Welcome to Machinination’s How to Make Machinima Guide! This guide was written and edited by (note to all people working on guide add your info here!) Mitchell R. Stover (Bolddoughnut) Sebastian Neme (Frozsand) Travis Algarin (Afroblaster917) Justin Wells (Virtual Pixels) David McLaughlin (Falco Maton) Angus McCallum (King Sangos) Michael Burns (Flamez0nFire) This guide is dedicated (note to people working add what you want here!) To the memory of Lower The Guns and to the people who made LTG possible thank you for all of your work we made the impossible possible. ____________________________________________________________________________ __ Machinination Guide Outline Production General Production Advice o Setting up a machinima meeting o Keeping the meeting on track o Ending the meeting o What we do Production Part B o There is no right way but there are wrong ways · Camera angles · Effects · Music choice · What we do · Issues we have had and how we get around them Post Production o Editing § Some of the biggest mistakes § Tips and tricks § YouTube § Vimeo § Other § Common Mistakes o Tags o Reception § A fan-base and cultural following § Director to Director Relationships § Reviews and Criticism § How we deal with Reception Other Information o Programs for non Machinima use ____________________________________________________________________________ __ Section 1: Welcome to the guide! Part A: What you can and cannot do with this guide. ____________________________________________________________________________ __ What follows below is Machinination’s official How To Make Machinima Guide. This guide has been written by the community that surround Machinination.com. This guide’s purpose is to give new machinimators a in depth look at the tools of the community they are taking their first steps in. However, this guide is protected under certain copy right laws which forbid certain actions. Below is the basic outline of what you can and cannot do. Any questions about what you can and cannot do should be directed towards Machinination’s staff! What you can do. - Download and view the guide - Share copies of it with your friends - share links to this document - Learn tips, trades & tools from reading this guide What you cannot do - post this guide on a website without consent from Machinination.com - remove names or modify its content - sell the guide - use this guide as a basis to create a different guide - edit the guide and include inappropriate and offensive details and material If you have questions about these statements or any other statements please feel free to ask the staff of Machinination.com or fill out the email form on our front page! We will get back to you as soon as we can. ____________________________________________________________________________ __ Section 1: Welcome to the guide! Part B: What this guide is. ____________________________________________________________________________ __ Machinination’s How to Make Machinima Guide is a guide built by Machinination.com’s community to not only share our vast knowledge of the machinima community but to help people who are new or interested in working with machinima get their feet on the ground and figure out what they need to do. This doesn’t mean that this reading and memorizing this guide will make you a instant machinima god. What it will do is teach you the basics and give you real world examples of what works. Consider it to be as a sort of icing to a delicious cake. After reading this guide, you’ll be well on your way to eating into the delicious center. (please note to all editors feel free to add onto this and change it as the guide evolves!) ____________________________________________________________________________ __ Section 1: Welcome to the guide! Part C: Who worked on this guide? ____________________________________________________________________________ __ Tons of people worked on Machinination’s How to Make Machinima Guide however, the people listed below contributed either to writing for the guide or by supplying the guide with pictures. In order to recognize their hard work and dedication, below is a quick bio about them and a banner that is linked to their website! Bolddoughnut Bolddoughnut started creating machinima in 2007 under the gamertag silentpig and the production group “The Star Movie Clan.” However, the clan soon fell apart and Bolddoughnut decided to leave to create his own production group called “The Never Regret Clan.” After working for a few years with the Never Regret Clan, Bolddoughnut along with his friend TJ IVIullenator (aka jayfng2) created a bungie.net group called Lower The Guns. The purpose of this group was to protest the lack of weapon lowering in Halo 3. For the next two years Bolddoughnut would run the Lower The Guns group and make movies for the Never Regret Clan. Both groups grew dramatically over these years from the Never Regret Clan hitting it’s 2 millionth view and Lower The Guns becoming the biggest group on Bungie.net. However, after the release of Halo Reach Bolddoughnut and TJ IVIullenator decided to pull the plug on the historic Lower The Guns group and Bolddoughnut began work on a website known as Machinination.com. Today, Bolddoughnut is majoring at American University in Film and Video production and is running Machinination.com, the website that is in charge of this guide. Frozsand Frozsand began his story of machinimas on 2010, but before that, in 2008 he was a Play Station guy, but that same year Frozsand watched his first Machinima, the beginning of Arby ‘n’ The Chief, Master Chief Sucks at Halo, with that he began to get more into machinimas, and began to watch Arby ‘n’ The Chief, then in the 2009 he got his Xbox 360 and a copy of Halo 3 ODST, began with the name of SeboNZ (Represents his name Sebastian Neme Z.) , then got a copy of Halo 3, he ended the campaign and kept playing multiplayer, but he was still watching every single machinima he found, later in the 2010 he got his capture card and began his machinima history, with the name of Rhapsodian Films. In the beginning of 2011, he joined the nation at Machinination.com, and became an Affiliate, at the moment he is working with the nation and helping with this guide. Afroblaster917Afroblaster917 started making machinimas in 2010. His first account was “narutouchwa” where he made his first machinimas then made a new account called “GammaShardStudios” in July 2010. From there on he started making higher quality machinimas. A month later he joined the website “Machinination”. After awhile he got a message from Bolddoughnut asking him to be an affiliate which he agreed to. He then became a very active member in the community. Months later he was chosen to become one of the Administrators of Machinination. His job was “Community Coordinator”. At the moment he is working with the nation and helping with this guide. Virtual PixelsVirtual Pixels started making machinimas in 2008 with the gamertag killjoypkr. He used the Dazzle DVC 100 for a long while. He was the founder of SloMoeshonProduction, the channel was created back in January 7, 2010. He had some channels before that, but those channels have been deleted over time. I met Afroblaster917 back in April 2010, they both joined Machinination at the same time. Falco MatonFalco Maton started to make machinima backing in 2008. Before this in 2007 he was under the account Falco Tardiso but he was hacked & had to close his account. A year later Falco Maton was born. Falco started making machinima on a old account called 3MenVid Productions and worked on a series called ‘The Corrupt Spartans’ But this account closed down in 2009 & later that year Paradox Productions was formed. Falco Maton is now head & cofounder of Paradox Production with Bloodseye ande begin to fully make machinima in 2010 with a few shorts and music vidoes, then moving on too working on the finale part of ‘Aftermath’ with Monkey Tails Productions (Eggymean) In Decemeber of 2010 Falco join a custom game of Lotica’s which turned out to be a ‘Machinination Game Night’ and later that night he joined the site and is now a active director on the site. Now at the moment Falco is working on his biggest project ‘Torchwood Reach’ which is due out Autumn 2011 & continuing to help the nation, like writing to this guide. King Sangos King Sangos had begun pondering ideas about Machinima back in 2007 but really started off in Septemeber 2009 with his first series, King & Friends. This Machinima was locally favourited but generally disliked among the YouTube Machinima Community. Sangos then begun work on future series with more serious nature. It would take a further year and more inspiration to set his Machinima.com series Wings of Equilibria to set off. He joined Machination in March 22nd 2011 and was a novice. He quickly became accustomed to Machination’s nature after leaving the Professional Machinima site, Virtual Flicks. At the same time he was given a position as an Affiliate, he was offered by the Administrators to become a new rank known as The Community Guide Manager of Machinination. He accepted and his priorities would include management of the How to Make Machinima Guide and management of the Machinination Wiki Page. (Note to editors please fill in your info here when you get the chance!) ____________________________________________________________________________ __ Section 1: Welcome to the guide! Part D: How this guide is formatted. ____________________________________________________________________________ __ Machinination’s How to Make Machinima Guide is formatted in the following format! (note to editors this can change at any time if we need it to!) (second note this part will change as we finish putting information into it) 1. Basic info for the section a. This means that this part will contain details about that section and will cover all the basics 2. What we do a. This section will contain statements and stories from Machinination.com affiliates and will pretty much show how we do things. Ex. A director goes through how he/she films. ____________________________________________________________________________ __ Section 3: Production Part A: General Production advice ____________________________________________________________________________ __ _______________ a. Setting up a machinima meeting _______________ When you are ready to jump into filming your machinima, you need to set up a meeting. While setting up a meeting time may seem like a simple thing to do, if you don’t put a bit of thought into it, you might end up making your meeting harder for no reason. So, in order to keep your meeting on track and to have it go without any incidents, here are some tips to help. 1. Pick a time and date that everyone can understand - While this may seem odd, one of the things I have noticed in the past is that machinimators will send out a message saying meet me friday or meet me friday at 8 for filming. While that may make sense to him and a few of his friends, it is confusing. It is confusing because we don’t know what time zone this person is in or if the message was for a meeting the previous friday. To avoid this, find out your timezone, include a.m or p.m. and give a date in your message! This will help you not only by informing your actors of the date and time that you plan on filming but it saves you the hassle of getting messages from these people and then having to reply with a more specific date. In other words, you send one message to everyone instead of one message to everyone and dozens of messages later. 2. Pick a reasonable time and date - While you may be available for a specific date to film, your body actors might not! This means that you need to pick a time that your body actors are available. One of the best ways to find out when your body actors are available is to look at your friends list with the body actors and see when they are usually online. Usually this tends to be Friday after 6 pm EST (New York Time) to around 6 pm EST especially if your working with actors who are in school. However, it is important to note that during the summer time, things are more chaotic due to vacations and other activities. 3. Don’t change filming dates more than once - If you plan on filming on a certain date and tell your friends thats when you are going to film, it is set in stone. NEVER EVER MISS A SCHEDULED FILMING TIME UNLESS IT IS UNAVOIDABLE! By changing your filming dates, you will throw people off of what they have planned and the more you change the more confused people will get. This means that people will show up in your party asking when you are going to start only to find that your not actually filming. The more times you change a filming date, the more chances there are that someone will miss a message and get confused. Limit your changes to limit confusion. 