Saving Grace Released and TMU features Sci Fi Productions

The long-anticipated production Saving Grace by Sisch has been released. She shares:

"Saving Grace is my first big Moviestorm project. From the start the idea of mixing footage from different sources appealed to me, and as I wanted some spectacular space views, I contacted Egosoft and was kindly allowed to use material shot in “X³ Terran Conflict” for a non-commercial project.

I also wanted to implement “The Movies” – TM is where my machinima roots are, and though I doubt I will ever go back to filming a whole movie in it, I still think it has features that look great and combine nicely with Moviestorm.



The idea for the story of “Saving Grace” was born while thinking about distance – I wanted to submit a film for Del’s Distance Competition, and this is what I came up with!



Special thanks go to Norrie, who as always listened to my ramblings while working on the story, inspired me when I was stuck, and finally proof-read it.

Another thank-you goes to my fantastic voice actors – both AnotherNewDawn and Goofparade brought their roles wonderfully to life – I’m a big fan of both their work, and always very proud and happy to have them star in my films!



Killian, who listened to my rants about Magix and offered valuable tips about render quality, and how to improve workflow (because working with such a lot of footage – nearly 1GB! put quite a strain on both my computer and Magix) has my special thanks, too, as has Overman, who, in his critique for Dark Obsession, gave me wonderful tips on how to improve sound.

Last but not least – thank you, Ken, for TMUnderground, the online home of us all, and the place to find a large group of like-minded people!

I hope you’ll enjoy the movie – one of my initial goals was to make a movie of under 15 min, but alas, that was not to be – apparently my stories always take longer to tell…"


In honor of this sci-fi release, the movies highlighted on TMU's homepage are all sci-fi productions:

The Truth of Mars: Speck in the Eye of God by bongoman
Conquest Opening by Tinman
Star Trek: A Homo Sapien in Uranus by animatechnica
Odyssey Season One Promotional Reel by Killian
Capitol Origin by Alex Bradley
Enigma II Ep 7: Coup De Tate by Uber
Galaxy at War: The Super Weapon by Chris62
Agent X3: Confrontation by simpsdog
EDS Destiny S2 EP1 by CaptainStrider
Stowaways S01E01: No Turning Back by VectisEthaniel
Instinct by Throwaxe
Foreigner by Tarison

To view any of these, click here.

12 movies of Christmas

Currently featured on TMUnderground are thebiz's picks for the must-see 12 movies of Christmas. Well, ok, there's 11 shown now and on December 25th the final 12th will be spotlighted.

Now showing:

The Clarks: Holiday Greeting by act3scene24
Mezmeros Grim X-Mas by JohnnyEx
What I love about Xmas by Overman
Pines and Needles by Yogurt King
A Fantasy Christmas Music Video by iiclone
Satanic Beatniks in Love by Atomic Robot
Barney's Holiday Extravaganza by grouchobeer
Ginger Lincoln and the Antics of Evil by Synnah
Holy Night by pigboss
It's a Bloody Wonderful Life by BudBundysMullet
Santa Claus is Coming...for you! by tmunderg

To view these movies watch here.

The Movies Review Archive

As of December 5th, 2008, Lionhead Studios closed down The Movies Online. The Movies Online (TMO) had run for just a little over three years, and had collected more than 145,000 movies from over 32,000 filmmakers. During that time, many working relationships were born between filmmakers, voice actors, musicians, and other artists. The many memories and substantial history that was TMO lives on in this archive of movie descriptions and reviews.

This archive was generated by a custom web crawler that ran almost continuously for the final three weeks prior to The Movies Online being shut down. While it was unable to gather the movies themselves, it did gather the majority of the movie descriptions, reviews, and thumbnail images.

THE MOVIES REVIEW ARCHIVE

Special Thanks to Norrie for hosting The Movies Review Archive on the TMO in Hi-Res web site! The website was generated by Riley Entertainment, using a custom Java program.

Thank you for saving this part of our history Riley - the comments we've received on our movies over the years are a treasure!

The 101 Remake Competition

Jase180 and AnotherNewDawn, hosts of the The Industry 101 Show, have organized a remake competition.

