3D World #122 - No machinima

Issue #122 finally arrived of 3D World magazine here in San Francisco.

This issue contains a disc that along with the standard 3D World disc contents has films from the 2009 Bitfilm Festival.

We were excited to get this issue since we were a part of Bitfilm 2009 and because of this little bit found on the Bitfilm official site:

"All selected films will be published on a free DVD on the cover of 3D World Magazine in September 2009. Each selected filmmaker will receive a free copy."

:) Fun! Machinima on a disc with 3D World magazine! But wait, no machinima on the disc. :(

The only categories are 3D Space, FX Mix and Politicool.


Oh well, I guess it was a bit much to ask for machinima to be advertised like this in a major magazine. And I don't think Bitfilm was being misleading or anything. I guess it just turns out that machinima did not make the cut yet for this level of distribution.

Still a cool disc and it is cool that we were all part of such a big festival! But in all honesty I only got it to see if the accepted or winning machinima films made the disc. ;p

2nd place in Bitfilm!

The results are officially in and Shelf Life took 2nd place in the Bitfilm Festival!

We would like to thank everybody who supported us and gave us this 2nd place win! We truly appreciate the time you devoted to helping us get the votes!

The 1st place win went to a World of Warcraft film called The Orchard by Dan Ross and 3rd place went to a Second Life machinima called Scripted by Krrish Spyker.

Congratulations to the winners! And thanks to all the films that were in the voting process for creating such great films for the festival!

If you feel like watching the winners and discussing the results that is great!

We will probably post our thoughts on the Bitfilm Festival in general in another post but for now we just want to say thanks again for all the support and thanks to Bitfilm for offering such a big event for machinima to be seen and honored!

Shelf Life Chapter Two

Since the release of chapter one we have been very busy and have not had the time required to really jump into chapter two. We think are starting to turn the corner though and are going to be able to ramp up our production time.

Just yesterday we had a brainstorming session that went really well and we are excited to get some of the new ideas into production.

We spent a lot of time promoting chapter one and entering it into festivals. The Bitfilm Festival voting period has just concluded and we are waiting for the results of that to come in. Good luck to all the films running!

Next up for festivals is the Cinemanila Festival in the Philippines http://www.cinemanila.org.ph/ and of course Machinima Expo http://machiniplex.net/expo/

We have really enjoyed getting involved in the machinima community and would again like to thank everybody for their support and feedback.

Hope to start seeing you all again soon on Steam! Keep gaming and keep watching machinima!

- James Spencer

Bitfilm Festival 2009 Voting

This is the last week for voting for the machinima segment of the Bitfilm Festival 2009.

There are a lot of great films included in the festival that have had a lot of hard work put into them by their makers. Please take the time to support these efforts by going to the Bitfilm site and voting.

http://www.bitfilm.com/festival/machinima.php

Of course we are here to promote Shelf Life since that is our machinima that is included in the festival. We worked really hard on Shelf Life for a long time and are very happy it is being included in Bitfilm. It would be an amazing payoff for our work to actually get recognized with a win at Bitfilm. If you think Shelf Life is worthy then please take the time to give us your five star vote.

The most important thing of course is just to vote though no matter who you vote for. These festivals need voter participation to be successful so if you enjoy machinima please support it by supporting the Bitfilm Festival voting process.

Thanks for watching!

DragonCon, Bitfilm, YouTube and Interview!

It has been just a month and a half since Shelf Life chapter one went live on our YouTube channel and the response has been amazing!

It went live on July 6, 2009 and now our YouTube channel has over 2,200 subscribers, over 11,000 channel views and Shelf Life has over 30,000 video views and overall our videos have over 88,000 views.

Relatively small numbers in the bloated world of superstar million-hits-per-day channels that exist out there but we have only been around for a hand full of weeks!

Plus, we are talking about machinima here. As awesome as it is the word still leaves a blank expression on most faces.

In addition to our channel interest Shelf Life has been accepted into the Bitfilm Film Festival and it will be screening at the massive geek extravaganza DragonCon!

DragonCon starts next week and Shelf Life will be showing on Friday the 4th at the Augusta Room in the Sheraton hotel at 7:00 pm. So if you are going to DragonCon please add that to your list of to-dos!

The Bitfilm contest is currently in the voting process so please go to the machinima section and vote for Shelf Life! :)

We also did an interview about Shelf Life and machinima in general that was really fun and interesting. The interview is not available yet and we feel we need to keep the source secret for now in case it does not air or the source has plans for the release that we do not want to spoil. But either way it was a fun afternoon talking about it.

Overall we have had an amazing run since Shelf Life went live and it has been a lot fun! We would really like to thank everybody who showed us their support!

Please stay in touch!

- James

Shelf Life Accepted in Bitfilm Festival

We just got word the other day that Shelf Life has been accepted into the Bitfilm festival!

We are very excited about this and hope to receive some of your votes when voting starts next month. I believe the voting starts August 20.

Shelf Life was a lot of hard work but it was also a lot of fun and we appreciate all the support we have gotten.

It would be amazing to walk away with a win in the machinima category for Shelf Life! But we are very happy being accepted along with all the other great machinima this year.

We will keep you posted on the festival and voting!