the viewer to engage in perspective-taking rather than simple spectating... Another interesting finding of Davis et al. is that when people watched movies under a significant cognitive burden (when they were asked to remember a nine-digit number while watching the movie), the observed difference between the perspective-taking and non-perspective-taking subjects disappeared. This suggests that a brainteaser (such as this noir/sci-fi script of mine) may have an inherent difficulty in fostering viewer "identification" and "empathy."

* More precisely, the perspective-taking subjects used higher proportions of the adjectives they used to describe themselves when describing the character, compared to the non-perspective taking subjects. The overall overlap between the words used to describe the character and those used to describe self was similar across conditions.

Work cited

Davis, M.H., Conklin, L., Smith, A., & Luce, C. (1996). Effect of perspective taking on the cognitive representation of persons: A merging of self and other. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 70, 713–726.

Gaut, B. (1999). Identification and emotion in narrative film. In C. Plantinga & G. M. Smith (eds.). Passionate views: Film, cognition, and emotion. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press

Tan, E. S. (1996). Emotion and the Structure of Narrative Film: Film as an Emotion Machine. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Incubus released.

2010-06-21T18:20:00.000-07:00

By S.

After a long six months of production, which was about twice the time we thought it would have taken, we finally released "Incubus" yesterday. We were glad to keep it under 20 minutes, considering that - before writing the script - we had thought it would be about 10 minutes long.

Admittedly both of us have lost perspective on this movie a few months ago, having watched every scene and heard every line one too many times. This added to our curiosity at the reaction from viewers who were watching it for the first time. We were quite relieved and happy that the reception has been positive.

"Incubus" took six months mostly because real life kept us busy. There was also a rather unexpected large amount of effects work, which is an area that we are slowly learning more about as we go. Although earlier in the project we were hoping to use more Second Life footage than actually ended up in the movie, some of the key scenes and props were from Second Life. This exploration has given us more confidence to continue using Moviestorm as the foundation, and other engines to fill in the gaps when needed.

During production, we were pleasantly surprised with some of the packs that Moviestorm released - some of them found its use immediately in our work in progress. For the kind of stories we like to tell, Moviestorm has been the ideal platform and we are grateful that it exists and continues to be expanded and built upon. All the orphans from "The Movies" out there know what we are talking about.

Machinima Expo 2010

2010-06-19T05:59:00.001-07:00

Here is our trailer for MachinExpo 2010.

It was Kate Fosk, the executive director of the MachinExpo, who suggested that machinima makers parody their favorite movie moments for the trailer.

Machinima Expo 2010 Trailer from Chat Noir Studios on Vimeo.

Readers of our blog must know this, but again, the deadline for submission is August 31.

Incubus, almost there.

2010-06-07T17:27:00.001-07:00

By Kate

We finally have a low resolution release-candidate of Incubus. This, six months after the beginning of the project.

A release often is a bittersweet experience for me. It's letting go. It's saying good-byes. I had a tough spring, and for full six months, this project has been an engaging companion and comforting bosom. I fell in love over and over again with the characters that our wonderful VO actors incarnated. Many times, I got lost in the complexity of the tasks. Each time I stumbled upon an unexpected new place that stimulated me. We had mutually enriching relationship, Incubus and I, and S and I are proud parents of this new creation.

The mythical creature, Incubus, is a demonic being that visits sleeping women to have intercourse with them. It looks like the beast succeeded in planting a conception in Isabel, our (anti)heroine. A conception in the form of a nightmare, that obsesses her and compels her to search for its meanings. Alas, interpretation of dreams is a treacherous enterprise. Try it at your own peril.

Ivy Film Festival, after thoughts

2010-04-17T19:08:00.001-07:00

The fact that I am still in school working towards my third graduate degree has its benefits: my student status qualified me to enter our movies to the machinima section of Ivy Film Festival. We had no big ambitions, and thought this was just a chance to get a few more views. But before we knew it, we were sitting in a dark lecture hall at Brown University, watching student films screened at the festival, including our "Darren," the machinima competition jury award winner.

It was a great honor to win the award, and it was fun to see our movie played in a different venue. However, we never truly felt this movie, although dear and special to us, deserved that level of accolade. We know there are better machinima movies (made by students) to represent this medium to the larger audience. Darren's going to Ivy Film Festival almost felt like a missed opportunity for machinima. (I don't want to mislead people. The audience was small, largely because the majority of the viewers left the hall 30 minutes before the machinima segment began in order to attend another screening section starting elsewhere.)

At any rate, watching non-machinima student films at the festival was a pleasure. Viewing student shorts can be quite an intense experience, seeing all these burgeoning talents, their blood and sweat, their hopes and dreams, projected onto the screen for 20 minutes at a time. It's like sampling these young people's soul. Not all of them are polished, not all of them are agreeable. But none of them lack spirit.

I think student shorts and machinima share some similarities. They are brief, rough around the edge at times, often experimental, and deeply personal in most cases. They are "deeply personal" in a sense that each one of them is the product of the film-maker himself (who frequently is a writer-director) rather than that of the market and industry. This means these movies go through much less rigorous trimming process by the third person's point-of-views than the movies we find in theaters, which can be both good and bad in my opinion. Watching student shorts today, I found myself naturally making notes of what to do and what not to do in making machinima. Here is my personal list:

Do be bold and original. Because everybody else is. Quite honestly, the world of short films/machinima can be like a screaming competition. Everybody is doing something "crazy," but a lot of them feel vaguely familiar. I'm all for taking an old idea and crafting it well. But most likely, it ain't enough.

