Post Exhibition... post?

The time has finally come two days ago, the evening of the exhibition!
I was actually really excited and couldn't wait to show people my movie and introduce them to the wonders of machinima!
All in all I got around 40 maybe 50 people which is a fantastic number and it exceeded the amount that I thought I would get!
And I have to say that I got fantastic feedback as well! The younger students were interested in machinima and in the software, the creation of such a movie, and creating a movie with games. The parents and teachers were impressed by the story and by this whole new "style" that they haven't heard about beforehand!
To be quite honest, I would gladly do the exhibition again, but on a friday.... Because yes, the day afterwards you get really tired!
I also had some problems... lovely! At first my monitor wasn't working and I had to go to our IT department to get a second monitor, which also didn't work, so I figured it must have been the cable, I got a VGA cable, but then my initial monitor started to work again. So that was lovely!
And also at one point I was showing some man how Machinima Studio works when my computer froze. I managed to interest him in conversation while fixing the computer though so that wasn't as bad as it could have been, it didn't require a computer restart!
I got some new subscribers the next day so some people were obviously interested in more! And that was also one of the main responses "You should make more" or "Make more based on this story, like a series about the Storytellers." And I was very happy to hear that!
People also asked whether I saw this as a job opportunity, but after my "experience" with Sony Vegas I wasn't very keen on it... Maybe once my hate for it goes away, we shall see!
And now personal project is almost done! Some fantastic products were presented, but I just really can't wait for it to end! It's been a long bumpy ride, with it's ups and downs!

Write Up

The rough draft of my write up, doesn't include a table of contents, annotations or pictures:

Personal Project Write Up

The Last Storyteller – A World of Warcraft Machinima

By: Jacek Mackiewicz

Supervised by: Alex Rawson

International School Basel 2011-2012

Word Count: 3,460











Table of Contents

Introduction

My goal for this project was to create a short animated movie, using the new technique known as “machinima”. Although this was the broad goal, my strict purpose was to create a movie which could be enjoyed by everyone. Since machinima is a new way of movie making, it isn’t very popular amongst “non-gamers”. People that don’t play video games, usually aren’t interested in everything that surrounds them, and so don’t know about machinima. I wanted to change this with my project, I wanted to show my teachers, and the parents of my friends, what video games can be used for, how art can be created with them. I wanted to show how it shouldn’t matter whether a movie is animated from scratch, made with real actors, or uses a certain game’s assets, what really matters is the art of creating the movie, the story that it tells and the way it influences it’s audience. And that was my ultimate goal, to get the audience, no matter what age or gender, to think. Whether it’s about the story that I have written, the times we live in which allow everyone to create a movie using simple programs, or maybe creating a story on their own, my goal was to provoke something in all my viewers.
            There are actually many reasons for me having chosen this project. Many inspirations worked together, but I think there are two main ones which really stand out. The first inspiration is my utter love for games. Any game, whether by a huge studio or a small two man team developer, I simply love games, and I’ve always enjoyed drawing characters from them, writing characters’ back stories, etc. As long as I got to be creative with something already given to me. As you can tell, this is what machinima is all about. When you are given tools, what will you do with them? What kind of story will you create? My second inspiration is the amount of machinima I have myself watched. There are thousands of them on YouTube. And I will never forget when I first saw “Tales of the Past III” a whole 88 minute machinimated world of warcraft movie.  In this case, the movie told a story about the game, but it was an incredible movie. And it truly showed off what can be done with machinima. Ever since I watched that movie, I always wanted to try creating a machinima myself. Martin Falch who was the director of that movie, was a huge inspiration as his other, shorter machinima were always very entertaining, they had great story which really left you squeezed in your chair thinking. I think he was my biggest inspiration along with Oxhorn who creates short, 5 minute comedy machinimas that me and my sister always watched and laughed. And I wanted to try my hand at something like that.

            The primary specifications for this “dream” of mine were to create an 8 minute comedy/spoof movie, machinimated using World of Wacraft. I had a book of funny quotes I could use, characters I could mimic from other movies, etc. This idea of mine was quickly dropped when I realized that making my movie a spoof would limit the audience a lot. Most adults wouldn’t get the references, and some teenagers probably wouldn’t either. 8 minutes was also a stretch as I found out just how much time it takes to create a machinima. I changed my specifications into making an animated, voice acted machinima about the art of storytelling itself. I wanted to make a story about telling stories. This was influenced by my thoughts and conversations with friends, how I noticed that stories are getting rarer, people prefer television and the internet to a good story.