4. Don’t change filming times or dates less than 24 hours before the event - 24 hours before you film, people have already for the most part made plans on wither or not they are going to be there for your event. By changing filming times with less than 24 hours left on the clock, you risk confusing, angering, and loosing your body actors for that event and possibly for future events. _______________ b. Keeping the meeting on track _______________ So, you got your meeting on track and your ready to get everyone into the game to start filming. This is, no surprise, the most important part of filming so you need to make sure that you have a plan and that you have contingency plans in case things go wrong, which they will! So, in order to help you realize scenarios this section will help you see what will go wrong and how to allow it not to ruin your shoot. 1. Don’t wait for one person with a large group - When you are filming, there is always one person on your friends list who is running late and will ask that you wait a few minutes for him. DON’T! While this person obviously wants to help, the longer you don’t give people instructions the probability of having people goof off increases. Remember, once someone “accidentally” kills someone, all hell will break loose! (note Caboose and Church from Red vs. Blue) However, it is important to note that if you have a small group of 2-3 people participating, it might be best to wait for that person. 2. Don’t boot actors once they are in the party - Once someone comes into your party, they may bring a friend or two along with them. This means if you kick that one person to let a friend of yours in, those other people will leave as well and they could leave right in the middle of filming! This not only creates a dead body in most cases but could cause a slight lagging of the game or a black screen to allow the game to load again. However, it is important to note that if the person breaks one of your rules or is annoying and not contributing it is a better option to boot them. 3. Leaving to go to the bathroom - No, we’re not going to do any potty jokes here however, while this may seem stupid make sure that everyone in the party does not have to go the bathroom any time soon. Yes, it’s awkward however, you don’t want them disappearing for a while in the middle of filming for something that can be prevented unlike parental units! (this includes yourself by the way!) 4. Get in and get out - Do not have the game or filming session go on longer than necessary! Simply put, the longer the game goes the chances of something going wrong increases. So, don’t let people waste your time and keep the filming session moving. 5. Humpers and Jumpers - While jumping around like an idiot in video games is something everyone does, you don’t want this to appear in your machinima. So, when you start filming a scene alert your actors that you will be able to tell who humps and jumps so don’t do it. You can even threaten not to invite them to future filming sessions if they do hump and jump. _______________ c. Ending the meeting _______________ Once the meeting is over, there are a few things you need to do in order to make sure you maintain the party and so that you can make sure your video is saved! Below are a few tips and tricks you might want to consider. 1. Let people mess around for a few minutes at the end of the scene - Not only does this allow for some fun shenanigans but it also allows for some funny bloopers to occur. Also, it helps people note that the filming is over and that it’s ok to act normal again. 2. If you need to save video don’t run from the game - The game is over and now you need to save your film (if applicable). However, you have a full party of people standing around waiting possibly for a game night to ensue. So, instead of running away to quickly save the film and then re-inviting them to a party, give the party leader to someone you trust and then have that person start up a custom game. Once that game starts leave, save your films, and then return to the custom game. 3. Thank your actors - While this may seem odd, it’s always important to thank your actors no matter who they are, how important you are, or wither or not they were good or not. These people will watch your film when it comes out and may end up being your strongest fans, don’t alienate them because you’re too lazy. _______________ d. What we do _______________ Producing videos can often seem like the longest process however, it isn’t and so you need to make sure that it doesn’t end up being the longest part. One of the biggest things I always recommend doing is setting up the rules before the game starts and alert people that if they violate the rules they will be kicked and not allowed back in. While this often means you have to close the party, it also means that people will follow your requests. Also, you need to make sure you follow through with your threats NO MATTER WHO THAT PERSON IS! The only other thing I can really say is to remember that you are playing a game and you’re not paying these people so, treat it that way. In other words don’t be a dick, be nice and you will gain fans, views, subscribers, and a community. ~Bolddoughnut Body Acting in a filming session is the most crucial part to how a Machinima will turn out. Dialogue and Audio wise, things may be good but a series of Machinima can be spoiled by any minor distinct errors that are happening visually. I tend to be very strict about what happens in my Machinima videos so as to allow the audiences on my YouTube and Machinination Channel to be content with lovely Audio/Visual and Scripting details to my products. ~King Sangos ____________________________________________________________________________ __ Section 3: Production Part B: There is no right ways but there are wrong ways ____________________________________________________________________________ __ When it comes to making machinima, there is no “right” way to make a machinima. However, there are wrong ways to make them. This section of the guide will help you look into certain aspects of production and give you a brief overview of each idea and then explain what you should not do! _______________ b. Camera Angles _______________ Camera Angles don’t just show the perspective the viewers have to take, but it also shows the mood, tone, atmosphere, character, etc. of the story. The Camera Angles are a very important part to Machinmating, and should be carefully planned out before you begin recording. If you are interested in looking at what types of camera angles there are and what makes camera angles different, we recommend you either google camera angles or check out some of the links below! For what different camera angles are click here http://www.mediacollege.com/video/shots/ Another explanation on different types of camera angles http://www.mediaknowall.com/camangles.html However, this guide isn’t just here to tell you where to go and find more information on other websites, we’re here to have information in this guide as well! So, here are five things people commonly mess up when they are working on their camera angles. Please note that the following is a list of suggestions and may not apply in all cases! 