TMO Directors have posted their films here if they are willing to open one of their past movies to being re-envisioned by a different director. Directors who post their films will have the final say so in who gets a crack at re making it. Those that want to remake a posted film must have a vision and will need to sell their take on it to the creator. Movies are not limited to being remade with TheMovies.

This portion of the competition (submitting movies to be remade or pitching to be the director of the remake) closes December 22nd.

Further details about this competition can be found here. Good luck to all participants!

Spotlight on MarvellousGuppi

What led you to get involved with machinima?

Many years ago, I was playing the once great online game called Star Wars Galaxies. One day a guild mate told us all about this great little video that was made using SWG called Fett's Vette. I was aware that machinima existed but I hadn't really watched anything and I thought this was great. I thought to myself, hey I can do that, and so I got fraps and started making a few bits of nonsense (MarvellousGuppiMovies).

It was while I was planning on making a comedy tourist guide video to our player town that a couple of other guild members were talking about a new game coming out in which you could make your own animated movies. I was instantly interested, found out a bit more about it, then pre-ordered The Movies.


What aspects of movie-making do you enjoy the most?

I'd say editing, I enjoy putting a film together. I like writing to a certain degree, probably the same amount as I enjoy filming, but the best part is taking all that and turning it into something. That's one reason I did the videos for the Pengvin Crossing's Jack Chick comics. It was all recorded and I just had to edit the audio to the pictures, with a little bit of filming in the movies. It was fun.
( Angels, Fairytales, Flight 144 )

I'm looking forward to being able to move outside the constraints that uploading to TMO put us under.


What programs do you use to craft your work? Why did you choose these?

I use TheMovies, it's very familiar to me and I didn't really get along with Moviestorm. iclone looks interesting, and I might end up using that, but right now it's either get that or get stuff for the baby, and apparently the baby is a bigger priority (go figure).

I use audacity for sound, it's free and it does what I need it to do and again, I've become familiar with it.

I use both Blender and Photoshop for titles, overlays, anything of that sort. Blender is also free and is a very powerful piece of software, if you can get used to it. It can export animations into a series of image files for overlays or export to video as well, so it comes in very handy. My farewell to TMO movie (TMO Falls Down Stairs) was filmed completely in Blender.

I do have celtx, but I haven't actually used it to write a script in yet. Usually I just use notepad to convert my handwritten mess into something that makes sense.

I've only used outside editing on the Pengvin Crossing Chick Tracts. I used Magix, and, while not free, it was cheap. And for Flight 144 I got hold of a copy of Adobe After Effects. I will use those for any future projects.


How would you describe your movie style?

Not sure what my style is; I guess I'm a bare bones kinda director. Nothing too fancy, I'm certainly not this great cinematographer that agonizes over every camera angle.


Which of your movies best depicts that style? Why?

Pretty much all of them. But Short & Curly (part 1) was my first "big" movie, before the time of freecam and overlays. It was my first movie with voice overs, featuring a cast of my Star Wars Galaxies guild mates.




What are your proudest achievements in this field?

I think my favourite is Thong of the Dead 2 - Thongocalypse Now! I was happy with how it turned out, probably the happiest than with any other movie I've made. It was made for the Roger Thong competition and contains a lot of in-jokes which limits the audience a bit. I was also proud to be able to get Madangus and the VO legend Lizard to perform pig noises for the movie. I guess it was going back to how I started, making a movie for my friends.

My proudest achievement in modding has to be getting my first mod finished. I chose a hard one for my first. I wanted to replace the helicopter animations with a plane, but since it was replacing a helicopter it had to be capable of vertical take off and landing, so I chose the Harrier Jump Jet.

The information required to make an object 'flyable' was scattered all around The Movies Workshop site, and I spent quite a while trying to get it to fly. Finally it all came together and the first in game flying object was released.


You also do some terrific mod work. What can you tell us about that? What does modding involve when it comes to The Movies?

There's lots of different ways to mod the movies, from simple retextures, to new costumes, to custom built sets. However, unlike the other main machinima programs, The Movies wasn't built with modding in mind. It's been a long road to get to the level of modding we're at today. If it wasn't for the people at The Movies Workshop and now DCMF, picking apart the games code, I doubt anyone would still be using it.

It can be quite tough just getting a basic static prop into the game. First you have to overcome the first obstacle, Blender. You can use other programs to make your prop, but you still have to run it through blender to get it into the game.