Do be efficient in story telling. No doubt we should strive not to waste another human being's time, a piece of a person's life with a very limited span. But efficiency is not just a matter of economy; it's a matter of aesthetics.

Always, always do your best not to be or come off pretentious. There is no bigger turn off than a pompous self-satisfied piece of ...work. (That said, if somebody accuses you of being pretentious, just tell them to f-off.)

Over all, do take care of your audience. Of course you make your movie for yourself. But if that's the whole truth for you, you shouldn't publish your work and waste other people's time. Without the audience, there is no story, no ... "art," no whatever.

And finally, don't ever think you're special. Because everybody is.

These are today's notes to self.

MaMachinima International Festival 2010

2010-02-20T19:31:00.000-08:00

By Kate

What an event that was! It was an amazingly intense experience to be in that great dome filled with so many machiniphiles from all over the world, watching 50+ movies for nine hours!

A unique feature about MMIF is that each movie maker takes a stance on stage while his/her movie plays, and participates in a little Q&A after the presentation.

(Where is S? He was a few steps behind me.)

Standing there on the stage in front of the audience, and seeing Death in Venice playing on the big screens was devastating. It's mind boggling to think how nervous I got. I mean, I knew it was just my avatar standing there, but it didn't matter. My heart was racing, my blood was rushing to my face.

We'd like to take this opportunity to express our gratitude to our gracious host CodeWarrior Carling (@Ideajuice at Twitter) and Evie Fairchild, and of course, the amazing Chantal Harvey, the organizer of the event, and everybody who contributed to the festival as well. Their enthusiasm and dedication to this medium inspire us all.

So many amazing works were presented there, and we discovered so many great works! Oh, gee... This is the kind of sentence one produces after nine hours of movie watching. It is time for me to stop writing. But before I do, here are just some of the amazing movies we saw today. (We highly recommend that you double-click the thumb nails to go to the original sites and watch them in full screen.):

Iono Allen's movie was absolutely breathtaking. Surprising in every turn. Simply stunning.

The following one by Pyewacket Bellman is incredibly poetic.

I could not believe Lowe Runo's action flick was done in Second Life. Oh, yes, only in Second Life, you can make something like this!

Action Flick Part One, Rescue and Perdition from LoweRuno on Vimeo.

Last but not least, a delightful comedy made in Second Life and World of Warcraft by Phaylen Fairchild. (She's also an amazing event host.)

Of course I'm forgetting many other great movies, but oh, there were just so many...

Here are some more photos from the festival: Flickr photostream

Addendum: You can see a list of movies played on MMIF 2010 here.

Of empathy through simulation, sympathy as a passive observer, and living the lives of the others

2010-01-15T19:05:00.000-08:00

Cognitive scientists generally agree that our engagement with a fictional character is a major source of our emotional experience while viewing a film. Yet, the nature of such engagement is under a controversy.

According to popular belief, we "identify" with the protagonist of the story. We are angry when injustice is done to the protagonist as if it was done to us. We are saddened when the main character loses his loved one as if we lost our own. Our heart pumps when our hero is chased by a ruthless killer as if our own life is at stake. This seem obvious. Until you really think about it.

Identification can mean many different things. In the psychoanalytic theories of cinema, the viewer's identification with the hero is considered to take the form of an illusion that one is the character in the movie. In more modern theories, identification is often described as mental simulation of another person. According to the simulation theory of philosophy of mind, we simulate other people's mind by going "off-line" from our normal mental lives and adopting the target person's beliefs (i.e. the knowledge and representation of the world), desires, and even at least some aspects of his personality. If the simulation is successful, we end up with the right emotional outcome of the target person in the given situation (correctly imagined, if not actually felt). Many scholars, Oatley, Feagin, Walton, and Currie to name a few, believe that appreciating works of fiction involves simulating characters' actions, goals, plans and emotions in this manner.

However, there are compelling arguments against this view. Noel Carroll (2008) points out that the viewer often has quite a different emotion from the character in the film. When the heroine is sound asleep as the killer approaches her with a dagger, we don't experience her peaceful oblivion but our own fear for her. When we watch Alfred Hitchcock's hero in Vertigo climb the stairs to the top of the bell tower, what we feel is not fear of height but a concern for the man who has such fear. In watching Saving Grace by Sisch, we may feel sadness and admiration for Grace who is separated from her loved ones to complete a mission for saving the humanity, but we don't simulate her love for Dylan. Do we? Dolf Zillman's (1991) example of children shouting to the TV screen, "Watch out," as well as the same internal urge of adult viewers, testify for the gap between the point view of the viewer and that of the character. Therefore, Ed Tan (1996) says we usually experience the events in the film as "passive observers," rather than in the character's shoe. In Carroll's term, sympathy and solidarity, not empathy, are the main source of the viewer emotion. We don't imagine being the characters, but we feel concerns for them as a separate individual, and we feel strong affiliations with them.

This sounds convincing to me. But does this mean identification/simulation does not happen at all while we watch a movie? Amy Coplan (2004) contends that it is possible for us to experience the belief, desire, and emotion of the character while having our own separate belief, desire, and emotion at the same time. In other words, we can have empathy through simulation and sympathy as a passive observer all at the same time, and the fact that we have third-person emotions while watching a movie (as Carroll points out) does not mean we can't have an empathetic engagement with the character. In fact, Gaut contends that sympathy and empathy reinforce each other. The more sadness you feel in empathizing with Grace, the more concern you may feel for her.

At this point, I wish I had some solid empirical evidence on this matter. Unfortunately, I find solid scientific studies on this subject scarce at best. My general feeling is that our emotional experience during film viewing largely consists of sympathy and solidarity (the emotions as passive observers). But aren't there sparks of moments when we actually feel what the character feels as if we were her? Or is this a mere illusion?