This ties in well with my area of interaction, Human Ingenuity. My product has pretty much everything to do with human ingenuity. Not because it’s something that I created, the reason is far more complex.
I wrote the story for the machinima, and although you don’t see much of it in the actual video (due to montage, cutting out bits, making sure it’s not too long) I tried to create a whole world. There was a story with multiple characters, plots, etc. that is one side of human ingenuity, creating something. Such as creating a story for a movie that I will be making as well. But it’s also exploring a new art form, creating using new technologies which were unheard of 10 years ago. Machinima has been around for 20 years or so, but it only really became popular recently, in the last 5 years with the creation of it’s YouTube channel. It was human ingenuity that allowed machinima to exist in the first place, when gamers recorded themselves playing with a camera and then added voice over to it. Programs kept being developed allowing directors filming within the game as if it was an animation studio. With the rise of new technologies, new software, it’s easier for people to make their own movies, anyone can become a writer or a director, which really spreads up peoples wings, allows them access to a brand new art form which is easily approachable from a making and viewing perspective. Not only that, but human ingenuity takes over the whole process. From writing the story, to creating the script, to creating the characters (their clothing, their hair, their model, etc.) choosing the environments, lighting, filming and then finally voice acting it, everything requires imagination and ingenuity.

            My time plan (which didn’t work out in the end at all) was to create and finish the storyboard a week or two after the summer holidays, be ready with all my materials by the 5^th of September, finish the machinima by the 1^st of December and have the rest of time to write the report. Due to a lot of technical issues and problems the machinima was done 11^th of January in 2012. I will discuss those problems later, but I have to say that sometime in December I simply abandoned the idea of a time plan. First of all, knowing myself I know that I work better under stress. If I was to look at a calendar and see that the final date for personal project is the 19^th of January, I would probably write the report on the 17^th or so.. When I was under stress with the machinima production, with my family’s support, I managed to do quite a good job at it, better than I expected. The reason it turned out better than expected, is because I used different software than I originally had in mind.
            At first I was meant to create this machinima the way most machinimators do it, using Sony Vegas Pro (which is a $700 program) I found that way to be very irritating, annoying and unprofessional however, and I swapped to a third party software “Machinima Studio” with it I created a far more professional looking piece and I was actually quite pleased with the end result (unlike with Vegas) the main reason for this however was money. I wasn’t going to spend 700 dollars on a program that would create a horrible, choppy machinima, while being extremely difficult to use. And so I came across Machinima Studio.
            This was important, as the name suggests that the developer of this program created it entirely to make amazing machinima. In fact reading over the features list on the website seems like a dream come true. The program is amazingly simple yet intuitive and it lets you do everything you could need in producing an amazing machinima. And this is very important. If someone was to introduce machinima to a broader audience, he would need the proper tools for it, they would want the machinima to look and feel good, feel immersive so to say. To really give the viewer a feeling of watching a world, not just a few choppy scenes recreated in a software program, but an actual world with it’s own characters, story, etc.

Description of the process

The whole process started with the idea, a comedy machinima. After having drawn 9 pages of storyboard and then leaving on holidays, I quickly dropped the idea of having an 8 minute long movie. This had to do with my research. I interviewed TauriMovies who is a famous World of Warcraft machinimator, and once he told me the amount of time it takes to create a machinima and what goes into the process, I decided that a short, story driven movie would be much better for creation. I watched many online tutorials on using Sony Vegas together with WoW Model Viewer (a third party program for putting together Warcraft’s models) I  bought a magazine which had a tutorial on creation and I watched lots and lots of machinima as an inspiration. When I had all this data and this knowledge, I started creating my machinima.