Without going into the boring details, the way the import/export scripts are at the moment, there are a number of things that can cause your prop to fail at this stage. For the newcomer, this is where they have most problems.

Once that is done, there a few more files that need to be made before you can load up the game and see your new prop.

For anyone wanting to start modding, there are tutorials over at Directors Cut Modding Foundry, and you can ask questions on the forums there. Once you've done a mod or two it gets easier.

It can be a little hit and miss, but soon, DCMF will be releasing new import/export scripts for Blender which should make things easier, as well as add a few new tricks to the modding toolbox. I can't wait for that.

Since I can't voice act or compose music, I'm glad to be able to give something to the community in some way. It's always a pleasure to see a mod of mine in a movie.



Have you worked on projects with anyone else in the community?

If you don't count the custom modding, There have been a couple of projects. The biggest being Conquest : Beginnings.

Based in the universe created by K4ownzall and written by MUstachio26. It was interesting working on something I hadn't written. I enjoyed that challenge. It was also great working with K4 with all the modding and creating the look of Conquest. It was a shame that TMO crashed just a couple of days before the release date, and before TMU came along.

The other was the Ninjas Will Always Live Forever part 76 movie. Doc, king, monk, sg and I were in a skype conference and decided to make a ninja movie. There's a thread about it on the TMU forums here.


Do you have any projects on the horizon?

Well, I haven't heard anything from Mustachio about how Conquest part 2 is going, but I'm sure i'll be doing that at some point. I was going to enter the Remake Competition but at the moment I can't seem to think of any good ideas.

I'm sure i'll enter the Thong Competition next year since I do have to finish that trilogy. All I need is an idea.

So yeah, nothing set in stone, but that's how I work.


What advice would you give someone starting out with machinima?

Have fun with it.

Movies in the Metaverse

The first TMU Movie Night was held this past Saturday in Second Life. A few community members provided their thoughts regarding the event...

From Nahton:
On Friday December 5th, Lionhead closed The Movies online hosting site. On Saturday December 6th, in fine "Whatever doesn't kill me, only makes me stronger" fashion, the community spawned by The Movies game held their first TMU Movie Night. The event which was conceived, produced and hosted by thebiz with assistance from Norrie and Phil (Overman) Rice, took place at Overman's Theater in Second Life.

Those in attendance were treated to a number of teaser/trailers including Jase180's Jesus Christ Superstar, which appears to hold the potential to be a ground breaking machinima production, if not an enormous undertaking. Killian, who apparently doesn't sleep and admitted to not having a life, had two impressive trailers shown. One was his "Odyssey: Season One Promo Reel" and the other was his "Shadows of Albion" Teaser. Both look to be must see productions.

The featured short was Dulci's "I Will Not Speak of It" which was filmed with iClone and also included some "The Movies Game" content. I'll avoid categorizing the film in order to avoid spoilers but it is eerie in nature. Is it possible to build suspense in a 3 minute movie? Watch it and see.

Finally, the main feature was Biggstrek's "Underpants Away! -2- A Land Down Under(pants)" starring, of course, Underpants Man (Biggstrek). Checking in at just less than 20 minutes the film is another UPM laughfest that contains some incredible special effects. Biggstrek continually produces movies that push the technical capabilities of The Movies software beyond their intended limits. Not to be overlooked are his fine directing skills and there is a femme fatale entrance sequence that should be the envy of any Machinima director. Did I mention he also composes some of his own music? The voice actors were stellar (present company excluded - editor's note: I'd strongly disagree with that exclusion!) but my favorite performances were delivered by the 3 female leads; JetCityWoman (Mrs Biggsstrek), Sisch and Azuresama (who should be contacting the producers of the Wallace and Gromit films and auditioning for a part).

I am a confessed Second Life newbie having previously briefly attended Overman's MachinimaFest. I have to say I am pleasantly surprised at the capabilities of the software. I am fast becoming a fan of these virtual events and this one was a rousing success. There were admittedly a few glitches along the way but help was volunteered to those who needed it with Roger, notably, providing some valuable tips. Roger has also indicated he is constructing a TMU theater so more Movie Nights can be expected. Coordinated premieres for TMU Movie Nights could provide a suitable (and dare I say superior) replacement for the old TMO end of the month chart friendly releases.