Anyway, what does all this mean to machinima makers?

If you believe in empathy through simulation, you may consider enhancing the viewers' empathetic engagement with your character by aiding their simulation process and make it easier for them. This may mean minimizing potential gaps between your viewers and the protagonist in terms of their beliefs, desires, and personalities (so that the viewer's own mental state would not compete too much with those of the character during the simulation process). This would mean creating characters that resemble the viewers as closely as possible, and advancing the story from your protagonist's point of view.

If you believe that third-party emotions dominate the film viewing experience, you may consider experimenting with a variety of things. You may intentionally create gaps between the viewer and the character, and play with it to rouse different sympathy reactions in the viewer, ranging from concern to suspense. A good use of antagonist may facilitate solidarity between the viewer and the protagonist. Characters radically different from the viewers in term of their beliefs, desires, and personalities would not be in the way of evoking sympathy in the audience, as long as they are likeable.

To me these sound like valid strategies for making your story more engaging and appealing, and something to think about as a student of the craft of fiction writing. But in the end, we want works of fiction to do more than simply rousing our sympathetic reactions to a third person or getting us empathetically engaged with somebody just like us. We want books and movies to give us an opportunity to live the lives of the others, letting us experience the world from different perspectives and, perhaps, even with completely different souls. Do they ever succeed, or is it all just an illusion?

Or perhaps giving the viewer an illusion of an empathetic engagement with somebody radically different from himself is what a story-teller should strive to achieve. Creating an illusion of empathy sounds like a good topic for a future blog.

Work cited:

Carroll, N. (2008). Affect and the moving image. In N. Carroll, The Philosophy of motion pictures (p. 146-191). Malden, MA: Blackwell.

Coplan, A. (2004). Empathic engagement with narrative fictions. The journal of Aesthetic and Art Criticism (62) 2, 141-152.

Gaut, B. (1999). Identification and emotion in narrative film. In C. Plantinga & G. Simith (Eds.), Passionate Views: Film, cognition, and emotion (p. 200-216). Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press.

Tan, E. S. (1996). Emotion and the Structure of Narrative Film: Film as an Emotion Machine. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Zillmann, D (1991). Empathy: affect from bearing witness to the emotion of others. In J. Byrant & D. Zillman (Eds.), Responding to the screen: Reception and reaction processes (pp. 135-167). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

The Human Face

2010-01-08T12:00:00.001-08:00

By Kate

Do you feel what I feel on seeing this picture? That little knot in the heart. That subtle pang between the eyebrows.

I am often amazed at what an image of a human face, even completely out of context, can evoke in another person.

Psychologists call it emotional contagion. The theory roughly goes like this. We human beings have an innate tendency to mimic the faces (and postures and prosodies, etc.) of our conspecies with which we're interfacing. As we view others' faces, our own facial musculature instinctively assumes certain aspects of the expressions on them. The subtle muscle tones generated this way in turn create a feedback to our system and thereby produce the very emotion that is associated with the original facial expression.

An interesting theory, although I question if we have to actually mimic the faces in order to be infected with the emotions expressed on them. My own suspicion (as an armchair non-working psychologist) is that evolution must have endowed us with a much more direct route to be attuned with others around us. (In any case, I haven't encountered any empirical evidence that emotional contagion requires actual mimicry.)

Anyways, here is another image of the same actress in the same movie. (You guessed it, it is Nicole Kidman in Moulin Rouge. A fine movie, not my favorite, but that's not the point.)

Her expression is much subtler here. Barely noticeable. But this face still communicates something and draws you in. This is not just because this is a beautiful face (although I'm sure it helps tremendously). Look at the doll version of the same character.

This should be at least as beautiful as the original face, but it hardly does anything to me. I am completely disengaged.

By now some of you (if there is any of you stayed with me until this point) must have sensed where I'm going, given that this blog is about machinima, supposedly. Yes, I sometimes wonder if machinima can ever be as effective as live action films without real human faces -- these exquisite communication devices that bypass your mind and reason and speak directly to your heart. That powerful equipment tested and retested, modified, and built into the very core of who we are, through millions of years of evolution.

At this point I suggest that you watch the following video by Phil "Overman" Rice. (It's really funny anyway.)

So I Ran Over a Monkey from Phil Rice on Vimeo.

It's amusing and amazing. His facial expression at 4:17 into the movie... That subtle mixture of shame, regret and self defense as guilt slowly dawns on him in the process of seeking an escape but finding none. It's all there in that complex human face! Alright. I'm talking nonsense. But you must have gotten the point if you watched the movie. What a great choice it was to put his real face on the screen! Can we ever achieve this level of expressiveness with animated faces? Maybe some Pixar geniuses, possibly. But I doubt any animated machinima actor ever got close to the performance of Overman in So I Ran Over a Monkey, and we're not talking about a professional actor here. Seriously. (Well, the only exception I can think of is the perfectly neutral machinima face I love to use and overuse to the point of an abuse for the Kuleshov effect.)

So what's my point? That machinima is doomed? I suffer from my share of negativity, but I'm not that self-destructive. At least not in public. Whereas I do think machinima suffers from a heavy handicap for being deprived of the magic of the human face, I can see a number of ways in which machinima makers can overcome this shortcoming. Some further thoughts on this matter would make a good topic for my next blog. But now, I end this post with something that I hope would make you feel a little bit better.

Incubus production update

2009-12-30T08:46:00.000-08:00

by Sherwin.