1. Bumpy tracking shots - When you are doing long tracking shots, be prepared to try to do it over, and over, and over again until you have it right. This means that your final clip of the shot will have NO sudden movements and it seems as though your camera is simply flying along without having to suddenly jerk around. If you are having trouble with this sort of shot, try doing the shot backwards if possible, or see if there are ways to to cut the shot. (meaning to simply jump from the moving shot to a steady shot. 2. Absence of midshots - When creating a dialogue scene where multiple characters are standing and talking to each other, make sure that you don’t forget to use a midshot for part of the scene! While it’s completely ok and in fact encouraged to use multiple angles, make sure that when you are setting up the dialogue scene that you start with a midshot and end with one. 3. Extreme close up - While extreme closeups are helpful and very common in machinimas, they are extremely dangerous to use. For the most part, an extreme close up shot should only be used when your character is exclamation a point or when he or she is shocked. NEVER use an extreme close up shot for any other reason, it looks stupid and can throw your viewer off! 4. Movement in a still shot - When you are in the middle of a dialogue scene, your shots should not move. What we mean by this is that when you should not change the camera angle unless you cut from angle to angle. While it is not a common mistake, showing the camera moving in a dialogue conversation creates a dizzying effect and will throw the view off. SO DON’T DO IT! 5. Movement at the end of a shot - When you are ending a dialogue scene, never ever ever show the camera moving at the end of the scene! When you do this, it not only shows that you had a bad camera angle but it shows that you didn't edit properly. While this may seem like an editing mistake, this mistake is made in production so please make sure you avoid it! 6. The 180 rule - A common mistake that happens often in machinimas is the violation of the 180 rule. The 180 rule simply is to keep your camera from moving more than 180 degrees in a single cut. (See Diagram) (note to editors add diagram because it’s hard to explain) If you break this rule, it can confuse your viewers and can make it hard for your viewer to understand what they are looking at and where things are. So, we highly recommend obeying this rule. _______________ c. Effects _______________ When you are in production mode, you need to plan out your digital effects and plan accordingly! Not doing so can lead to your effects look off such as having feet stick out of the bottom of a pelican you added in post! So, here are some tips to help you when in production avoid issues that will make your post production a nightmare! 1. Mark off areas that you are going to be using if you plan on adding in items such as ships, vehicles, or other items. By doing this, it shows clearly to all of your body actors where not to go or to stand in front of! This is helpful not only to you but to everyone in your party and who works with your video! 2. Explain to body actors what is going on when it comes to the entire scene especially in terms of the special effects. Not only does this give them one last question to ask you it also helps them understand what is going on and how to help out! 3. For special effect intensive scenes have a character watch as a camera. By doing this, you will be able to get a general idea of what your scene will look like. Not to mention, you will be able to tell if you need to rerun the scene because a special effect will not work how the scene was run. 4. Don’t be afraid to run complicated sequences multiple times. While you may think that the first run through was a success, there is always the chance that one things in a scene went wrong and you didn’t catch it. By running a scene multiple times, you are able to pick and choose which version you are going to use later. Also, the more video you have, the easier it is to edit things together in post production. 5. Don’t come up with things on the spot! While you might have a really cool idea, once you have made a script stick to it. By mixing things up on the spot you deviate from the script and risk a potential waste of time or failure. While some great things in the past have come from on the spot inspiration, we do not recommend you constantly make things up on the spot! 6. Do tests before you film the real one. Special effects are complicated and can take a long time to make. However, before you sit down and use on in a production, make sure that you have tested it out before! This will help you figure out how to set up and act out a scene so you can preform the special effect effectively! _______________ d. Music Choice _______________ While you should have chosen you music before setting foot in a match to record, there are a few things you need to keep in mind about music while you are in production. 1. Does the map feel right for the music you are using? One of the worst mistakes you can make is to spend all of your time working in production only to get into post production and find that the map you make doesn’t work with your music. “But how can a map not work with music?” is something that is usually asked after stating this. Well, while it may be an extreme example, if you use a slow and depressing song on a map filled with rainbows, unicorns, and smiling flowers, it doesn’t work. (unless you plan on doing color correction later) 2. Always, if possible, have you music on hand when you are filming. This will allow you to easily listen to your music and get a general understanding of what you should be doing if for some reason you have a brain fart. _______________ f. What we do _______________ When it comes to the entire production process, I tend to have everything already planned out and I follow the rule of K.I.S.S. (Keep It Simple Stupid). By planning things and keeping things simple, anyone is usually able to body act in my