154 - [LF a good topic]
This time I'll write something about machinimas I've watched + a little update on "the untitled plot movie".
First we have this thing called Illegal Danish 2: Escape From Orgrimmar. Many people have waited it for more or less patiently. When the release date was finally upon us, some god damn F.E.A.C.S went and h4xx3d Myndflame's site into oblivion. That sucked even more than having to listen to Linkin Park and other emo crap tied to a chair without having a chance to escape.
The movie itself is technically a fantastic, top-notch machinima. The editing and camera movement is flawless, the Myndflame guys and girls certainly know what they are doing.
But.. then the movie itself. It had some funny moments (the one with Dirti + Log + Minidiablo is my favourite), but as a whole the movie jumped a bit too much from plot A to plot B. The biggest disappointment for me was the ending. ID2:EFO ended too sudden and too early.
Lots of people compared ID2 and Tales of the Past 3, which for me sounds a bit weird. Sure, they are both machinimas but in totally different genres. But who knows, maybe there will be room for epic-scale fights in ID sequel(s)?
I am not the only one disappointed. If/when there will be a third part, it really must own this movie hard, give solutions and answers. My conclusion is that ID2 is not great, but it is not bad either. As it is free entertainment - just wach it and enjoy it!
If I would have a rating system, ID2: EFO would get something like 7.5/10 or 4 dead murlocs out of 5.
You can watch Illegal Danish 2: Escape From Orgrimmar here, if you have not already done so for some utterly crazy and absurd reason.
WARNING! If you mostly watch PVP-movies (which take 0 skill to make), this one is a bit too complicated for your brains, shush! There is no emo wristwrist music here neither. QQ moar!People walking around and nice camera movements. A plot. The newest one by Yume is the latest of his works and in my opinion best till day. This video features pretty video effects, which are in a good way quite simplistic. In addition to that, the soundtrack of the video is "Frozen" by Dogzilla which is one of my favourite EDM tracks from 2007.
It features also some exploration content, but I am not the one to say anything about that. I've never been into exploring that much, but when it is presented in a cool way and synced well to the music it gains my interest.
In my imaginary rating system this would get 5 chopped dwarf heads out of 5 or 9.945943958745 / 10 as rating.
Go watch Arithmomania right here!
Nothing earthshakingly new to say about this one yet. It still lacks a name for the movie. What I forgot to mention in the first post that most of the "Nik movie" will be filmed using WoW characters and Unreal Tournament 2004 backgrounds.
There will be some WoW only material in the beginning and some parts of the ending, should this monster ever get completed.
This is also a small recruitment request: if you are a really good UT2004 mapper and are willing to make some stuff for this machinima, please do not hesitate to contact me :)
The reasons why I have chosen UT2004 for the second engine are as follows:
- UT2004 runs very nicely on my laptop: this is a necessity when I want to film spaceships or vehicles in the greenscreen map.
- UT2004 is technically from the same era as WoW - the characters blend into the backgrounds pretty nicely.
- I would love to use UT3, but currently I won't. Just because the damn thing is crashy and buggy on my pc, even after installing the latest patch & Nvidia drivers (though I am not the only one with these issues).
- UT2004 has a nice selection of maps, both official and fan-made. I have already picked some really cool ones for the main scenes for the movie.
- Do gnomes have a vibrate setting? Or did the wrench just lie to me about the ligtbulb being absolutely crazy eating the tormented rainbow with umbrellas and hunter items marching in Siberia?
As for future projects of my own, I do have ideas for some music videos. And maybe a Limited Escapism 2 as well.
Or.. more palading spinning.
Update!
Today I dinged my first lolliance character to 70! Next step is to vibrate the money from somewhere to Gnorgasm's flying mount.
Gimme epix!
posted by BaronSoosdon @ 6:47 PM
5 Comments
5 Comments:
Hm, well it would seem that Illegal Danish has been on everyone's mind.
I honestly think that people are being over critical to this movies, and machinima in general. I mean, it's all for fun, a labor of love. If people paid admission than I guess all the QQing would be justified, but no one is and people should just take it for what it is; just something a couple of guys did for fun and posted on the internet.
I don't know, but I think machinima has got a little out of hand. People are making it look like Hollywood films that the viewers are expecting that out of everyone all the time. I think its about time we got paid. :P
That's a fair comment, Khandy. Some people are definitely expecting too much from machinima. It's an amateur thing, which people (mostly) do for fun and their own enjoyment, and expecting machinima to be professional quality entertainment is unreasonable. It's not to say machinima can't or shouldn't aim for Hollywood levels of skill or style, but a home movie shouldn't be judged by the same criteria as movies which cost upwards of a hundred million dollars a minute to make.
It is possible to get paid for machinima - you can put movies on Revver or the like, or you can sell DVDs, like the RvB guys do. However, if you do that, you risk falling foul of IP law unless you either mod the game so heavily that there are none of the original assets in there, or else you go with a licensed machinima tool like Moviestorm or iClone. (Disclaimer: I work for Moviestorm). Though of course if you do that, you can't make WoW movies or Halo movies or whatever your particular bag is. It depends whether you're trying to make a movie and just happen to use that game as an easy way of filming, or whether you're making a movie about that game and that universe.
But yeah, let's keep some perspective and remember that making machinima is meant to be fun. That's why we do it.
I think the real issue with Myndflame is that the movie itself had NOTHING to do with the trailers. That in addition to the fact that almost 1/3rd of the total film was intro/credits. Another thing people felt weird about is that people donated to Myndflame to help with ID:EFO and the rest of their future machinima projects. One other thing was the constant delays. I'm sorry but, if you insist on giving a release date and making trailers with that date... then you should do what you can to meet that date.
If it weren't for those issues, there honestly wouldn't be nearly as many negative comments.
I think Machinima creators (such as BS) have the right idea as for as movie promotion goes. There is no need to go all out, release trailers, make set dates and collect donations from so many people. It's about the love of the art.
I'm currently working on a 1-hour long WoW Machinima project and have done a few machinima projects using Guild Wars in the past.
I understand how fans can over-react at times. However, I also understand that we, as machinima creators, need to not let our ego's get the best of us or make promises we cannot keep to our viewers.
When I click on the Illegal Danish 2 link I get locked in my browser until I shut-down the process thread by some piece of shit "I'm here to help"-browser crap.
Please take a look at it.. madly lame since this site is featured on wow-europe.com
Well, I have no idea what is causing that but the ID:EFO2 link goes straight to the Warcraftmovies.com page of the movie.
The link works OK for me, I use the latest Firefox.
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