Casting is now complete. ScarletRhapsody (who played Claire in Death in Venice) will be playing Isabel Bennett, the heroine. Sisch will be the voice of Lydia Vogel, an artist and Isabel's confidant. Goofparade will be Julien Leroy, a renowned artist. And K4 is Nathan Bennett, Isabel's well-to-do husband. AnotherNewDawn will have a special appearance.

Rather than trying to further cut down the script, we've decided to move ahead and start working on it as it is. We suspect that, given the proportion between description and dialogue, that the 28 pages will probably translate to 24 minutes or so. And we'll adjust the pacing once we see what we have.

Since "Incubus" was written with Moviestorm in mind, we may have fewer of the technical challenges that we faced in "Death in Venice". For one, it's not in Venice. (Thank God.) There are still various hurdles and a never-ending amount of tasks ahead to create and improve the visual elements. I know we are spending a lot of time designing the sets, and that it doesn't feel any faster than before. But there's nothing in Incubus comparable to, for instance, a conversation on a gondola ride through narrow Venetian canals. Most of the settings are interiors, but they should look different, unique and appropriate. We've made some good progress over the last few days!

And so we end this year looking forward to a fun year of moviemaking and moviewatching. I got to watch a lot of (non-machinima) movies these last few days of 2009, and I have to say that the diversity, versatility and the power of cinema never cease to amaze me.

Happy New Year!!

A horrific dream begins

2009-12-13T19:03:00.000-08:00

By Kate

For the last two months, stories and ideas were churning inside me, while I was racing to meet my life's obligations. Jutting down ideas during the commute, and thinking about the scenes into my sleep, I was waiting and waiting for this day to come.

So here I am with our next machinima project, and "Incubus" is its working title. (See the fairly self-explanatory picture above.) This is a story about a woman whose nightmare changes her life. I think "La Boheme" will make a nice ironic title for this one, as there are many rich artists involved in it (and there's another reason I wouldn't tell), but "Incubus" is just way too cool to give up.

This is going to be another unabashed Romantic affair (with the capital "R"). It's interesting that our machinima tends to be so unapologetically Romantic. I don't see myself, or my other writings outside machinima projects, fitting this description at all. The medium seems to define what we end up working on, and machinima seems to almost always lead us to wilder side of the imagined world.

The truth is, I was working on a more somber story until mid-November (working title: "Of Human Bondage") with a constant apprehension that the material might not be a good fit for the medium. Then this story happened...

I'm still writing up the script at this point. S started imported props for the sets. We are both very excited to submerge into this dark water in long winter nights.

Miscellaneous Musings

2009-11-29T16:48:00.000-08:00

By Sherwin

While K is on a short break from posting on this blog, I thought I would try my best to fill in for her by just talking about what's been happening.

- * - * - * -

The International Machinima Expo 2009 that took place just last week was the kind of event that provides the inspiration and energy needed by a lot of machinima filmmakers. Even though it was taking place in the virtual world of Second Life, being in the same virtual room filled up with a bedazzling number of different avatars representing members of our little section of the machinima community - that was a fun experience for us, who came back to moviemaking four months ago.

I also had a chance to catch a few movies I had not seen before playing in the screening rooms. Even though the streaming quality will be inferior to that of a video streaming website, the environment and the people you watch with makes it a whole different experience. I got to watch our movie "Death in Venice" with award-winning filmmaker IceAxe, who fortunately did not burn the theater down with his torch.

This event also introduced us to the world of Second Life. I took the chance to explore many areas, also with the intention of maybe using some SL footage in a movie. What's most intriguing to me is the wide variety of environments that exist, and many of these being quite detailed, especially considering how empty most of these places appeared to me. While the commercialism is hard to ignore, there are a few areas in which SL really appears to shine: as a medium for artists to create virtual worlds, and as an innovative tool for education and dissemination of knowledge (e.g. virtual museums).

- * - * - * -

Moviestorm's recent announcement of their subscription service created a bit of a hoopla on both the TMU and the Moviestorm forums. The TMOA radio shows "The Storm Hour" and "Ken & Roger" have almost exhausted the topic. I do believe that the vast majority of us are willing to invest in this movie-making tool, and that the passion in the arguments stem mainly from our sincere concerns that the company remain a viable business in the long term. Being an engineer, my instincts are to leave these decisions for the business/marketing types and the number crunchers. The MovieStorm founders are prominent evangelists of machinima, so I trust that they will steer their ship accordingly.

- * - * - * -

On a lighter note, I think we have settled on a machinima project for the coming Winter break. Since we moved from California to New England, winter has taken a whole new intimidating meaning in our minds. Staying home and watching the snow fall from our windows while discussing moviemaking minutia - that sounds like a good plan. Alternatively I could learn how to drive on the snow, but I'm currently trying to minimize my auto insurance costs.

It will likely be a shorter movie than "Death in Venice," as our current goal is to keep it below 12 minutes. This time Kate is starting the script from scratch (instead of a three-year old "The Movies" script), so we'll hopefully be able to take into account the strength and limitations of our machinima tool from the scripting stage (instead of bending the tools to fit the script). It's still early days so I can't say much more than that, but you will hear from us. :)

Post-Mortem

2009-10-13T16:40:00.001-07:00

By Sherwin

It seems an opportune time to look back and dissect a particular aspect of our latest movie effort "Death in Venice". One decision that I personally believe to be crucial in setting the tone and mood was made about halfway - a month into production. At this time we had completed the first half of the movie, each scene separately filmed and connected to each other only in our minds. It was time to string these scenes together and see what beast we had created.

