How we made “Education for Leisure”, a Moviestorm machinima film

I’d be really pleased if you have a look at this film that I’ve been involved in producing since February this year, a machinima interpretation of Carol Ann Duffy (the recently appointed Poet Laureate)’s controversial poem “Education for Leisure”.

Education for Leisure from The White Room on Vimeo.

With a group of six TV and film-makers from the Northwest, it was part of the DMEX programme I’m working on, training media freelancers with digital skills through work placements, seminars and collaboration. We produced this short film using Moviestorm, a very new free software tool which was launched in the last year or so. The Moviestorm blog explains a bit about the process and team.

My role was effectively as a project manager, acting as the ‘boring glue’ to let everyone else be creative.  The twist with this project: it was a ‘virtual collaboration’ – we only met twice in person, all other production meetings were held using weekly Skype text meetings, and all shared resources and tasks were assigned and monitored using Huddle - two free resources I would heartily recommend for eryone from a voluntary group to an international project team.  Huddle particularly may lack the features of a most sophisticated bespoke system but actually it’s simplicity means it’s so much easier to use.

Our group was made up of writers, producers, editors and researchers – primarily use to working in the hectic environment of TV production offices, and some were self-confessed technophobes.  We split up tasks between more traditional roles (like script writers, editing, or sourcing and recording actors) and two brave Directors who learnt out to use Moviestorm to create film-like scenes.

The beauty of Moviestorm is, unlike typical machinima using existing console games, it’s designed to be copyright free for users to create their own actions using the simplicity of computer game tools and it’s leagues easier to learn than learning animation from scratch.  It’s also sophisticated in enabling directors to effectively ‘draw’ expressions on characters with fairly subtle nuances (even using ‘angry’ ‘happy’ sliding faders!), again, not typical of computer game machinima.   The downside: it was actually a far steeper learning curve than we may have thought with lots of annoying technical glitches (not to mention being epically processor and file-size hungry), but perhaps future releases of the software will be more feature rich and versatile – it’s early days.  There were plenty of limitations too, as Moviestorm to date doesn’t have so many costumes or sets – so we had to be creative in the sets, script and change a few things on the way.  Having to infer a goldfish was being flushed down a toilet (without a toilet, bathroom or goldfish on set) was a slight challenge!  But then again, aren’t all budget films intrinsically creative through such limitations?

I’m pleased with the final film, not least because I know how much hard work has gone on behind the scenes from the team – Harvey, Karen, Lee, Frances, Pawan and Jim.  The team, unlike many machinima makers, come from a traditional film-making background and I think have given the short a more cinematic feel than many other examples of this emerging genre.  And dialogue from real local actors – plus a composed sound-track from my old time musical collaborator Dave Fox – gives it a really distinctive edge.

For me what made it especially rewarding was how readily everyone took to using digital tools for production, communication, and even making decisions – and how, a lot of the time, it made the whole process easier and more democratic (we didn’t have a budget and everyone was doing it in their own time). And it’s always great to work with such creative people who can do such magical things with a limited amount of time and cash!

Please let me know what you think of the film.  We’re holding a premiere on the big screen event on July 2nd at Cornerhouse Cinema in Manchester to preview the film and talk a bit about the programme and how it was made.  Email me (susi@digitalconsultant.co.uk) if you would like an invite.

The next DMEX Labs project is called “The Mill” and will be a ’social media soap opera’. A similar team will create a drama distributed through social networks about the lives of a group of young creative types in Salford’s Islington Mill. I’m currently putting together the project team and formulating the brier with exec producer Carlton Reeve.  Very excited to get it moving, which I think will be a really cutting-edge production in its own right.  I’ll blog some bits about it as we go along. The production will be launched  in early September.

EM Media Producers Forum 20th Nov – Uncovering Digital Distribution

It’s unusual that an event on cross-platform and digital distribution takes place on my doorstep, and more so in the very lovely surroundings of The Walk Cafe, Nottingham’s creative-friendly answer to The Ritz for tea and cake served with a knowing old fashioned charm.  And so to The Producers Forum, part of a series of events aimed at East Midlands film, tv and digital producers organised by screen agency EM Media.

A gathering of a few dozen producers – mainly film types but a few advertisers, games developers and consultants too – discussed the changing nature of distribution in the digital age.  Lisa Trnovski (2am Films) and David Shear (Revolver) discussed their new horror Brit Flick Mum and Dad – apparently the first film to be released simultaneously on all formats – cinema, TV, DVD, digital download and pay-per-view -(although I seem to remember the same claims levied about Road to Guantanamo) which has caused some consternation amongst indie cinemas who see digital as cannibalising their pay-to-see local business – including the present Chair of Nottingham’s Broadway cinema.

Shear claims the strategy makes sense for the indie distributor in allowing one ‘hit’ to promote the film in all formats to achieve significant scale from a small promotion budget – and allows the producer to get paid quicker.   Landmark deals from big studios like Harry Potter’s simultaneous cinema launch with Sky on pay-per-view (ONLY $50!) are closing the typical 16 week cinema to DVD/digital window.  Yet it’s small indies who are able, partly through necessity, to push the envelope in developing innovative and immediate forms of distribution – particularly for niche audience films.