films. Granted when it comes to do more complicated work, I use a group of body actors that I have met and who have gained experience with me. However, for the most part I try to keep things simple so people who watch my videos on my YouTube channel can be a part of the videos and then form a personal connection with the channel. Remember, these personal connections will create fans that constantly come back to your channel! ~Bolddoughnut Represent the Machinima in a cinematic fashion. I also want my fan-base to feel very content and happy about the product at the end. All the hard work pays off at the end and a great Machinima has been released. Now go back and make another one. :P ~King Sangos _______________ e. Issues we have had and how we get around them _______________ Personally some of the troubles I have had is how people see me. If you make Machinima but don’t update yourself well enough, people begin to doubt you. Make sure you remain constant and online. I tend to visit my fan-base, 1-2 times a week and I also participate in forums such as Machinination as well as MachinimaRevive and YouTube. This allows it so that people can have easy access to talk to me and converse about ideas and troubles in relation to Machinima. You can also feel free to contact me on my Skype address on fear-the-kantus. I will be online for most of the time so you feel free to drop by and ask a few questions about Machinima to me. ~King Sangos ____________________________________________________________________________ __ Section 4. Post Production a. Editing ____________________________________________________________________________ __ _______________ a. Editing i. Some of the biggest mistakes _______________ 1. One of the biggest mistakes of a Machinima that you can make while editing is forgetting to lower down or transition some of the audio from the Real-Time game time footage. I’ve had earlier examples in games such as Halo 3: ODST where I was editing a very dramatic scene only to hear a rewind clip noise from the Theater or to hear a loud waterfall in one clip only for it to disappear in the next one. Keep watch of all your clips to spot out any fatal mistakes in the clips. 2. Another big mistake is a bit of a newbie error: the error of forgetting to cut the pauses between your shots; players will occassionally leave the pause from scene to scene in between their Machinima whether it before or after it (Commonly before it), so use your god-given video editor and cut off the pauses. *This can’t be stressed enough. 3. Watch out for the game narrator in theater mode, no one wants to hear him! If you have a scene where he speaks, either redo the audio piece by piece at different times or kill someone first for the “first strike” medal and then kill the actual person. 4. Glitchy videos on YouTube. One thing that irks me is when you spend hours or minutes creating a video and then you put it on YouTube in the wrong format so it doesn’t play properly. COME ON! Before you post a video upload it as private and don’t make it public until you are sure it’s ready to go! 5. Funky text colors. Overall text is something that shouldn’t be a center point in your machinima unless it’s for a good reason. However, when you do have to use text avoid putting them in odd colors. White and Black texts are fine but yellow with a red shadow just look WRONG so please keep it simple with text unless you are going for a specific effect such as red and green for Christmas. 6. Logos and credits. There is nothing wrong with having logos and credits however, if your movie is 90 seconds and 60 seconds of that is your logo and credits, you are wasting people’s time. If your film is really short, which is ok, make sure that you have a quick logo and quick credits! 7. Text time on screen. When placing text on a screen the best way to make sure that it is on screen long enough is that you should be able to read through it twice! Otherwise you will distract people and they can get annoyed. 8. Color filters from post. Making scenes dark is fun and makes things epic however, please make sure that they are still light enough to see what is actually going on! 9. Saturation. Yes, saturating the color is fun and can look cool but please make sure that you don’t over kill it! If you see the color bleeding and changing color from what it should be you ARE over-saturating your video! 10. Remember, it’s easy to accidentally destroy your film when editing so please make sure you edit a DIFFERENT copy of your film. (depends on program) _______________ a. Editing ii. Tips and tricks _______________ 1. A tip that can be used to add to the realism of a scene in a Machinima is to increase the volume of custom sound effects and music and use it to overlay the sound of the real game-time footage but not so much as to mute the sound of the voice actors. Remember, voice acting lines should be priority to a Machinima so don’t quiet that down. 2. Applying custom colour correction to a Machinima via editing programs can also dramatically influence the outcome of your Machinima. If you wish to develop it into a kind of Noire film style then adding a tint of Brown as well as Black & White can really help improve that effect. The same colour correction methods should be thought into other genres such as Comedy, Action and Horror. Remember that colour in film is of the up-most importance. 3. One thing I like to do is to focus on making sure that you understand that slowing things down can be cool however, in video games, the frame rate is already set and it can’t be slowed down. All you will be doing is slowing down the individual frames. The only exception to this is when you are recording and using high frame rates on computer games (this does not include any consul). 