Live Action
and ohhh the adventure continues…
The Glue:
I thought I’d take a little time to explain a little of my thought process regarding my recent push to Live action as well as what the future of MYP may or may not be. Working on any Live action film or short is something that really fell to the wayside for me over the past year or two (or three if memory serves me) and only just VERY recently has it come back to the forefront of my mind. Every since I stopped producing video’s for an old group that I worked with, I gradually moved away from live action, and into something that was more feasible for me to work with in my present situation. When it came down to it I had several reasons why I went almost exclusively Machinima. (Not all of them good I’m sure)
- I work…and work necessitates that priorities be allocated to it for the majority of my time.
- I still go to school…it’s grad school, but that still soaks up a good portion of my time during the year. (I’d like to finish eventually you know)
- The friends I have…have lives, and can’t always be used in what I work on if their schedules won’t allow for it. Seeing as…
- Live Action requires so much more work and time dedication, with scheduling, setting up equipment, and other unforeseen items that vary depending on the story you’re trying to tell. Machinima only requires that I have the hardware components of a Gamer and Editor. It’s like the producers wet dream, especially if it can be successful in telling similar stories.
None of these arguments haven’t been used in the past…and I’ll be the first to admit, Yes, it’s lazy. But I decided that it was the best thing for me at the time. In a way it still is, but I recently came to the conclusion that I shouldn’t just exclusively rely on it. That’s why I hit myself on the head when I became very unhappy with the direction my series was taking from earlier writing. I had been noticing for quite a while an interesting trend with machinima…even without being a part of it’s community for very long.
- It’s Limited: Yes, there are some game engines that are great for building and filming great machinima…but that’s just it…everyone and their dog is doing it now (I mean look at me).
- Everything is apparently a re-hash: There’s a lot of argument among the machinima diehards regarding what makes a machinima good…and that most everyone is simply copying someone else…even if the story is completely different…if one element is used it’s apparently full on theft and the directory should be bashed for it…though truthfully they’d probably bash even if it wasn’t as not everyone likes the same things (great thing about freewill and tastes).
- Filming generally game play and making commentary is becoming the primary source for most views as most viewers apparently don’t wish to appreciate the hard work put into many of the video’s made. The reasoning for this is logical as game play video’s will get more exposure because they are much easier to make, and there are a crap load of them.
- It’s becoming quite stale…in most respects unless you already have a tried and true formula that fans like…and even that becomes stale after a while.
Now, I know this is a large complaint…and I’ve always said that I make videos because I feel like it and for the viewers…but it does end up wearing on you after a while. I mean just pop on to any machinima message board and they’ll start complaining about the politics of the whole thing. That’s one thing I can’t really stand too much of…talking politics. It’s good every so often…but it gives me a headache and I’d rather put my time to other more constructive uses.
Because of all this, I decided to take a break from it all to rehash the script. When I did, I remembered how much fun it was to actually work on live action film. It was then that I started to write and brainstorm a new idea. I worked through it for quite a bit and finally started the planning and production. I found that it was fun…and that I missed it. that’s why I decided that…I will now be focusing more on live action shorts for now. I will also be experimenting with other types of visual effects and churning out a few new things as they become of interest to me. This will allow me to hone my skills further and to continue to tell the stories that I want to tell. Hopefully, I’ll have time for it all..but that’s what’s great about this…I want to and now can fully take my time to do things the right way and give the quality I want to give. As these live action shorts are not Machinima, they will not be seen via distribution on Machinima.com. Instead I’m independently releasing it in my own channel and various other outlets (VEOH) to give it more exposure. I still may do machinima…but it will likely be very rare..and will probably focus on finishing up the story I started with Tango Squad.
I do hope I’ve piqued your interest enough to give it a chance. But most of all I do hope that you enjoy. I’ll let you know when I have more, in the meantime check twitter on the right…it’ll let you know more till I have an actual official announcement to make.