Our earlier mindset with the 10-20 minutes machinima "shorts" had been that the story had to be as efficient as possible. Kate crafted this script in 2006 which was lean and mean, in the sense that the information was fed to the viewer regularly and at an accelerated pace when compared to regular feature films. We were indeed cramming a lot of background information in a short period of time (e.g., five flashbacks within ten minutes), and expecting the viewers to keep up. Would this approach work?

In some movies in the past we plead to being guilty of information overload and expecting much from viewers. This is not a decision we've made casually, and it is one that we have debated and sometimes reverted. In case of "Death in Venice", we ended up slowing the pace for the first half of the movie to give the viewers a chance to breathe and catch up. The background information is necessary but it can be tasking. After all, this is the fragile point at which the viewer is still developing a connection with the characters and an understanding of the plot. Did our efforts fall short? It depends on who is watching and the attention they are granting the movie. It depends on the environment it is consumed in - low-end speakers or headphones, full screen or not, the bandwidth of the stream (or whether it is a download), the display monitor. These factors are out of our control, but we have to strive for balance and make a serious attempt at pleasing most viewers. The truth is, I cannot tell whether we succeeded or not, as I cannot watch this movie unspoiled as if for the first time. But I am glad we made the attempt.

Making a movie that doesn't connect to viewers can be a self-absorbed exercise in narcisism. At the same time, a 20-minutes drama machinima is not yet an established medium, one that some people still doubt even exists. I think of this movie making experience as an iterative and incremental experiment in which audience and filmmakers consciously or subconsciously adjust to each other, and meet in the middle where expectations are met and a connection is finally realized. "Death in Venice" was hopefully a step in the right direction for us.

Death in Venice soundtrack

2009-10-06T18:48:00.001-07:00

I finally gathered all the Death in Venice original music files and sent it to TMOA. You can listen to it here as well (find the widget on the right side). :)

It is really fun to compose the music for the movie that you are helping to direct. We deliberately extended a few seconds here and there when we felt an extra little musical phrase would help. And of course there were long discussions on whether music is necessary at all in certain places.

There are a few recognizable recurring themes used throughout. One of them is a short motif from Verdi's La Forza overture which I found to be handy - this overture is the music you hear at the opening intro with the mask and that church on the other side of the Piazza San Marco - what's the name of that? There is also a 'revenge' theme, associated with Sebastian, and a 'love' theme - prominently played near the end of the movie.

Death in Venice Released

2009-10-04T18:55:00.000-07:00

How do I feel now that it’s done?

I’m still a bit shaky I guess, from all the happenings of today. First, we were on the Ken and Roger Show, and then Death in Venice was premiered at the TMU theater. I was very nervous the whole time.

Well, the interview didn't go well. Ken lured me into discussions based on some of my blog entries, and I just fell right into that trap, forgetting the fact that I cannot talk and think at the same time. What can I say? Unfortunately, writing is my true mode of thought. :P Despite the stress and all the wrong things I said, it was very nice to be able to chat with these two nice gentlemen.

TMU Theatre is such a wonderful institution that enables people from anywhere to gather together and watch a movie (that is streaming on web a browser), chatting with each other in near real time. Having your movie premiered there is just an incredible experience and a true privilege. We thank D. L. Watson, a.k.a. Moonlight Pictures, for bringing such a wonderful gift to machinima makers.

For those of you who couldn’t make it to the premiere today, please find the movie on the right column.

Death in Venice

2009-10-03T15:27:00.000-07:00

I guess my days of posing as a blogger are over! :) It has been a long time since I posted anything here. For the last few weeks, S and I have been working hard on our first MovieStorm machinima, Death in Venice.

Working together with your spouse on a creative project is an experience to have. Now that our joint efforts of last two months are about to come to fruition, I am excited and sad at the same time. I will certainly miss those countless late night discussions and dinner table debates.

The production process of this movie in particular was such a rich experience of creative collaboration, not only between S and I, but also with the initial involvement of NeoNoir, who was originally set to direct this movie. Even though he ended up dropping out of the project, he left a lot of his footprints in this. More than three years ago, he expressed his own interest in incorporating the motif of masks into a hit man movie after hearing a bunch of stories I pitched to him (including what became Death in Venice), and I subsequently wrote the mask motif into the script for him. Some of the mask-related parts are gone now, but the theme left its permanent mark on a deep place of the story. (Watch the movie, and you’ll see.) NeoNoir’s suggestion that we bring some spectacle to the movie by having the climax take place in a “piazza” (as well as his mentioning of “Venetian masks”) sealed the destination of Marc and Julia as well. When he brought up the possibility of having our first killing in a concert hall, Verdi's "Rigoletto" came to haunt the story and never left even after the concert hall turned into a restaurant.

After three years of hibernation and many week's intense labor, the story will be released at TMU Theater on October 4th (7:10 Eastern, 4:10 Pacific).

Machinima?

2009-09-02T14:31:00.000-07:00

by Kate

I’m relatively new to “machinima.” Before my two-year break, I mainly stayed inside the tight-knit community of The Movies Online, and hardly ever called what I was doing machinima. Now my partner (and husband) and I make movies with MovieStorm. Here are some of my thoughts after suddenly finding myself being in “machinima.” (I am not discussing “anymation”* here to focus on the case of machinima production involving single non-game-based engines.)

Let me begin with some popular definitions of Mahchinima:

“Machinima is making films with computer games” (Hancock & Ingram, 2007, p.14).

“Machinima is the art of making animated films within a real time virtual 3D environment” (Kelland, Morris, & Lloyd, 2005, p. 10).

The second definition is slightly broader and more inclusive than the first, and as of mid 2009, this is pretty much the meaning of “machinima” heralded everywhere from Wikipedia to Machinima.com, to various machinima festival sites, and to the blogsphere. “3D environment” and “real time” have been established as the defining features of machinima production.