4. Take your time, one thing that can gunk up your work is setting a deadline when you don’t need one. By rushing you WILL make mistakes so slow down and enjoy what you are doing because people including you will enjoy and appreciate your work more. Plus you’re already taking the time to create it so why waste your own time? _______________ b. Posting on a web service i. YouTube _______________ YouTube is by far the most common and popular web-hosting video service for a Machinima to be posted on as almost all popular directors choose to upload their work onto YouTube (including the grand-daddy, Machinima.com who make a business using the YouTube URL) When posting your video on YouTube, the fact that the lines Machinima might be including might score you some views but this may be unlikely as Machinima.com had since 2009 changed the name’s morals and ideals. YouTube is also allowed for almost everyone with a Internet Connection to post videos of themselves for the world to see. Everyone is different however and only culturally accepted videos make it to the top so do not be depressed if your videos are not going beyond the four figure (1,000) mark in views. One major thing that people don’t do when they post to YouTube is fill out the tags on their videos. Simply put tags allow set your video keywords which allows new people to come and see your videos. So if you create a video, SET THE @#$@ TAGS otherwise you will rely solely on your own community which will grow slowly. You only hurt yourself by not using tags! _______________ b. Posting on a web service ii. Vimeo _______________ Vimeo is very different from YouTube because of the fact it is not as well known. Vimeo has advantages such as the fact that you are allowed to upload machinima videos that are over 30 minutes if not an hour long with good examples of this including Atraxia and Opus Machinima. Vimeo also boasts a higher quality uploading system so your videos should look like the crystal lakes in Iceland if you have uploaded it in a crispy HD format. Vimeo also has some downsides as well as the site is rarely used for Machinima users as YouTube is a far more popular URL and Vimeo can be seen as awkward territory for some which can ultimately drive them off from trying out the site. _______________ b. Posting on a web service iii. Other _______________ Back in the day, Machinima.com had their own Video Uploading service where anyone who wanted to upload their videos to be accepted by the Machinima.com could do so. Since 2010 however this had changed dramatically as the company had abandoned the previous URL and decided to enter the Facebook craze. You can also post your machinima videos on online sites such as Machinination or VirtualFlicks. You will of-course have to upload it to a site like YouTube or Vimeo first but you are most likely to achieve a higher amount of views and subscribers as you are presenting your product to your designated Primary Audience. Of course do not feel like your will be the best in the game as many passionate directors from the said sites might even criticise your work if it is far too lackluster for their taste. _______________ b. Posting on a web service iv. Common mistakes _______________ Some common mistakes include the fact that people include this famous comments (mostly on YouTube) “Subscribe, Comment & Like”. Its a very irritating slogan which can be seen as almost insulting as some audiences will feel like they are being forced to do this. Do NOT do this if you are truly determined to be renown in the Machinima Community. People will respect you more for this and at the end of the day, the slogan is just literal and nice English for “Will **** your **** for Subscribers” Another major common mistake that appears often in the machinima community is the sub and sub back.... NEVER POST THIS ON YOUR CHANNEL OR DO THIS IF YOU WANT TO BE TAKEN SERIOUSLY! When a major director or association sees that text on your channel and sees that you actually do this, you are discredited and seen as a person who inflated their subscribers. Something that is also a common mistake is using glitches to increase your subscriber count. It is REALLY obvious when someone has more subscribers than views on their videos so please for the love of god don’t do it. You will grow a community over time so just let it come to you! Stealing popular YouTube videos or posting your favorites as your main video is also a major no no for the machinima community. Simply put, you are stealing your copetition’s work WHICH IS THEFT and you will be hounded by other communities for doing so! Also, having a favorite video from someone else on your channel (unless you were in it) means you are not proud of your work and most people won’t take the time to dig for your videos. Putting advertisements on your videos without actually having a license to do so is illegal! YOU CAN AND WILL BE SUED for damages so even if YouTube comes up and says “make money on your videos” don’t unless you have the rights to do so! _______________ b. Posting on a web service v. Tags _______________ Tags are very important as they help YouTube Users locate your video via the Search Bar. Do NOT however include pointless tags like Hot Girl or Cute Kittens if your Machinima has nothing to do with these said tags. This will miss-direct viewers of YouTube and you’ll most likely be shunned if not trolled for adding these. Stick to relevant tags and you should be alright. Also, it is important when working with tags that you enter as many as possible that are relevant to your video. For instance, on a lot of new machinima videos the director will add the tag “Halo Reach Machinima” and thats it! This WILL HURT YOU so please don’t do it! If you don’t understand, let me explain it in a different way. Go to google.com and type in “halo reach machinima” as of the writing of this text, I received about 5,590,000 results in 0.08 seconds. Why should you represent 1 in the 5,590,000 when you could increase your representation to something in the 100,000’s? While it may seem like your still hopeless to have people view your videos, simply keep at it. Over time people will find your videos through tags so keep them true and over time you will grow a community around your videos. Also, make sure that you make your own unique tags for each video you use! If there is a funny phrase use it and please post your production groups name and the title of the video in the tags as well so people can simply search for the video! _______________ c. Reception i. A fan-base and cultural following _______________ If you release a Machinima single or a Machinima series, you may sooner or later find out that you may be developing a cultural following or a stable fan-base. This means that a number of people appreciate your work to such an extent, they begin implementing the ideas or products from your Machinima into their daily lives whether it is to be quoting lines from a comedy you invented such as Dex or Lyle from Sanity Not Included or role-play in the form of a character that you had created aka Dues Ex Machina from the title of the same name or Caboose from Red vs Blue. You may even develop a fan-base of people who subscribe and comment on all forms of your work because they appreciate or even love your