New update

Unfortunately, a few days ago filming on my entry for the LG machinima contest came to a screeching halt. Not because my computer crashed or anything, but I suppose you could say that I hit a "creative roadblock."

So, instead of continue filming at my new abysmally slow pace, I have been working a little bit on the music for the film, which has not gone too badly.

The worst part about this slow-down is that it's forced me to realise that, if I make it at all, it will be an extremely tight squeeze for the October 3rd deadline. Especially because I am going on a vacation/field trip for almost a week in the middle of September. I feel like total crap about this.... It seems like I always miss deadlines.

A warning about a false website

The other day it came to my attention that a website was using my machinima tutorial as bait for unsuspecting passerby in order to infect their computer with malware/spyware. The website in question (the fourth link from the top) claims to have a "download" of the 1st part of my tutorial:

Do not go to this website. The reason that I know about this bad website is because I went to it myself out of curiosity. Fortunately I use sandboxing to protect my computer, instead of some crack-pot anti-virus crapware. Thus, I simply deleted my sandbox and that was that; absolutely no infection. I urge you to stay away from this site. You only had to visit the page for the malware to start attacking you-I don't even know what would happen if you tried to "download" whatever it was that they were claiming was my machinima tutorial.

A hard-core synopsis of my work today

Made more progress today. I did some shots that required extremely precise timing. One shot took 12 takes, two others took 6 takes. I also made 2 new effects and I'm working on integrating them with some others that I made previously. This amounts to a total of 35 videos recorded.

That was your hard-core synopsis. (because I don't feel like writing much)

Update on the new video

Well I managed to film a few shots today, not as many as I was planning, but overall I am pleased with the progress I have been making lately. Here is a screen shot from part of my filming:

Don't worry, the volcano is only a very small part (this isn't a rip-off of "ERUPTION!" hehe), not really significant at all. In fact, that is why I chose to show it, because I didn't want to show a shot with any main characters or plot details in them.

I guess you could say that I am a good deal through filming it, seeing as how I have recorded approximately 100 videos so far. That doesn't mean that I have finished 100 shots. A lot of the shots have many takes, and some videos got recorded because I used Ctrl+Shift+F11 to slow things down to get timing right.

Anyway, I hope this update is exciting to someone.

New film, new format

I have been working on a new machinima for LordG1gabyt3's machinima contest. I won't say anything about the plot or the set, because I don't want to give it away, but I can give you some interesting information about the format of the film:

I wanted it to be filmed in 1280x720, which my monitor is capable of, however the normal version of RCT3 is not capable of displaying in 16:9. Strangely (and much to my chagrin), even if I forced RCT3 to display in 1280x720, the field of view remained in 4:3. To fix this, I am using a rather dirty method to get wide screen, but I don't think you will be able to tell the difference once I get it onto YouTube. The process is officially called "Vertical Minus" or "Vert-" for short. Instead of setting my screen resolution to 1280x720, I set it to 1280x1024. Then once in the game, I film as usual, with one exception: I have configured the Xfire FPS counter and Xfire clock to block out the top and bottom of the screen, as if you are watching a 16:9 movie on a 4:3 screen:


This makes it so that the middle portion of the screen--which has the dimensions of 1280x720--is proportioned regularly. This does not fix the fact that the video being recorded is still 4:3 1280x1024, but once I get into a video editing program it is easy to cut the top and bottom off.

Usually I would shake my head in disgust at this method, because it simply decreases the amount of the surroundings that you can see, but the more I thought through it the more I have realised that it doesn't matter. As long as I have the Xfire bars letter boxing my screen, I can setup my shots so that they will look correct once I crop the top and bottom off. The end result is a video that is properly proportioned and has the resolution that I want! Pretty cool I think. At first I thought that I would have to buy an expansion pack to RCT3 in order to get wide screen resolutions, but this workaround is acceptable for now.

(Please remember that you do not have to have Xfire in order for this to work. The black bars in the screenshot do not actually make the video widescreen, they are simply a visual aid.)