At first I spent about a week creating around 20 characters that I could use within the movie. This process was tedious, as World of Warcraft has probably around a billion various looking items by now, so imagine all the possible combinations that you could have, and you had to make sure the character looks good! Also naming items “The Last Despair” may be cool in game, but when you’re creating a character, and you want a blue shirt you have no clue what “The Last Despair” will be. Once I had all my characters created I downloaded Sony Vegas and got to work. Now to sum it up shortly, it was the most boring and unsuccessful action of my life. Since you had no direct control over the characters, you had to film them within Model Viewer the way you wanted them in the final machinima, this process was absolutely hair-tearingly awful. It was hard to get the animations right, and then place the character where you wanted. Regardless, I went on with the process, being fully aware that my backgrounds didn’t want to work for some reason. Then all of a sudden the Vegas trial ran out (it never reminds you or tells you the days left. A horrible move on Sony’s side.) I was either forced to buy the program or abandon all work. In short, I bought a computer that my friend was selling since it was twice as cheap as the program. I then downloaded another trial and continued work. The machinima was about 60% done when I left for Christmas, although it looked choppy and rather awful. When I came back to continue work, I found all my files gone. Deleted or disappeared, it didn’t matter how or why. All my work was gone. And I was really not going to put up with the Vegas way of editing. After hours of searching I found a great indie program called “Machinima Studio” which is basically a massive sandbox, able to load every single model from many games, put them in a scene and allow you to control everything to do with it. From the animations, to lighting, to camera movement, etc. This program was fantastic, the answer of my prayers. I finished the whole 2 minute machinima within 20 hours of work on it (although there were other problems..) when I finished work with Machinima Studio I had 10 scenes completed which I put together using iMovie (windows movie maker on a mac basically.)
            There were a lot of other ways I could have done this machinima, but each created a lot of problems and limitations. World of Warcraft actually has a built in “record a machinima” function, but that only allows you to record your gameplay, limiting your creativity a lot. There’s an extended version of that program, also developed by an indie developer which allows you to control various factors within the game. But as I said, even though you have more options, you have no freedom. You are limited to what the game world offers you. There is the Sony Vegas method, which I described above and which is the most famous, well known method. But I’m never touching that program again.

I think that the technique I ended up using is really the most profitable to everyone. I managed to create a rather good looking machinima (brilliant compared to what I had in Vegas.) I found the process enjoyable and fun, plus I spread the word about a very small and very unknown program. It’s a win situation for everyone. Since Machinima Studio really does deserve more attention than it has, I plan to maybe create some tutorials for people that want to get into machinima, that way they can forget about mistakes that I’ve made.

Analysis

To be honest without the original inspiration from the huge amounts of machinima I’ve watched, I wouldn’t be writing this report right now. Inspiration really is such a power tool of creation. And it all begins with the things you love. I have been playing World of Warcraft for 2 years or so now, and I really do enjoy it. I like the universe, and I love the fact that people created movies using it. I thought that one day I could do that too. And along came personal project, and immediately I knew that my product would be a machinima. After having done some research I found out that it is quite simple, and anyone could do it, all it required was time. And although at first I wanted to do a spoof type of movie, a short comedy, my sister quickly said that the idea was stupid and no one would find it funny. Since this came from an eleven year old I decided she was right and changed the machinima into a more serious and story driven movie. Which was my best decision in this whole project. The second best decision was going for Machinima Studio.

The most important part of any project, alongside the initial idea is the actual execution of it. And always when creating something there are choices the creator faces, decisions to be made. I also had a bunch of choices, which altered my final product. It doesn’t simply come down to whether to use software a or b for creating the machinima. Like every movie there are a lot of other choices. How much lighting do I use in a particular scene? Do I leave this scene in or do I cut it out? Is this character really necessary to have within a given scene? How much of a warcraft feeling do I give in this scene? I remember a very small detail upon which I was thinking, do I call the town that the action happens in it’s Warcraft name or do I make up a name for it?
            I think that in the end I did enough cutting for the movie to be short and to the point, while leaving space for the viewer to imagine what happens next. To be quite honest, I’m very pleased with the result; I was expecting my machinima to look worse upon completion. In the end I quite obviously didn’t reach my original specifications, but I definitely reached everything I wanted to reach with this machinima. The feedback was great, both from my friends that know everything about machinima, to teachers and parents that never seen it before. I think that introducing a new art form can produce various results. I had the luck of having everyone enjoy my machinima so far. And I think this is mostly due to those decisions while “filming” the camera angles, the lighting, etc. seemed as if it was in a real movie, giving the audience something they are familiar with. And that’s the effect I wanted to achieve, introduce something new while having a familiarity with it. So that the audience will simply see it as an animated, voice acted movie.

Conclusion

            Now that the project is done, I can clearly say that I’m never working with Sony Vegas again. The whole process was very painful and produced god awful results. Not only that but the amounts of problems I had with it were simply immense. I spent more time fixing problems then actually working. I always found a soluteion for each problem in the end, until all my files got deleted. At first I was furious, but then I was actually quite happy it happened, thanks to that I produced a movie of better quality which was also really enjoyable to film and produce. At first I was worried after having submitted my movie to YouTube because I know of the hate and prejudice people have towards World of Warcraft, it’s the laughing stock of the internet. I was expecting many dislikes and crude comments but to my positive surprise everyone (so far) seems to love it! And so that resolved the biggest problem that I truly had with the machinima. Once I’ve created it, once the 6 months of problems were over and the movie was safely saved and finished, I was simply worried about the feedback, but thankfully that problem has saved itself!