designing style. They will most likely stick with you until your hobby or passion in Machinima ends aka what Smooth Few Films (The Bag Boy & Gunstop Advert) and Darkspire Films (Matchmaking & The Magical Candy-Coated Wonder Road) have gone through. These hobbies do last for a long time so they will be sticking on to you for a while. However, don’t abuse your new following because there is NOTHING holding them to you. So, if you are doing a bunch of tutorials and then switch to gameplay commentary your community might ditch you! When you find your own niche stick with it and don’t destroy yourself! _______________ c. Reception ii. Director-to-Director relationships _______________ You may find that after you have achieved a majority of views or have built up a trustworthy fanbase that you are contacted by another known director in the Machinima community. These can be culturally known Directors of YouTube such as Arbiter617 or ThomasProductions and/ or even Contracted Machinima.com Directors such as BlueNovaStudios and Darknal. When meeting these directors, do not try to be someone that you are not. Just act like yourself and see the outcome. If the Director likes you for who you are then you have made a new friend on that day who you can always come back to and talk to them. If the Director does not like you then do not fret, its not the end of the world as not everyone in the world is bound to like you and sadly this is the truth but some are tool full of themselves. The best you can do is move and continue being proud of who you are and people will respect you for doing this. At the beginning, you will find yourself with many other novice directors who are in the same skill set as you. Not everyone will start off professionally and some tend to take a while, if not years to develop their Machinima into entertaining masterpieces. If you meet a so-called novice director then continue the actions on the above statement I made earlier last paragraph. When you reach a high status in the Machinima community, you may also find out that Director-toDirector relationships are harder to make as the key distinction between friend and follower will be mirrored in your eyes. There is also a lot more stress from working to meet the expectations of your followers so these relationships will become much harder to form if you reach this stage. _______________ c. Reception iii. Reviews & Criticism _______________ It is crucial not to think that your work is untouchable because it is in the form of a Machinima Video as with every Director and Producer, there is always a critical member who will attack you! Critical Machinima viewers are people who spend their passion and time viewing and commenting to Directors about their Machinima Videos. Their purpose is to look over a Machinima Product, point out to the Director any flaws or hindrances in a production and offer advice in terms of Editing, Voice Acting, Camera Angles or Sound. NEVER DISREGARD ANY OF THEIR ADVICE. They are posting this feedback as a means of advice. If its a post such as “ You Suck” then kindly ask why he/she had thought so. You will know the difference between the user if the post is either “Your camera angles were far too static and needed more variety in them.” or “Lol, **** my ****” If you do disregard the advice then people will begin to disrespect you. You will be seen as in denial and just overall seen as disliked person who can’t accept the fact his work isn’t great. Another form of Criticism in Machinima is in the form of Reviews. There are a minority of Machinima Reviewers who spend their time developing Reviews for Machinima Products. These can be structured in either Two Ways. The IAW (The Intentional Assistance Way) or The PSW (Professional Standards Way). The Intentional Assistance Way is were the reviewer carefully structures his review in order to detail in a basic category form of “Likes, Dislikes, Improvements, Final Thoughts & Final Score”. It is called the Intentional Assistance Way as it is made by a reviewer who seeks to assist and help a Machinima Director in improving his work in the future. The majority of all Machinima Reviewers are categorised in Intentional Assistance Way Method. These reviews are made specifically for the Director to enjoy and improve his work from there on. A undisputed minority however choose to review Machinima in the other method, The Professional Standards Way. Instead of reviewing the Machinima Product in a personal response like the Intentional Assistance Way does, The Professional Standards Way Method includes reviewing a product to entertain audiences and to help them judge what to think and do next. They usually choose to review other Director’s work in a similar fashion to how Rotten Tomatoes, Empire or Yahtzee (from Zero Punctuation) would review Movies or Games. This method of reviewing is made majorly for the audiences to decide what to do and is only mentioned in minor detail for the Director to view. A lot of stress has been mentioned about whether Machinima should be reviewed in the Intentional Assistantace Way or the Professional Standards Way but keep this advice at mind. Make sure to read both these forms of reviews. Read the improvements that can be made mentioned by the IAW writers and look at the differences in what the Reviewer did and did not like in the PSW writers. Commencing these actions should keep you in a safe zone and it also help you to improve in the future. _______________ c. Reception iv. How we deal with the reception _______________ Well my fan-base has always been quite stable but ever since Wings of Equilibria was released, my cultural following has sky-rocketed. Its quite strange to see people talk about my product which I created and the fact that they love it makes me feel quite chuffed about what I have done. I try to sit down and talk with my fans to help them build a good relationship with me and I urge anyone to come up and give me criticism. I want as much as I can so I do tend yo ask for this quite bluntly. My advice is to just sit down, know your fans and you should be alright. I know I am at the moment ;) ~King Sangos For the most part, my channel really started to get going once I started posting video tutorials. However, I am still attacked occasionally by people who are ignorant and ignore my narration in my videos to explain issues with a tutorial that I did. (my assault rifle one is infamous for it) But this doesn’t mean that people who watch my channel are all trolls, for the most part the people