2007 Machinima Festival - Europe

Okay then! Most everyone knows that Keith and I attended the Machinima Festival (the first EVER in Europe) which was held in Leicester (pronounced Lester). It was technically a three day event of which we attended one day. A two hour drive (each way) may not sound like a lot - but by the end of Saturday I was worn out. We did have a VERYYY busy day though!

We arrived early - and we were both kinda bummed when the girl didn't find our name on the list. I told Keith not to worry about it .. but he later ran back downstairs and had them look again. Lo and behold we were on the list. Anyway we got our goody bags and sat down in one of the many rooms in order to hear some presentations.

The first we heard was Paul Marino. For those that don't know who Paul Marino is ... he's like the grandfather of machinima. Other people may have brought machinima into the mainstream (which I'll get to later) but he more or less started it all.

"So what are they like?" Keith and I spent a lot of time talking to different people at the Festival throughout the day. Paul seems to be a very reserved guy with a strong 'matter of fact' sense about things. Even though he was being ushered everywhere and people were wanting interviews and such - he still found time to talk to everyone who wanted to talk to him - which I find highly admirable. Paul is definately a guy I'd like to sit and talk to more - the type you want to pick their brains, really.

Keith with Paul Marino

I didn't do a whole lot of interacting with the folks attending the festival - I'm shy like that. Keith was walking up to people left and right "So what video have you done? I've seen that!" And I just sat back and took pictures.

The funniest thing about the entire festival is that even though we felt like we knew a lot of those people through their work alone - we couldn't pick them out. ASIDE from one incident which I'll document later ;)

We were talking to Paul for a bit when I snapped the picture. He heckled me about not submitting a film for the festival. I thought that since the director of the festival had asked if she could show our films that it would be in bad taste to submit one ... I was wrong and it'll never happen again! So Paul gave me a razzing before another guy walked up and he and Paul started talking, shaking hands - anyway it was obvious they knew each other. Paul asked us "I'm sure the both of you are .. but I'll ask anyway. Are you familiar with FRAPS?" Duh yes! Its practically all we use. Then Paul said "Well this is the guy that made it."

Keith laughed a bit and shook his hand "Well you have about $30.00 of mine!" He was kinda coy and shy and just laughed "I thought it was cheaper than that these days." We all talked briefly and of course I took a picture.

Keith and FRAPS Guy (I forgot his name SORRY!)

I sat in on the "Distributing and promoting your machinima" panel while Keith jotted off to attend the "legal" panel. He got a lot of questions in (to hear him tell it) whereas I simply listened on most of the event I was at.

Keith even hung out with a group that was filming the festival - Lit Fuse

who had a film or two shown during a couple presentations. One of the teammembers even contacted Keith in SL so I think he's made a new friend out of it.

As far as the SL end of things went at the Festival .. it seemed everyone was familiar with it - but no one really knew how to utilize it. De Montfort University even has a sim there (as well as La Interactiva head Ricard having a Machinima Sim) but the guy behind the computer really didn't know how far Second Life reached. We sat in the room a couple of minutes before taking the keyboard away from the guy and cutting loose. moo Money and Geius Dassin were in the sim and watching the festival on the feed so Keith said - "Hey watch this! I'm gonna run down to the main room .. get in front of the camera - and wave!" He did - and it was funny. Not only that it was nice to show the other guys "Hey look we DO have friends!" Anyway - moo and Geius took a screenshot/snapshot:



At any rate - that's all I'll post for now. The other post would dominate all this as its more of my documentation and not a mash-up of info from both Keith and I. Just a first person narrative on what went down :)