Flinging Thoughts

Well, I’ve been trying for days to write something about this past 24/7 A DIY Summit put on by the Institute for Multimedia Literacy School of Cinematic Arts (IML) — at least the part I played in it. I’m not much of a diarist or journalist, but I will say, I had a blast!! And here’s why…

• The people putting it on were warm, kind, enthusiastic and generous with their time and fortune.
• The academic atmosphere was a welcome change from my day-to-day routine. I’ve always had an affinity for the scent and surroundings of a structured learning environment.
• The DIY multimedia content I got to watch was varied, entertaining and thought provoking.
• And the food was great.

I had the distinct pleasure of leading the Hands-on Machinima Workshop on Sunday afternoon. It took place in a basement PC lab on USC’s main campus. Chris Wittenberg and his impressive tech crew made sure that Moviestorm was loaded up and ready to run on all of the machines.

There was a full house of workshop attendees, and they all came motivated and open for fun. I was amazed at how easily the folks took to the application. It almost taught itself. I thought my job would be to lead everyone in the methodical step-by-step process of creating a short scene, but I quickly became the guide to all of the hidden treasures in the software, hurriedly trying to keep up with everyone as they built sets and dressed and placed actors, like it was a game to be enjoyed and conquered.

We conversed a bit about what machinima is and even touched on Second Life as a platform for animated movies. Everyone seemed to take away a good foundational knowledge of Moviestorm; at least I hope they did. And I got to meet some talented and interesting people.

I want to thank Paul Marino for asking me to take his place in the workshop. He had scheduling conflicts for that Sunday, and I wasn’t expecting to see him at the summit. To my great fortune, we did get to meet and hang out at the reception Saturday night. So how cool was that? Very!

I also got to meet The Kid from Stage6 as well — another unexpected pleasure. He demoed a DivX device that hooks your TV to your computer network and plays the media it finds on the network shared hard drives.

A huge thank you to IML’s Mariko Oda, Virginia Kuhn, Mimi Ito and the many summit organizers I got to meet. They took care of everything for this out-of-towner and made his experience a joyous treat.

Here’s to next year!