This, in my opinion, excludes movies made with software such as MovieStorm or iClone, as “real-time” is not the filming process in these platforms. The users of MovieStorm and iClone pause time in their virtual set to build the action piece by piece, and move back and forth along the timeline to make corrections and add subtleties. Yet, in practice, many individuals and various organizations/competitions consider MovieStorm and iClone production as machinima.

So here we are with a wide-spread definition of machinima that excludes a particular kind of non-conventional animation on one hand, and the common usage of the term that defies this definition on the other. My question then is, is this the time to redefine machinima? Or do we need another term for non-game-based movies that were created with the animation tools targeted for mass market?

There are some good reasons for keeping the old definition in peace and coin a new term for the instances that do not fit it. The production process in MovieStorm and iCone (and other similar platforms) is significantly different from the traditional machinima production, and there seems to be some existing resistance among old-school machinima circles to accepting non-game-based animation as machinima. Beside, a new term might actually help us break loose from the old baggage of certain machinima mentality and claim ourselves as -- excuse me if this sounds pompous but this honestly is the best words I can think of --artists, as opposed to, say, ingenuous hackers.

On the other hand, it is convenient to have one handy umbrella term for all the animated movies created with nontraditional techniques. In addition to the fact that it is a convention in formation , there are reasons for keeping what are currently called machinima categorized together under the one single label. Certain game engines are highly machinima-friendly and offer ample contents and functionality targeted for machinima production, blurring the boundary between game-based and non-game-based engines. In addition, the term machinima has been comfortably accommodating various potentially ambiguous cases such as the movies made in Second Life. The truth is, in spite of the existing sectarian disputes, there seems to be such a thing as a larger machinima community, that share the same love, enthusiasm and vision, directed to all sorts of alternative animation that allows common people like you and me make movies with micro budget.

But by applying the term machinima to certain movies, aren't we in fact changing its definition? Then, should we try to popularize this more inclusive definition, instead of copying and spreading the traditional narrower definition over and over again? Should we go ahead and edit Wikipedia? Or is the time not ripe yet?

Addendum:

I think the problem is that the term “real time” is used in many different ways. In animation, as I understand, the term “realtime” is often used in relation to “realtime rendering environment” which allows the animators to see their work in the rendered speed in the animating stage. In machinima circles, however, “real time” seems to have been used in various ways. In one extreme, the term requires capturing the action as it unfolds in front of your eyes even without any editing. In the other extreme, the aforementioned animator’s technical definition of “realtime” appears to be adopted. Between these two, there are various grades of “real time.” As such, I think it would be helpful if the term “real time” (preferably “realtime”) is further explicated when used to define machinima.

That said, I wonder if 3D animation in general will one day move to realtime rendering environments and the current definition of machinima (even with the word “realtime” with clarification) will be challenged once more. Or will the boundary be broken completely in the future, leaving only the distinction between high-budget, independent, nano-budget animations?

Work Cited

Handcock, H. & Ingram, J. (2007). Machinima for Dummies. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley Publishing, Inc.

Kelland, M, Morris, D., & Lloyd, D. (2005). Machinima. Boston, MA: Thompson.

*For “anymation,” see this page by Phil “Overman” Rice, or this Urban Dictionary entry by Tom Jantol, who coined the term according to Overman’s comment on this web page.

Anatomy of Empathy – Part 1 (or a Hopelessly Self-indulgent Musing)

2009-08-24T16:43:00.000-07:00

By Kate
A little robot, Wall-E, spent hundreds of years in solitude processing garbage in the empty planet, until one day, when he meets EVA. She becomes his girl-friend and sole friend. When she turns inactive for a reason he doesn't understand, he takes care of her, dressing her up and bringing her to picnic.

Satine, a beautiful courtesan of Moulin Rouge who wants to be a real actress, is in love with a struggling writer. She is about to be raped by the duke who has been their sponsor. She announces that today is the day her life ends.

At the end of a picture-perfect love story in which a young couple overcome their obstacles, the young man watches the love of his life lie in a hospital bed dying of leukemia.
It might be too shameful for you to admit that you felt something in those moments. It is for me. But that does not change the fact that we felt for these characters. Empathy. Identification. These are the words often used to label what happened to us. They say we empathized with those characters. But what does that mean?

As it turns out, philosophers have spent much brain power to resolve the “paradox” of empathizing with fictional characters. Susan Feagin, for example, contends that “empathy” is feeling exactly what the other person feels and “for the right reasons.” According to Feagin, in empathizing with a real person, we have to believe that we adopted the beliefs and desires of the person in question. (Otherwise, it would be sympathy, not empathy.) In empathizing with a fictional character however, we can't hold such a belief. In fact, we don’t even believe that the person exists at all. So how is it possible that we empathize with a fictional character? Feagin’s solution to this paradox is to say that we imagine having the fictional character’s beliefs and desires, rather than believing that we do. This sounds like saying that the empathy we feel for a real person is categorically different from the empathy we feel for a fictional character. The former is based on the second order belief (the belief that we adopted the other person’s beliefs) and the latter based on imagination.

A more convoluted proposal comes from Gregory Currie, who says we don’t imagine believing the same thing as a non-existing person in empathizing with him, but we (lo and behold) “believe-I” and "desire-I" the contents of his beliefs and desires to simulate his mental states. (Here, the special “I-states” denote real mental states that bear some sort of systematic resemblance to the mental states of the target person.) Moreover, he says that what we do is to simulate “a hypothetical reader of fact” who empathizes with the fictional character in question. So Currie’s solution to the paradox seems to be making up this new mental state (“I-state”) as well as insert an intermediary between us and the fictional character. (It appears to me that the “hypothetical reader of fact” is an unnecessary entity, although some may find it useful for solving what Currie calls the “personality problem,” the fact that we empathize with the kind of fictional characters we wouldn’t empathized with in real life.)