Up next, Joel Kemp from Outso, a true success story of redundant ex-Climax studio developers making good by moving into outsourcing and recently the creation of virtual worlds, including Home for Sony Playstation.  MixM8 is their own in development virtual world for music, where artists can create fan zones, give live concerts, and even create unique MP3 tracks and virtual items for sale.  They’ve already got the ultra-hip Scroobius Pip and War Child on board. This is an exciting development and opens up genre and sector specific activities within virtual worlds (which are currently something of a scrum ground for unfocused selling of tit-tat and hard to target consumers) which is quite possibly the (long-term) future of social networking.

I was somewhat disappointed by the general discussion from the panel (which also included Michel Peters from Content Republic, Jason Burrows from Together Agency and Suzanne Alizart from EM Media) which took a somewhat narrow film-maker focus as to the limited possibilities of self-distribution.  It’s a subject I’m currently researching for my Masters, but Michel Peters in particularly adamantly believed there was little possibility in producers to self-distribute and aggregation was the way forward – believing that even all the major UK cinema chains working together would be unlikely to yield a profitable digital distribution business as a web-based model needs to have global scale and negotiate at least rights across a continent.

This certainly seems to have been the case so far with the music industry where major retailers have failed to launch viable digital businesses.  Yet I felt the panel failed to grasp that digital does mean direct contact with your customers, where aggregating data can be a long-play but can lead to greater independence and sustainability.  I certainly know from my days at an indie TV producer than we were able to sustain a seven figure e-commerce business through early investment in online through creating our own community.

Jason Burrows believed the challenge is maintaining interest in the ‘information economy’ where the new buzz and product finds it harder than ever to get noticed – guerilla tactics are needed to reach the multi-tasking generations.

Andrew Cooper, chair of Broadway, believes we need to capitalise on the ‘zeitgeist’ Nottingham now has for film makers – where some producers claim they can noticed more becuase they are from Nottingham, in much the same way bands from Sheffield benefit from the ripple effect of The Arctic Monkeys et al.

I found the discussion high level and useful, but the network needs to start bringing together other senior media practitioners other than film people to move the discussion up a gear to get really interesting.

But of course, most importantly, cake…

Em Media cake

EM media cake going...

EM Media cake going..going...

This is Playful – London Games Week, Conway Hall, Oct 31

“To thine own self be true” read the inscription above the stage of the humanist community venue of Conway Hall in Holborn – an appropriate epitaph for an era where user-generated content and the collaborative nature of web 2.0 is pervading computer game technologies, and new forms of playfulness emerge from the fusion of game play with toys, theatre, web and movement – as explored at this one day event as part of London Games Festival games fringe week.

Organised by my fellow conspirators Pixel-Lab from Derby, This is Playful was a very chilled out laid back event full of interesting talking and stuff followed by a few light ales, and generally a good sense of community. A lot of the technicalities went over my bear-like-brain-when-it-comes-to-games, but a few talks stood out:

Chris Delay from Introversion talked about building high production values in graphics from a micro-indie’s budget using procedural generation – that is using patterns of nature in a generative progam to produce patterns – like tree branches spreading outwards, or even city scapes spawning more and more detailed roads. This can be split into everything – even building floors and windows on buildings, producing exterior textures, or internal building scapes to produce desks, computers and objects. This cuts out the handmade time of game artists, and would seem to be the future of much CGI and games generation in the increasingly expensive era when users demand higher-level graphics.

Kars Alfink from Leapfrog in Utrecht – the Netherlands’ epicentre of game design – talked about playing with form using the example of the Z-Boys from the film Lords of Dogtown, who formed what became now skateboarding technique from experimenting with their surroundings of disused swimming-pools. Now skate parks take the form of extreme hollowed-out bowls that were originally just the functional spaces available.

We consume media but we use tools – so game media is about creating tools for functional uses. Habbo Hotel, the virtual world for children, has very ‘underspecified’ tools – like rooms where children play at ‘horses’ – despite the fact that it’s not a stable and there are no horse-specific objects there – rather like kids will play at anything with a few limited props in the ‘sandbox’ of a garden or playroom.

Tom Armitage from Headshift talked about the Obama 08 campaign manager software for iPhone, and how you could rate your performance as a campaigner against others – a multiplayer game (of sorts). Everything is now a multiplayer environment – enabled by web 2.0 thinking and technologies. We all have ‘rings’ between us, our closest allies, friends of friends then everyone else; social media platforms ape this – e.g. email/SMS/IM for close contact, Facebook next, MySpace for the semi-unwashed and open spaces for everyone else.  Yet social networks are not merely spaces, they consist of people who are connected by a shared object or interest – like World of Warcraft for gamers or Flickr for photo lovers.

Armitage believes multi-player can take the form of differing contexts – not just MMO or simultaneous multi-player forms but a “super context” – shared information and shared fun asyncronously, in close but not necessarily simultaneous timespans – like sending links and sharing comments on Facebook or by email.  This also gives you more to talk about AFTER the event.

Eric Zimmerman from GameLab spoke about games being about rules and maths.  The play is the free movement within rigid structures – be that skateboarders in swimming pools or playing within the mathematical rules of the game. Gamestar Mechanic is his new venture allowing users to create their own user-generated online game to share and play with others, an interesting combination of web 2.0 and game technologies.

Lots of other interesting bits and bobs including a very interesting presentation on realism and expression in high-end games design from Jolyon Webb from Blitz Games using the example of how getting it right with teeth affects how you feel and interactive with the characters, and a very silly Singing Sock Puppet linking up Last.fm with, er, a sock puppet.  A fun end to the week.