I used Human Ingenuity in as many ways possible. At every stage of the production I was thinking of the impact that human ingenuity has on my project. Without it, I really wouldn’t have done anything. There would not have been on original story with original characters, nor would there have been a program to put it all together in. Not to forget that without human ingenuity, machinima would never exist! It’s very interesting to observe all these things evolve and how many ways there are of doing something. I think that is the biggest strength of machinima making, the freedom you have. The freedom starts with the story that you create, it goes onto the various characters you use from various games, continues with the different software that you want to use, with new ones being developed all the time. I personally had so much freedom whilst creating, that it was often hard for me to decide what to do next. And while this is a strength, it’s also the biggest weakness.
            Especially while using Sony Vegas. Since you don’t actually control your models within S.V. you have to have everything recorded the way you want it in the end, which I found an absolutely horrible method. Maybe it’s just me as there’s thousands of machinima made using this method, but for me it’s simply awful and not user friendly in any shape or form. This is good though as it adds up to the experience and knowledge I have if I decide to make a machinima in the future.
            Speaking of which, if I was to do this project again I would have done a couple things differently. I would have first of all written a good, believable story with one or two key characters that would be easy to put into film. Then I wouldn’t have wasted time on trying to think of silly references and so on, but I could get straight on with filming, which this time would be done in a program which actually works for me, and I wouldn’t need to waste a lot of time trying to get everything to work. I would also have more time to test voice acting, maybe hire someone from a voice acting forum or have a friend do it, simply improve the quality of sound. The sound effects in my final video turned out very choppy for some reason, and I wish I would have known that this is what they would have sounded like before I uploaded and saved the video.
            Based on this experience I might make another machinima or two if the YouTube audience asks for it enough. I’m thinking of maybe doing a tutorial on Machinima Studio as there aren’t many out there. Also, one thing that I now know is that I no longer consider this a career option. Before I started I thought it would be a dream come true if I worked for machinima (the YouTube channel) thankfully I tried it out first, and it’s definitely not something I would want to do on a daily basis. Once every few months, maybe, but definitely not a career choice.

All in all, I’m very pleased with how my product turned out to be and the knowledge I gained on the way. I just wish I didn’t have to put up with so many mistakes in the process, but errors happen and you need to figure out a way to get rid of them, just like I did in the end.

Bibliography

Apple. GarageBand. Computer software. GarageBand '11. Vers. 6.0.4. Apple Inc. Web. 11 Jan. 2012. <http://www.apple.com/de/ilife/garageband/>.

Apple Inc. IMovie. Computer software. IMovie '11. Vers. 9.0.4. Apple Inc. Web. 12 Jan. 2012. <http://www.apple.com/de/ilife/imovie/>.

Blizzard Entertainment. World of Warcraft - Cataclysm. Vers. 4.3.0.15050. Blizzard Entertainment, 2010. Computer software.

Chaurasiya, Rakesh, and Salim Merchant, perfs. "Dor Flute Theme." By Mir Ali Husain. Rec. 2006. MP3.

Lehr, Michaela, Linda Schult, and Nadine Wangler. "Vorhang Auf!" PC GAMES MMORE 01 Aug. 2010: 70-79. Print.

Machinima Studio: Basic Introduction. Dir. Wowexplored MachinimaDev. YouTube. Google, 21 Mar. 2011. Web. 9 Jan. 2012. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Of4eN-GQq5M>.

Machinima Studio: Capturing / Exporting. Dir. Wowexplored MachinimaDev. YouTube. Google, 1 Apr. 2011. Web. 9 Jan. 2012. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUtnFwbB044>.

Machinima Studio: Dynamic Scene Objects. Dir. Wowexplored MachinimaDev. YouTube. Google, 1 Apr. 2011. Web. 9 Jan. 2012. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AGiCGlyeEEw>.

Machinima Studio: Lighting. Dir. Wowexplored MachinimaDev. YouTube. Google, 21 Mar. 2011. Web. 9 Jan. 2012. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sHN1yutMZc0>.

Machinima Studio: Scenes. Dir. Wowexplored MachinimaDev. YouTube. Google, 21 Mar. 2011. Web. 9 Jan. 2012. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wbk41JsKC4w>.

MachinimaDev. Machinima Studio. Computer software. MachinimaDev: Your Machinima Tools. Vers. 1.0.7.297. 3 Dec. 2011. Web. 9 Jan. 2012. <http://www.machinimadev.com/>.

Nightwish. "Nemo." Rec. 7 June 2004. Once. Tuomas Holopainen, Tero Kinnunen, 2004. MP3.