who watch my vidoes are machinima directors or people who helped out in the videos that I made. This means that most of my videos are fairly well received however, they do point out errors and ways to improve which are always helpful. I am also fairly open to criticism (in my opinion) however, people who are not constructive usually end up blocked on my channel. Also, one thing that I would recommend for new people not to do is get into comment wars with people who dislike your video! DON’T FEED THE TROLLS! ~Bolddoughnt ____________________________________________________________________________ __ Section 4: Other Information Part A: Work areas ____________________________________________________________________________ __ (NOTE TO ALL EDITORS PLEASE DO NOT ADD TO THIS SECTION UNTIL WE BEGIN POSTING ALL MEDIA INTO OUR GUIDE! THIS IS SO IT DOES NOT TAKE EONS TO LOAD THE GOOGLE DOCUMENT!) The following section is a media intensive section that houses all of our work areas and explains briefly what we all do in order to do our machinima projects. Please note that all banners in this section are click-able and will take you to the director’s YouTube page. ____________________________________________________________________________ __ Section 4: Other Information Part B: Programs for non machinima use ____________________________________________________________________________ __ Please note this is a general overview of the programs with NO tutorials because there are hundreds of programs that could possibly listed. All the ones below are ones that we have used and would recommend to other people to use. Wordpress - For those of you unfamiliar with Wordpress, it’s a free blogging program that is distributed by wordpress.com. This program is easy to use and is easily modified to fit the needs of almost anyone. If you are looking to run a website and are looking for a piece of software that can run your website (note you still need a host) we highly encourage you to check out Wordpress. In fact, Wordpress is currently used to run most of Machinination’s webpages. Adobe Dreamweaver - This program is a web development program that helps users write HTML and CSS code for their website. This program is not recommended for people who are new to coding and is fairly complicated which means it has a huge learning curve. However, if you are looking to build a website and are willing to spend money on this program, check out Adobe Dreamweaver! Freewebs - Just like it’s name states, Freewebs is a free web hosting service which will allow users to to make a website for free. While this service is free and for the most part is easy to use, the major downside is that you are limited in space, url options, and customization. You will not be able to use wordpress on this service. If you are wondering if someone you know uses this service, look for freewebs.com/username or username.webs.com in their url. If it is there, this website is hosted by freewebs. IPBoard - IPBoard is a complex forum software that is commonly used in many forum communities such as Machinination.com. This web software IS NOT FREE however, if you are looking for stable software to host online forums and are willing to invest in these forums then you shoudl check out IPBoard as a possible forum software option. Vbulletin - is another forum software package which will also cost you some money. Vbulletin is currently used on websites such as 405th.com and virtualflick.net to host their forums. For the most part, many people view Vbulletin as a more stable program than IPBoard however, in recent months this idea has switched back and forth as the debate continues to go on. phpbb - This forum software is a free forum program that can easily be installed on websites. However, because this forum software is free, there are many downsides to it and there are many security holes that are constantly being found and created. This means that if you pick this software you may have to deal with hackers more especially if your community grows big around this forum software. However, if you are starting out and have a very small budget to run a website, this forum software is highly recommended. joomla - Joomla is a free content management system that is seen as the biggest competitor towards Wordpress. Currently websites such as Virtualflicks.net (on their homepage) use this program however, it is usually seen as a more complicated solution. However, Joomla by far offers more customization options than the average wordpress account. drupal - This is another free content management system that can be easily installed on websites. While Drupal is free like many other programs, for the most part, the community surrounding drupal is dedicated to direct coding which means that you will have to know how to code directly to really get a customized version of this program running on a website. adobe photoshop - This photo manipulation tool is one considered the end all be all of photomanipulation in the professional world. Most people who create graphics, photomanipulations, and even websites will more than likely use this program. While it may not be free out of all of Adobe’s programs, this is one of the cheapest in comparison to the other programs. If you are planning on working in the machinima community for a long time, this is a program that you should definitely look into getting. gimp - This free photomanipulation program is quickly growing in popularity and is a great tool for people who are looking to start of with basic photomanipulation and graphic design. Apple Motion - Apple motion is a program that Apple created to create lower 3rd and introduction titles. However, it only works on Apple computers and is still having issues with the recent release of Final Cut X in the sense that people don’t know what will happen with it. Sound Forge- As Sony’s attempt at a sound editing program, it is fairly good however, there are still a lot of big features missing but it fairly inexpensive. If you are looking for a simple program with a few options when it comes to audio editing this might be the best option. Sound Track Pro- As a part of the Apple Final Cut Suite, it has recently disappeared with the release of Final Cut X and many people still love to use the one that came with Final Cut 7. Wither or not it will come back is still up in the air however, unless you are planning on working with Final Cut 7 (if you can find it) then don’t worry about this program.
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