We are in the process of updating our Expo 2012 blog here. Let me know if you spot any inconsistencies or errors (or if you have suggestions) and we’ll get right on it.
We now have a “Contact” form (care of jotform.com) where you can contact us directly with ideas or messages. Just click the “Contact” button, fill out the form and include your message, then “submit”. We’ll get to you ASAP.
We are also in the process of re-working our main machinima-expo.com site so that we can accomodate more technical challenges and to make the site more flexible. I’d like to thank Phil Rice for handling our site for so long (and paying for the space). You are the best, Phil.
Also, if you would like to volunteer for the Expo and/or are interested in being on our screening team, please contact us using the “Contact” form. We’ll be publishing a list of volunteers and adding their names to our Staff list.
Our next ExpoCast radio show is on March 5th. We hope to be able to run the stream live through our machinima-expo.com site, so stay tuned. Working out the tech right now.
Very excited about the MachinExpo 2012 and it’s only February!
1) My own movies aren’t good enough.
We’re not looking for movie making experts! If you’ve been around the machinima world for a year or so, and watched a few movies you qualify!
2) My own movies are too good.
Worried you’ll miss out on a prize? Well never fear. Of course you can’t vote on any movies you have made yourself, but you can simply step out while we judge your movies, and step back for the rest..simple!
3) I’ve volunteered before.
Welcome back!
4) I’ve never volunteered before.
Don’t worry, there will be experienced screeners on hand to help you, and a new viewpoint is really valuable.
5) English is a 2nd / 3rd / nth language for me.
We need screeners who are passionate about machinima, not immaculately written reviews.
6) I only speak English.
That’ll do!
7) I have to go to East Timor for two weeks in July
We have three months to screen, you’ll catch up.
8) I have never been outside my own machinima engine.
No problem.
9) I’m worried I’ve got strange tastes and I’ll ruin the Expo.
Discussing movies is more fun if we have different opinions.
10) I’m worried you’ll all get to know me better.
The great thing is, we’ll get to know you better.
So what excuses do we accept? The core issue is around time and commitment. Over a three month period , June, July, August most weeks you’ll need at least an hour put aside to watch movies, some weeks it will be more, other weeks less.
As we move towards the deadline, and just after you may need to commit 3 hours.
If you are due to go away on holiday at the end of August or 1st week in September you would struggle, other times you will be able to catch up.
If you are interested but need more information then get in touch, don’t worry there’s no commitment at this stage.
If you don’t have time for the screening group, but you’d like to help in another way then let us know.
Thanks to Kate, Phil Browne and Ken White for all of their help in creating our first ExpoCast! Silly me for thinking it work as a half-hour program! We ran a full hour (and more) and got to go over lots of fun Machinima news, update Expo biz and have a nice chat with Phil Browne.
Here is the recording of the show via SoundCloud.
Our next show will be on Sunday, March 4th at 10am pacific at TMOA Radio. We are working to live-cast it at our machinima-expo.com address, but we’ll let you know if we are able to make that happen.
-Ricky
Kate and I will be holding a live podcast/radio show today (Feb 5th) at 10am (pacific) at TMOA radio. Our thanks to Ken for helping put this together. We’ll be broadcasting the first Sunday of each month for the rest of the year. The show will be about 30 minutes long and we’ll talk about what’s going on with the Expo, offer up machinima-related news and chat with a special guest.
Here are the links and outline of today’s show:
ExpoRadio Show #1 Outline
I. Intro music (“Music inspired by Asimov” by Lee Rosevere at Free Music Archive. Use track #9 The Last Question))
-use about 1 minute of this music
-describe how we will feature new CC music each month
II. Welcome + Introduction (Kate and Ricky)
-Kate and Ricky chat (what have we been doing since Expo in November)
-personal projects brief
-note links for show on Expo blog (note new colors and design)
-Expo planning to be around all year with radio show on the first
Sunday of each month. Contact us if you’d like to be on the show.
-Thanks to Ken and TMOA radio
VII. Music out (do a minute or so of another piece from the collection). Use track #6 The Dead Past
We had a great Machinima Expo this year. The quality of films was very high. Our effort to expand the managing of the Expo and share more responsibility was a great success. We have a strong core of volunteers for next year and very clear ideas on how we can improve.
Remember the Expo is about YOU: the machinima filmmaker. We’ve always wanted the Expo to bring the community of filmmakers together to share our work and learn from each other.
Expo Rewind
The Expo Rewind is a Vimeo channel we’ve created for you to see all of the recordings we’ve made of past Expo events. This year we didn’t do a good job of archiving (promise we’ll get everything next year), but we did record several excellent programs from Pooky Amsterdam’s “Legendary Sessions” on Sunday, November 20th, plus Tikaf’s Second Life class on Nov 18th and Henry Lowood’s Keynote Speech on Nov 19th.
We may be adding more depending upon how good the footage is that’s been sent to me. I’ll add it as it comes in. If you’ve recorded any of the programming, please let me know.
Statistics
The Expo in 2011 had fewer people attending than last year (about 25% less overall), which is odd since we put much more effort into promoting the event than last year. Still, we had well over 1,000 people come to the machinima-expo site and around 150-200 came to the UCSville Expo Hub. That’s still quite a strong attendance record. We hope to build on it for next year.
International attendance was still quite high. The US and the UK had the largest amount of people visiting, but Estonia and other countries had a surprising amount of people attending.
Second Life attendance was excellent. We hope to change the way the Expo works next year by perhaps focusing a full day just on Second Life events. We tested this out with some programming on Friday, Nov 18th (Tikaf Viper’s SL machinima class) and it worked very well.
The Future, or MachinExpo 2012
We’ve learned a great deal from this year’s Expo. Not sure if the time is right for us to go non-profit as the amount of effort, money and paperwork are huge, but we certainly are entertaining the notion. We’ll be losing our UCSville Hub this coming year and will look to replace it with our own SL home. We’ll be joining up with the New Media Film Festival in April of 2012. All 11 jury films are entered into their new machinima category.
Good chance that the jury films will show on a local San Francisco cable network this spring, thanks to the efforts of Anima Technica.
We plan on keeping the Expo a year-round presence. And starting in January we have some interesting programming coming your way. Too soon to announce anything, but stay tuned to this blog and our facebook page.
With that, I’d like to thank all of our volunteers, our filmmakers and sponsors. 4 years of successful Expo events is pretty damn good, IMO. I hope to continue for as long as there are people willing to help put it together.
Have a wonderful Holiday Season! And see you in January, 2012.