Oxhorn's Machinima Tutorials - YouTube. Dir. Oxhorn. YouTube. Google, 30 June 2008. Web. May 2011. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vb5_preNIoA>.

Sony. Sony Vegas Pro 11. Computer software. SONY Make.believe. Vers. Build 510. Sony, 2011. Web. Nov. 2011. <http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/vegaspro>.

SONY VEGAS : How to Cut/Delete Unwanted Footage. Dir. TechyTutorials. YouTube. Google, 10 Aug. 2009. Web. Dec. 2011. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLg7R76PEqE>.

Tales of the Past III. Dir. Martin Falch. Prod. Steen Falch. Perf. Nick Shaw, Mike Dunahee, Matt Greenburg,. WarcraftMovies, 2007. Online Movie.

TauriMovies. "Interview with TauriMovies." Online interview. 17 Aug. 2011.

Ufo_Z, and Darjk. WoW Model Viewer. Computer software. WoW Model Viewer. Vers. 0.7.9.3. 25 Dec. 2011. Web. <http://www.wowmodelviewer.org/>.

Wikipedia. "Machinima." Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation. Web. June 2011. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machinima>.

WoW Machinima Basics - Masking in Sony Vegas 8 Pro. Dir. SebaskaTheNoob. YouTube. Google, 27 Mar. 2009. Web. Nov. 2011. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XdSLDD7RWyA>.

WoW Map Viewer. Computer software. Vers. 0.5. Web. <http://wowmapview.sourceforge.net/>.

Bibliography

Revisiting all my history, looking through all my files and writing the bibliography (using EasyBib)
So far 20 entries... I'm sure there were more!

Write up writing time

Well been working at this for the past hour or so...
Introduction is done. (thank the lord!)
Now moving on to description of process... (this will be interesting *wink wink*)

My introduction has 1377 words... I think this is about the right length, I'll see as I continue. I usually write too much and go over the words limit, let's hope this won't happen here... editing this, as I imagine, could be a massive pain...

Ah well. At least the machinima is doing good :) Them views keep rising son!

Feedback

I decided to make this post the feedback post. I will update it everytime I get a new comment, anywhere :)
So let's go!

YouTube:
"Dude this is really god damn cool :D" - Backo3456


"DUDE AWESOME" - TheLucciman

"Story line= epic

Animation= epic

Voice acting= epic

Loved it! Its a shame you don't have the time to expand the story into a series. :(" - ElCabron889

"Great job! Loved it. :D

But it's ironic, because technology/entertainment let you create this video. ;)" - ColeTheComicGenius

"Great job man ˆˆ, loved it :) T" - TauriMovies 
(oh my god. TauriMovies. <3 This guy is like a machinima celebrity.... and the guy I interviewed for my research :))

DeviantART:

"Usually im not one for world of warcraft but that was good " - Sir-Johnny


Facebook:
"Dude, that's actually, amazing." - ANONYMOUS FRIEND! 


"I'm being honest here - even though it may not be perfect (and nothing is), it's one of most impressive pieces of work that I've seen recently " - cousin :')


"Good work !!!" - ANOTHER ANONYMOUS FRIEND


Blog (the important stuff! :))
"Jacek, 

Well done young padawan!! Excellent job! Nearing the end!" - Mr. Rawson

"

I don't know if the story itself was original or not but it was wonderful and you retold the story beautifully. The plot was all there, organized with background,conflict and resolution.
The technology you used made your production look professional - no feeling of an amateur having done it. I liked how you zoomed in and out bringing the scenery and characters to the foreground and then opening up the scene to include background buildings and other characters.
Although animated,your characters responded physically to the mood expressed in the narration. The fluidity of movement also surprised and impressed me. The movements of the characters were smooth, agile and without any jerking, even when there were other characters interacting in the scene.
Colors are brillant and clear both in the scenery and in the costumes of the characters.
Overall, a fantastic project Jacek!" - Ms. Wolf

As I said, FANTASTIC feedback!
Let's see what I get on warcraftmovies and machinima.com!