One of the problems I have with these views is their assumption that we really do adopt the beliefs and desires of others in empathizing with real people. How can this be possible? We have no access to other people’s beliefs and desires. We can never truly know them, much less adopt them. Most of time, we only theorize about them. When we attempt to “simulate” them, imagining is the only possible way. Therefore, in my opinion, we always depend on our imagination when empathizing with somebody -- real or fictional.

Another problem is the notion of putting ourselves in the other person’s shoes and identifying with them. Do we really put ourselves in the shoe of Wall-E, or the beautiful 19th century Parisian courtesan, or the lover of the dying young woman? Do we imagine adopting their beliefs and desires (or “believe-I” and “desire-I” them)? I think what really happens is something more complicated. Here is what I think happens when we "empathize" with movie characters (and with real people to a certain degree):

I suspect unconscious activation of one’s own emotional memories in response to the event on screen is often confused with (or constitutes) what we call empathy. (Oatley, a leading figure in cognitive science of fiction and stories, also lists emotional memories as one of the five processes through which fiction evokes emotions, but for him this is a process separate from “identification.”)
In some cases, we may become emotional imagining the events in the film happening to us even without simulating the beliefs and desires of the character.
Once we form an alliance or attachment with a character, our own desire not to see bad things happen to the people we like may be at play.
Automatic arousal in response to emotional expressions at display on screen, should also constitute our “empathy” experience.
Furthermore, we sometimes seem to react to the abstract “truth” the event on the screen distills. (e.g., Wall-E’s situation shows us our hopeless bondage to the blind yearning for attachment; Satine’s moment in Moulin Rouge! says that happiness does not last and sometimes you have to pay a horrible price; The end of Love Story reminds us how helpless we are in the face of certain fates.)

My suspicion is that empathy is not a single-process, but an amalgam of different processes that are bundled as one in our subjective experience. When we watch a film, multiple processes -- wonderfully diverse and complex -- may interact with each other, enhancing each other, to create the feeling in us of connecting with the character and feeling for them. This realization (or is this just a misconception?) opens a door to a whole new way of thinking about story-telling for me.

Works cited:

Feagin, S. (1997). Imagining emotions and appreciating fiction. In M. Hjort & S. Laver (Eds.), Emotion and the Arts. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Currie, G. (1997). The paradox of caring: Fiction and the philosophy of mind. In M. Hjort & S. Laver (Eds.), Emotion and the Arts. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Oatley, K. & Gholamain, M. (1997). Emotion and identification: Connections between readers and fiction. In M. Hjort & S. Laver (Eds.), Emotion and the Arts. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Other references:

Davies, D. (2007). Aesthetics and Literature. London: Continuum International Publishing Group.

Tan, E. S. (1996). Emotion and the Structure of Narrative Film: Film as an Emotion Machine. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

My thanks to the members of TMU forms who participated in this discussion thread.

The Economics of Interest

2009-08-13T15:50:00.001-07:00

by Kate

How can we make our movies more interesting ? Today, I search for an answer to this question in the book mentioned in my previous blog (Emotion and the Structure of Narrative Film: Film as an Emotion Machine by Ed S. Tan, 1996), as well as a few examples of machinima pieces. Tan's book offers so much food for thoughts that I can see it inspiring a few more blogs.

Tan compares interest to investment. Being interested means investing time and energy to explore the stimulus at hand. The return includes the satisfaction of being confirmed of one's expectations or that “ah-ha” experience. Like any investment, “[i]nterest is determined by the prospect of return.”

According to Tan, the prospect of return is partly determined by the past return. Just like you will not keep investing on a losing stock, the viewer will not continue watching a movie that does not reward him/her. If this is true, small revelations and emotionally satisfying moments, scattered throughout the story, will help keep the viewer interested. Intervention by Overman offers an excellent example of how this may works. (Disclaimer: I'm not attempting to guess Overman's intention. I'm merely describing what the movie was experienced by this particular viewer.)

Intervention from Phil Rice on Vimeo.

At the beginning, we see a man holding onto a buoy in the middle of the ocean. Even stranger is the way he gets away from the buoy. This clearly demands an inspection. Quite soon, you figure out what it is. The man is swimming backwards. This movie plays backwards! (A small reward was granted in the form of this little ah-ha moment.) You follow the man running backwards for a while, and soon receive a new clue. He is hiding from police vehicles. He must have been running from the law. (Another piece of reward.) This way, you follow the backward-running man till the end, while picking up morsels of returns to your investment, until the very end when you finally learn the whole truth, including the meaning of the title and the song, in a one single mind blowing rush of Eureka!

According to Tan, interest is a self-enhancing emotion. Once the viewer gets sufficiently interested, and spends enough time and energy in figuring out the story and character, they are more likely to be deeply involved in the story, as well as develop a stronger desire to find a closure or a stronger expectation for a particular end-state. They will have more at stake now. They cannot leave. Past investments lead to more future investments. In this light, what we story-tellers want to do is get our audience sufficiently invested in the story from early on, and keep them invested by withholding the biggest reward until near the end.

Intervention illustrates the self-enhancing nature of interest very well. As we explore the unfolding story for a prolonged period of time, our involvement with the protagonist gets stronger, and so does our desire to learn how he got into all this mess. We also have made, consciously and unconsciously, inferences and predictions that need to confirmed. With time, our desire to see things through only grows.