From thebiz:
So TMU movie night is now a pleasant memory where we watched our animated movies in an animated world clothed in digital fashions while chatting of lag and bitstreams. It was something different for many and I hope it opened up the pathways to new creative ideas. Perhaps future creature feature drive in contests or tech demo how-to classes. As I've said elsewhere, I don't see myself being a hard core SL kinda guy but it certainly provides a blank slate aspect to promoting, showing, discussing and creating movies. And blank slates are the best kind of slates.

Special thanks to Overman and Norrie for all their help in executing the event. Thanks to Dulci, Biggstrek, Jase180 and Killian for their contributions.

Interview download available

The discussion with Mark Walker & James Martin on the TMOA Ken & Roger Show is now available here.

The interview covered topics from iclone3 to machinima to what makes an online community to training to....well, take a listen yourself!

It was a pleasure having both gentlemen visit with us.

Mark Walker and James Martin on TMOA Radio Show Today

Today (Sunday, December 7,2008) on the Ken & Roger show, which airs beginning at 2pm EST, Mark Walker of Coolclones and James Martin of iclone Certified Traning will be joining us for a discussion of iclone and machinima.

To listen, select the 32K or 64K stream on the TMOA Website. You can also join the chatroom discussion while listening to the show by selecting Offical TMOA Chat from that page.

The Movies Online Officially Closed

The Movies Online is no more. For an interesting read, check out the official Movies Online History according to Lionhead. This does not mean the community is vanishing or that people will stop making movies with the software - it just means that there is no longer a Lionhead website for movies to be uploaded to; the online portion connected with the game is gone.

For the next day or so, all the movies on the homepage of TMUnderground will be ones from "The Movies Rescue Project", which consisted of archiving The Movies Online movies onto TMU.

Please join us as we remember good times, good movies, and good friends from the past three years.

One Shared Vision - Childs Play Charity

One Shared Vision was formed to support the charity Child's Play.

Starting this week and continuing through at least January, one new video will be uploaded each Monday as a way of supporting and drawing notice to this charity. The videos will be posted at One Shared Vision.

About the charity: "Since 2003, over 100,000 gamers worldwide have banded together through Child’s Play, a community based charity grown and nurtured from the game culture and industry. Over 3.5 million dollars in donations of toys, games, books and cash for sick kids in children’s hospitals across North America and the world have been collected since our inception."

The first video was released this past Monday by Overman (Phil Rice). Enjoy Gift Horse:

Gift Horse from Overman on Vimeo.

Spotlight on Sparky

What led you to get involved with machinima?

I got involved totally by accident. I was in my local video game store back at the start of 2006 and spotted The Moves on the shelf. I had played a few tycoon games over the years and becoming a movie mogul tickled my fancy. The deal was sealed when I read on the back of the game box that it was possible to make your own movies and add voices to them! I was hooked straight away and made 12 or so 'amazing' movies with a buddy of mine. This was before I even know the forums / TMO really existed and I sure as hell hadn't come across the term 'Machinima' at this point. One thing led to another, I uploaded some movies, people commented on them, liked them and suggested I join the forums (in fact as I recall it was Dulci that suggested one of my early films for Jase180 to watch. Jase then told me about the community and my Machina Life was born)

What aspects of movie-making do you enjoy the most?

First and foremost I am a writer. I have always written screen plays, short books, stories etc so that is still my #1 passion. In terms of actual movies making, I enjoy the visual aspect of setting up each scene and shot. I'm a very visual person and try to shoot my films like I would shoot a picture with a still camera. Hopefully then, people will get to see a really interesting and eye pleasing final piece.

Over the last 6 months I have been experimenting with Outside editing techniques. One of the reasons I didn't make more films that I have is because of the arduous process in The Movies AMM (Advanced Movie Maker) and PP (Post Production) - and then to get the thing exported without glitches! Nightmare. Learning to Outside edit means I can make films more like a real life production company and gives great flexibility for effects etc. I enjoy learning new things, new techniques, new challenges/

What programs do you use to craft your work? Why did you choose these?