This and that about machinima

Machinima is a new and still developing art form.
In it's simplest description, it's a new way of moviemaking which can be accessed by anyone from home allowing them to create either an epic story, a music video, a documentary, a comedy movie, etc.
Machinima works in a very simple way, every single game out there has it's own characters, it's own animations, it's own sound effects and it's own environments. It's what makes it a game.
With machinima, the artist extracts those animations and those characters, and can set them up freely, animate them or work with them.
Say that you want to take the animation of someone walking from a game.
You would take that animation and place it in front of your chosen background, whether it's green screen (as in real movies) or an actual setting, either from the game or from the real world.
The artist can control everything else as well, where the character moves, when he moves, the lighting around the room, the camera movements and the sound effects.
What makes machinima so truly special is that although everything you see in the ending product is from a game, the actual movie doesn't need to have anything to do with gaming at all!
There are also lots of ways for creating machinima; within the game, with a model-viewing program or with a full "animation-studio-esque" program such as Machinima Studio.
That is the first assumption people make, which is unfortunate, as machinima doesn't need to have anything to do with games. Which is what I tried to show in my personal project.
For my personal project, I created my own story lined machinima to show to people how fantastic this new art form really is. How anyone could simply sit behind their computer and create a movie on his own without putting much money into it (whereas most movies costs thousands to produce)
Here is the link for my machinima, The Last Storyteller. A machinima created with models, environments and sounds from the game "World of Warcraft"
Enjoy!

The actual video

Here you go everyone!

Machinima...

God uploading to machinima is not as simple as I thought.. ah well, waiting for the video to upload to the dropbox server so I can send them a link and my description.
22 views so far on YouTube, WCM still awaiting confirmation (can take up to 24 hours) basically, I'm happy. :D

Uploaded :)

The machinima has been uploaded onto my YouTube and onto warcraftmovies (it's awaiting moderation on WCM... you know to check swearing, etc)
Here is the YouTube link of the final product:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-H-z0mRbX0

I'm working on submitting this to machinima right now!

Just wait...

Movie is finished but I chose the wrong format, instead of high quality 720p it was large and looked horrible and pixelated.... :)

Tears of Joy and tears of laughter.

Rejoice.
Celebrate.
Party hard.
For the machinima is done. And is in the process of uploading to my YouTube channel.
After 20 minutes or so, I will put it on a memory stick and upload it to warcraftmovies (the description, etc is all ready for it)
And then I will upload it to machinima
And then I will link warcraftmovies in this very blog.
I can not describe the feeling of happiness in my body right now.
Thank the bloody lord, that is over and done with.
Phew.
And tomorrow, report writing time!
yay..
But before that:
gaming. (FINALLY!)
sleep.

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, for it is over and done with.
:D

*drumroll*

The final movie is exporting so I can add music over the narration.... 2 minutes, then adding music and the machinima is.... DONE! :D
It turned out pretty good actually! I wish you could hear sound effects of people walking (which you cant) but other than that, I think it turned out quite nice!
That will be for others to decide though, till then one minute of waiting until the final version can be done!

Almost....

Dinner kind of did slow things down a tad.
The voice is done though and now all that is left are sound effects (Which im working on right now, it's kind of tricky though....!) And then some music. And I will be done. I will definitely do this today before I go to sleep which is fantastic news! Just bare with me here...

Finished scenes, what now?

Well, right now all the finished scenes are being converted from an .avi file into an .mp4 file.
Why? Well for one, iMovie can't play .avi files. (And I am NOT playing round with windows movie maker...)
Second, this allows the finished product to go... anywhere. iPods, iPads, PSP's, YouTube, normal movie players, onto a dvd.... you get the idea. More possibilities.
Last 3 scenes converting.
Now in iMovie I will cut off some bits which are too long, extend bits which are too long, add the Title and the ending credits of the movie, etc.
Then once the movie track looks fantastic and beautiful, my lovely pubescent voice will cover the talking. When that is done, I will add in sound effects (such as a small fire in the beginning, walking, river... etc) general sound effects.
If at the end I feel that the movie feels "flat" I will add some background music for a more emotional viewing sequence...
And then it will be done.
Within the next 3 hours or so the movie will be uploaded.
*excited face* *happy face* remembers writing the report... *sad face*

FINALLY! :D
The final scene is completed and is in the process of rendering. As soon as that is done, all the scenes will go on a memory stick, into my mac's iMovie for some serious video editing.
The audio track will be added and then sound effects. If I feel the need, a music track will be added too to enhance the effect.

I would like to thank monster energy drinks for giving me the energy to work on this ._. sheesh..
Although I have to say this method isn't half as boring as the first one ^^

Thats the first scene done today, one last scene is left to do and then I'm ready to put it all together!
I'm actually so happy right now. I have found peace within.

Rendering....Rendering....