Another good example of the previous investment leading to even more investment is The Snow Witch by Britannica Dreams.

The Snow Witch by Britannica Dreams

Toward the end of this story, near the climax, we have developed a strong suspicion of the truth about Yuki-onna. In fact, we’re almost sure of what is coming. But instead of turning it off, we are transfixed in our seat, wanting to witness our anticipation being realized on the screen and curious to see how it happens. It is as if we worked toward this moment, and now we have to see it materialized.

Intervention and The Snow Witch also reveal another aspect of "interest" in movie watching. The streets of Intervention are relatively novel to me, and they look fantastic. Had they been exactly the same streets I watched many times before, or if they were shot with poor cinematography, would my interest have stayed at the same level? If the world of The Snow Witch were not as heartbreakingly beautiful as it is, would I have been equally motivated to explore that world? In these movies, the style and technique serve the story by helping to keep the viewer engaged. The quality of the artifact surely seduces the viewer. Possibly even more important is that it gives the viewer the sense of being at the hands of an able story-teller. It makes her feel safe about her investment.

We, story-driven machinima makers, have an obligation to our viewers to make our stories more interesting and rewarding for them. The viewer experience deserves more attention, and can be improved by better story design as well as other means -- such as pleasing dialogue and visuals. It would be mere laziness, or in some cases, sheer arrogance and conceit, not to try harder.

The Experience of Fiction vs. the Appreciation of Artifacts

2009-08-07T09:19:00.000-07:00

By Kate

When you visit Viemo, YouTube, or TMUnderground to watch a much-talked-about machinima piece, what is your primary motivation? What is it that you're seeking?

In Emotion and the Structure of Narrative Film: Film as an Emotion Machine, Ed S. Tan (1996) discusses two primary motives for watching a film: 1) the experience of fiction and 2) the appreciation of artifacts. The first is about being transformed to the world pertaining to the narrative. (e.g., being engrossed in the events unfolding, being scared as you watch the character ventures out to the dark). The second is about appreciating the style and formal characteristics of the medium (e.g., appreciating the camera work, acknowledging the way the monster suddenly flashes right in front of the camera after the long and slow building up of a nervous anticipation, or marveling at the way Memento tells its story).

This dichotomy seems particularly interesting in the context of machinima. It is my opinion that the appreciation of artifacts has a much higher priority in machinima watching than in film watching. It would be fair to say we often watch machinima mainly to see what people can do (and have done) with various machinima engines, and to be impressed and inspired by their ingenuity. At least, we do so much more frequently than we approach films with the same motivation.

The heightened status of the artifact appreciation in machinima watching is not surprising since machinima started (by and large) as the showcase of what an impressive artifact you can create out of the game you play. The machinima tools geared for story-telling are still in their infancy, and both the developers and users of these tools are in the process of discovering what can be achieved and how. In the mean time, a drastically high proportion of machinima watchers remain to be what we might call peer viewers (viewers who are involved in the craft and the community around it themselves), and for these people, the technique and style naturally are of particular importance and interest.

The problem is that this seems to brew the culture of 5-minute tech-demos in which the highest esteem and popularity are reserved for brief movies with minimal stories that are primarily to demonstrate the maker’s cinematic techniques or the potential of particular tools. In this environment, I find myself left wondering whether there is a place for story-driven machinima.

Should a story matter? I will not dwell on the point that style without substance is empty. Neither will I spend the virtual ink on my personal motivations for making those little movies. Instead, I would raise the point that machinima’s value as an artifact is bound to greatly depreciate outside the small odd community of the machiniphiles. None of the most superior camera works, lighting works, or cinematic techniques created in a personal computer will sufficiently impress non-game-players and non-machinima-makers. It is only through the story, and its universal appeal, that the people at large can be intrigued. It is through the story that machinima would be able to gain the legitimacy and respect it deserves in the real world.

Production Diary Aug 3, 2009

2009-08-03T19:29:00.001-07:00

We had a good weekend, our first one working on the Death in Venice project. We are surrounded by Verdi's Rigoletto everyday now, it's beginning to drive me nuts.

There's a learning curve for us, but we are excited about all the tools and possibilities that exist right now. I fiddled with Adobe After Effects to produce the opening shot, and I think we are on the right track. I am also giving more input than in previous movies where K did most of the directing. Of course, I run all my ideas with her - we all know who is the boss in this production studio. :)

I also worked on some music. It's a piece that we definitely cannot get a free recording of, to use commercially. So I just had to enter it and tweak the samples to sound better.

Finally, most of my time was spent on importing Sketchup props into MovieStorm. By the way, I think MovieStorm is a great tool. Sure there are some deficiencies, but I believe they are pointing in the right direction - making it simple to get things done so you can focus on the important things.

-S

Past, Present and Future

2009-08-02T08:23:00.000-07:00

By Kate

We lied. We weren’t sleeping. We’ve been busy hammering, sawing, and screwing around in the set. We’ve been training ourselves with Moviestorm, researching for postproduction tools, and conducting trial shooting.

In addition, I intend to blog here about: our production processes, writing, and… cognitive science approach to stories and arts, which I think could be a unique feature of this site and which will be an extra motivating factor for my quest to learn more about this relatively new field to me (although I have background in a related area). I may also try to write about exciting developments in the Machinima community, but I know there are enough people out there doing great job on that front already.

No more idle TV watching, no more weekend excursions... I see lots of Chinese takeouts in our future.

2009-07-29T17:42:00.001-07:00

Sssh.... We are sleeping.