Currently all of my visual animations are done using The Movies, more for convenience and finance than anything else. I am very familiar with the program and know how far I can push it to create the scenes I desire. I am experimenting with Iclone and Moviestorm and will no doubt branch off and away from TM software gradually.

For sound I use a combination of Mixcraft for scores, loops, sound fx and other music. I use Audacity still for recording my voice overs as it gives a very high quality recording with some easy to use, powerful editing and cleaning features.

I use Celtex when I am writing scripts because the formatting is so easy and straight forward, plus you can save your script as a PDF file from within the program itself giving a professional looking script to send out to a cast.

I also use various combinations of Fireworks, Photoshop and Paint for other visuals such as posters, stills and other advertisements

How would you describe your movie style?

Hmm, not sure I have a particular noticeable style. It varies more depending on the subject and style of the film I am making. One Last Breath for example was a Noir movie and so had certain style elements attached to it. These elements wouldn't work as well in other movies.

I always try and inject certain things into everything I produce; originality, quality, creativity and enjoy ability. I will always try and make sure each element is completed to the same standards as everything else. For example, there is no point in having great VO's if you make a hash of cutting the scenes. No point having cool special effects if the music sucks.

Which of your movies best depicts that style? Why?



The Hitman Strikes was a movie I made for A TMO competition. I chose this because it has a number of key elements as described above. A lot of detail was put into the sound design of this film, most of which you won't even notice when watching it, but every sound you hear was placed by hand, nothing stock. The music was carefully selected to compliment the action and the editing had to be clean and crisp to achieve the kind of stylish movie that I hope it is. This was also my first experience using MED to create some original sets.

What are your proudest achievements in this field?

My proudest achievement to date in movie making has to be One Last Breath, a film noir and at about 35 minutes long, its my longest work to date. This was a risky movie to really make my mark with because of the genre. Not everyone like black and white, 'talk' oriented films but it was very well received. Every major element of the production received praise from people across the board which tells me that I got it right. If everyone complimented the visuals but no one mentioned the sound or writing for example, then I would have to question if I had fallen short in those areas. This movies was help hugely by having a first rate cast, many of whom had never worked with me before, but all of whom have worked with me since. Says a lot…..

Have you worked on projects with anyone else in the community?

Yes, in lots of different ways. The most well known were Trewill7's violent comedy shorts which we worked quite closely together on. I have worked with a lot of people as a VA and have worked a lot in the background of various productions giving script/plot advice. I have never done a true collaboration though, not sure why - I guess I like my creative control too much!

Do you have any projects on the horizon?

Always. Next out of my studio will be God, We Play? - this is my HP Lovecraft inspired movie that will be out some time in the first half of 2009. it's a very strange movie as anyone who has read the full script will confirm - relying heavily on visuals which is something I don't usually do (normally let the dialogue lead the film). I also have The Man in The Cheap Suit coming out in the next few weeks. This is a short for Ravensfan's LNEYME contest. Also, I have recently announced that production has begun on First Impressions - this again wil lbe a rather strange movie and I am making a point of keeping people in the dark about the plot at this stage. There are 2 / 3 other ideas in the fire that may or may not come about - one will be a British Gangster movie taking influence from Guy Richie - again something I haven't really tried before.

What advice would you give someone starting out with machinima?

First of all, have fun with it. Don't try and run before you can walk. If you try and take on overly ambitious projects to compete with some of your favourite machinima movies, chances are you'll be out of your depth and get frustrated and disheartened. Get to know people - a great production involves many other people from musicians to VA's, modders to conceptual artists. Make contacts, make friends by getting involved in machinima communities and other peoples projects. Don't expect anyone to show interest in what you are doing if you don't show interest in anyone elses projects. Lastly, have fun with it!

You are also a voiceactor and musician. How do you balance all of that with movie-making?

Well, I try and combine it as much as possible. Use what you have at hand - if I need an original piece of music, or a cover of a well know song, I can record it myself. I try and let things balance themselves rather than trying to alter the flow. So If I have a lot of voice acting work on, I'll let it take me where it does and let the movie making take a back seat for a while. Again, I'm in it largely for the fun of it, so if I have some vo's to record, some music to write and some outstanding footage to shoot on a ,movie I'll chose the one I fancy doing the most. No point trying to force creativity.