This one scene is taking ages. There I go thinking I was done with it, and I started work on the next scene, but then I decided to fire it up and watch. It looked horrible although the preview made it look okay...
5th rendering now (They take ~5 minutes each on low quality, ~20 minutes on HD... Right now just doing standard to get it to work) and I hope this is the last rendering...
The preview is lagging due to the large (and I do mean large) scene here, thus the preview makes it look okay, although laggy, but it reality... yeah.
Anyway, This scene will be done soon, then the next 4-5 scenes and Im done. Maybe less maybe more..

Calling it a day.

4 scenes done and rendered in full HD as .avi files backed up on my computer and an external memory stick. :)

The scenes done are:

-Introduction: The Storyteller walking through a prison, heading towards his execution
-2 killings of other Storytellers - pretty self explanatory.. One gets shot by an assassin, the other killed by a soldier.
-Government talking - the scene where the government talks about killing the storytellers.

The voice acting is also done. What will happen tomorrow:
-I will finish the other scenes
-Once their all rendered in 1080p as avi files I will put them together in iMovie or windows movie maker
-There I can add voice acting on top of the machinima
-Once that is smooth, I can save the sound files from WoW as an .mp3 file and add those to the movie via iMovie or Windows Movie Maker.
-The video then will be ready for upload on the following:
-my youtube
-machinima.com and machinima's youtube
-warcraftmovies
-my blog

For now, good night it is!

That uploaded scene was in horrible quality, I changed it a bit after dinner and now rendering it in 1080P (the video will be available on youtube in 1080p) because yes, I'm not giving up. I'm going to get this done no matter how badly it kicks me into the ground!

The one scene that was saved

This is one that I saved right before I quit. It's showing the assassination of one of the female storytellers.

(no sound)

Depression

I don't even have the words anymore...
Why does something want me to fail so bad?
Turns out, that you can only save a scene once. So the first time you save. The second, third, and the next billion times you save, don't count.
And so, when my mum asked me to show her the FINISHED FOUR SCENES all I had was a slight beginning from each.
I am in absolutely fury and agony. Maybe I should just do a trailer. I only have today and tomorrow and redoing all these scenes.....
For now Ill go have a drink and cool off before I actually punch a hole through my computer screen and throw it out the window.

aaaaand

Aaaand now it's 3 scenes that are done, storming at this!

2 scenes

2 scenes are done, ready for sounds!
Onto the next one....

Talking part - done!

Garageband <3

That program makes it so easy to record your voice and then manipulate it until you've reached the desired effect....
Anyway, the audio (me talking) is done. The time is 1 min 20 sec
So that's give or take the length of the machinima, 1 minute and 20 seconds.
The opening sequence is done. The lighting, cameras, characters, etc, etc that is all done.
Now to editing the scene where storytellers get killed!

Amazement.

The program runs and works so smoothly, I love it!

If I leave it for too long though, it freezes and I have to restart it (not loosing any progress, thank god!)

I didn't make my own characters, in this program its a bit different and I don't like how you can't save them (re-making them for every scene? Nahh) so Im using NPCs from the game. The first scene is pretty much done (except the sound, my graphics card is messed up :( grrr) but that can be fixed at the end when all the scenes are done.

Back to work, however, like I said, this is so much simpler and faster and allows for MORE! :)

Downsides/Upsides

Downsides and upsides of having to do TLS again in Machinima Studio.

Downsides:

• I have to do it. Again.
• I need to re-create ALL the character models I'll be using.
• I only have 3-4 days

Upsides:

• This program is amazing and ultra fast
• It's basically one program connecting WoWmodelviewer, WoWmapviewer and Sony Vegas Pro 11 all in one
• IT WORKS! :D
• Its being currently updated, discussed, perfected, etc.
• Once I make a character within it, I never have to leave the program to do anything! I can simply add a background, add sounds, add animations, add effects, EVERYTHING. It blows my mind how fast and how GOOD these animations look!

Because, this is the first way:

• Create and save a character in WoW Model Viewer (can take up to an hour) 
• Load WoWmapviewer (if you can even get it to start) select which area and where you want to view it (if it even works in the first place) then record it with fraps. If you want the area to move in your movie, you have to move it while recording, timing it perfectly.
• Load up Sony Vegas and add the background movie
• Open your character again in WoW model viewer and choose which animation you want him to do. You have to get the angle and everything perfectly, because you can't change it later on. Once you have him running the animation you want, also record it with fraps.
• Add the character into Sony Vegas, play around to remove the green screen, open up a special program to zoom in, zoom out place him around the screen etc. (this is tricky!)
• When you have those two, and they look good, download a third program which will extract sound data files from sound.mpq in WoW's folder. You will then have a huge list of all of WoW's sounds and you can right click on any and save as an mp3.
• That mp3 can then be added into Sony Vegas and played/repeated on top of your animation and background.
• Remember that every new movement or correction that needs to be made, requires you to return to model viewer, load up the character, position him in front of a greenscreen and animate him precisely how you need him in the final scene.
• Once you have that, save the file and export the movie.

