Flinging Thoughts

There are now 25 finalists in the running for the top prize at Filminute’s One-minute Film Festival. The viewers are voting on them all this month. I didn’t see any machinima among them; hadn’t heard of there being many, or any for that matter.

I think there are some really entertaining entries in the fest. After watching some of them I found a few which caught my eye:

“Matchmaker” is beautiful, albeit confusing.
“Fun Time” is interesting for its non-linear story line. There’s a beginning, middle and ending, just not precisely in that order.
“Graham” is pretty cool. That gritty style of animation instantly caught my eye. I could tell the writer probably came up with the story idea during a particularly trying workday; lots of intensity in that mood. The protagonist reminded me of Beavis from Beavis & Butthead fame, but only after his temper exploded.
“Dave Foley and Fans” had me laughing hard. But, I’ve been an ardent fan of Kids in the Hall from the very beginning. His disarming sense of humor shows through well in this little piece.
“Acrophobia” is lovely! I don’t know what he’s saying, but I don’t care and can get the gist of it anyway. The wind-blown effect at the end was a nice payoff.
“Celebrate” is creepy in a beautiful sort of way. Nice video FX.

I’m reserving my vote until I finish watching the whole list. I just wanted to put down these thoughts now while I’m tossing them around in my head.

It amazes me how much someone can get across in a minute. I’m always impressed by the people who overcome the adversity of possessing a native tongue that is not well used in the world. They seem to become very adept at creating stories able to transcend any spoken or written language.

I must admit that I had forgotten about the festival until tonight when I came up with my own idea for a one minute movie. I tracked down the site only to find that, as usual, another one of my ideas is a day(s) late and dollar short. I think I’ll develop it anyway. There’s always next year.

I finally got around to adding music functionality to the Fling Films web site. My original compositions used in some of my films can be listened to in their entirety. The equipment I have is old and some of the songs were recorded long ago, but there they are - warts and all.

I am currently in a real studio with real musicians working on three original songs (lyrics, vocals, the whole shebang) I plan to make animated videos for. There’s always time for one more project; can I get an amen brother?

If the mood strikes you, I would welcome your thoughts and comments on the instrumentals I have posted.

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As I watched the way Tom Jantol recently introduced one of his latest creations, it got me thinking about a frustration I’ve encountered when trying to explain machinima to interested laymen.

I have more than once been attending some sort of community function or chamber mixer and found myself blabbing on and on about this emerging form of mass story-telling which involves making movies with 3d game technology. For some unknown reason I invariably use the word hacker in the conversation (probably because if I instead used the word modder, I’d have even more explaining to do).

The word just flies from my mouth. I don’t know if it’s because old habits die hard or I’m from a different time, but the scenario goes something like this: I say, “These really smart people hack into the games and produce tools for people to make movies with…” etc., etc. I can’t tell you how many times I get the look. That look in the listeners’ faces that say, He hangs out with hackers; he associates with criminals. I usually have to give them a history lesson about a time when hacker wasn’t considered a four letter word. Most of the time I would be more successful trying to convince a young person that the word gay used to just mean happy.

It’s times like that when I feel old—old enough to remember when the techie community considered hackers to be tinkerers and teachers. Now the word is almost synonymous with burglar and thief. Tom quite deftly exploited that fact as a humorous shocker to tease the viewer into watching his movie. I got a kick out of it; which means I fell for the very thing I lament in this entry. He hooked me.

And that got me thinking. I guess I’ll have to find a new word to describe those folks who like taking things apart and putting them back together again. Maybe tinkerers will suffice.

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You know, I consider Veronica Cartwright to be one helluva shining example of a successful professional actor. I’ve never met her, so my opinion is based solely on her resume and the many hours of viewing pleasure she has given to me.

As anyone perusing her IMDB profile can see, from the age of around seven she has been almost constantly working in films and on TV — 113 roles as of this writing.

At age 10 she gave The Beav his first kiss; when she was 12 she rubbed elbows with Buz Murdock (George Maharis) on Route 66; and in that same year she was placed in the care of an android grandmother in Rod Sterling’s Twilight Zone. Veronica has worked for Hitchcock, roamed the frontier with Daniel Boone, been under the care of Dr. Kildare, terrorized in Invasion of the Body Snatchers, was saved by The Mod Squad, tenderly Touched by an Angel, prosecuted criminals on L.A. Law, and was the alien abduction plagued mother of the infamous Agent Spender on The X-Files!

That litany of work was just the tip of the iceberg! She has been nominated for an Emmy three times and won a Saturn award for Best Supporting Actress playing Lambert in the blockbuster flick Alien. The woman is a consummate professional, a character acting diva in her own right. Bravo, Ms. Veronica Cartwright!

It’s finally presentable. I stole time where I could to get ‘er done. Please let me know if you find any glitches. If you want to tell me that you hate it, like it, love it, don’t care, that’s fine too. But don’t take it personally if I’m willing to live with the design. At the rate I get my own sites done, it could be years before I revamp it.

Thanks for visiting!

Thank you for watching this animation! You’re invited to use this blog entry for any comments and/or reactions you may have. All opinions and criticisms are welcomed, just please refrain from using profanity or vulgar language.

Thank you for watching this animation! You’re invited to use this blog entry for any comments and/or reactions you may have. All opinions and criticisms are welcomed, just please refrain from using profanity or vulgar language.

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Thank you for watching this animation! You’re invited to use this blog entry for any comments and/or reactions you may have. All opinions and criticisms are welcomed, just please refrain from using profanity or vulgar language.