Now here's the same process within Machinima Studio:

• Load up Machinima Studio
• Create a character and put him in a new scene (right click, place in scene)
• The scene will usually be empty with your character.
• You can then load up any model for background you want in WoW. There's a list of all the models and places or you can search for them in the search box.
• Once you have a background, move it around with your camera, select your character again from the drop down list in the menu and place him where you want him.
• Click on (forgot the button... something along the lines of "animate") and you can choose any animation, you can choose more than one and he will do them one after the other, in the same place.
• You can of course move him in each, so he walks WHILE talking (something I haven't seen before in machinima ;))
• And then you can also right click and add a sound (All of WoW's sounds are there) (that's around 60,000 by the way...) or right click and add an effect (there's around 200 effect's....) or right click and add lighting, which you can move, control, etc, etc. Or right click and add a camera, a moving camera and a camera sequence (for example you set up a character to just dance in the center, and take 3 different cameras front, back, side and have them switch every couple seconds) or add more models, etc.
• Then when you're done, also simply click export scene and boom. It's done.
• Now this is just one scene, you will obviously need more than one for the final movie, these can simply be put together in any movie making program though (iMovie, windows movie maker as an example) Simply drag and drop the finished scenes into their place and export the movie. 
• Done.

You can see that the second method is so much faster and less time taking, it's a true blessing. I wish I ran across it before. The quality of the images is also insanely better. Really, lots, lots better. There is no greenscreen to deal with. It's pure, 100% the way Blizzard spent hours making each model. And animation. And it's just so simple and amazing to use.

If anyone is crazy enough to try dipping into machinima, I definitely recommend Machinima Studio.

Think about it, no $700 Sony Vegas. No buggy WoW model Viewer, no not-working WoW map viewer and no MPQ extractors to dig up the sound files. 

All that for $15!! It also has a lot of other functions, but I won't mention them as they don't have much to do with machinima, their more for proper film making, animating, or game creation.

With that in mind, I'm going to sleep (still recovering from illness) and tomorrow I will kick some machinima buttocks and get to work on it.

Decision

Since this new program is so easy to use and looks gorgeous (results) I'm making the original script.
Besides, risk-taking and overcoming problems.
(Not thinking of grades here)

Just please, no more issues.

Have to buy machinima studio for 15 euros. I can live with that.

My prayers have been answered!

I did not find the files, but I found this.
Well I had it on my pc a while, and since WoWmodelviewer was useless, kept crashing, wouldn't work, I tarted this up instead. Then I googled tutorials.
Wow.
Is all I'll say, this will save me loads of work.

http://www.machinimadev.com/

Amazing program, about to buy it, watching the last youtube tutorials and then off to work.
The video will be about Why not to pick machinima as your personal project.
OR something like that.

No, nothing.

Nothing there. Everything I've worked on is simply gone.
gone.


words are lacking to describe..

I'm already hard at work to make this. I won't stick to this script. This scrip will be a surprise, but Im so determined to make this god damn machinima work. Not just for school, to prove to myself I can do it.

But never again. Good god, never. Ever. Again.
I'm warning all my friends not to choose machinima.
Right, turning off all distractions, hardcore mode on, lets go.
I can do this.
I've got the power (8)

Why me? Why me? WHY!?

Words can't even begin to explain how I feel right now.
The machinima was 90% done. All that was required was a tad of polishing and my voice acting. I've been horribly sick lying in bed this whole week, and so took this week as my one and only deadline (monday-tuesday to be exact)
I sit down today, put it my memory stick where the file was backed up, and I get an error message that something is wrong with the files. I press the clean it up option and upon starting up, the file isn't there.
Simply isn't there.
Vegas can't open it, it says it's lacking the file, please put the driver in the E:// station.
My laptop where I also backed up the file, doesn't have it. (HOW? HOW DID THAT HAPPEN?) I have an older version from when I was working on it on my first computer, and I would LIKE to see how much data is on there, but the screen won't work! So much rage is inside of me right now, it's unbelievable.
I am so damn desperate and prepared to ace this project though, I'll kick all those problems in their robotic bottoms.
As soon as I knew something was wrong, I had a back up plan that will get me good marks, the audience will like it and I can finish on time.

However I am so angry right now. I don't know who to blame. Myself? More copies were required?
Why? Just..... why?
*breaks down and cries*