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overcast #030

posted by overman — Fri 30 May 2008 12:02 am

 
icon for podpress  overcast #030 [53:48m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (357)

Phil Rice (Overman) and his new cohost Ricky Grove take on the topic of Pro Machinima [EDIT: Part 1 - Game Company Employment] Who has gone pro in this way? What impact has it had on the community? And what can you do to put yourself on a path which might one day lead to a game developer’s doorstep?

Thank you for listening! As always, your feedback is welcome and appreciated.

This Week’s Hot List (URLs from the show’s content):

34 Comments »

  1. Comment by Elf — May 30, 2008 at 4:38 am

    Mmm… cohost! It’s about time! :)

  2. Comment by Hugh "Nomad" Hancock — May 30, 2008 at 6:24 am

    Just out of interest, why didn’t you include Strange Company on the list of professional Machinima companies? To the best of my knowledge, we’ve been making Machinima professionally longer that anyone else in the world.

    (I’ve not listened to the Overcast yet, so the info may be in there.)

    I believe that Dead on Que are also full-time on Machinima these days, although I could be wrong, and I think that Tom Jantol is making Machinima full-time as his day job too.

  3. Comment by Hugh "Nomad" Hancock — May 30, 2008 at 6:26 am

    Oh - Rooster Teeth are pro too, of course.

  4. Comment by Hugh "Nomad" Hancock — May 30, 2008 at 6:27 am

    And I’m fairly sure that Ezra Fergusson is not, in fact, employed by Blizzard.

  5. Comment by Kate — May 30, 2008 at 6:44 am

    It will be great to get a more complete list of pro-machinimators, as for some reason many still think this is purely an amateur activity. Are we also counting those who are paid on a freelance basis for individual pieces of work as pro..semi-pro? This would increase the size of the list considerably.

  6. Comment by Trace — May 30, 2008 at 7:35 am

    If we are counting paid freelance work as pro/semi pro then I would like to count myself, I’ve created machinima work for EA, ITV, and Millions of Us in the past for example. There are also several Pro machinima companies that have been around for a couple of years working in SL for well known brands, including one company who created machinima that was shown in Washington at the US Congress Hearing on Virtual Worlds recently.

  7. Comment by Overman — May 30, 2008 at 7:58 am

    Hugh, you might notice it’s not a list of professional machinima companies which was being assembled. This show was focused primarily on those who went to work for game companies, which is perhaps more apparent from the show’s audio than from these notes. A couple of the mentions began to stray to the fringe of that (Ingrid, Brandon, Moviestorm), but the vast majority of the list (and the discussion) was about people who got full time employment at game companies.

    We plan to do another show down the road focusing on full-time independent machinima creators (those for whom their machinima work is their financial sustenance), which is actually a very short list. I and dozens of other folks have done works for hire from time to time (which is great), but for most of us it does not represent our primary source of living income. The list of folks who’ve managed to land occasional gigs isn’t particularly exclusive, though the semi-pro thing is an interesting topic worth considering on its own.

    So yeah, I was aware of DoQ, Tom, Rooster Teeth… of course, all full time indies. Didn’t know Strange Company was living off its machinima income for all those years, I thought you guys were freelancing when it was available but not relying on it to put bread on the table. That’s good to know and we’ll be sure to cover that in the program devoted to independents.

    RE: Ezra - my mistake. He’s part of the Blizzard Entertainment Network in Facebook along with Terran and Tristan (that’s a network specifically for Blizzard employees), so I assumed wrongly.

  8. Comment by Trace — May 30, 2008 at 8:18 am

    I’m not sure I agree that you can only be a “full-time independent machinima creator” if you turn a profit. Who is to say, this is just for example, Rooster are currently turning a profit, living fully off the income of their machinima work? They could be a failing business in debt, so could many others. There is no way of knowing.

  9. Comment by Trace — May 30, 2008 at 9:02 am

    Just another point on the not being able to live from the income of freelance work therefore it doesn’t count issue. I happen to have saved all the proceeds from freelance work, which has enabled me to take well over one year “off work” to do various things in life, and I’m 100 percent financially independent. So I am living solely from the proceeds of freelance work for that entire time. And I have woken up on the wrong side of bed this morning, and will no doubt regret all these posts by tomorrow.

  10. Comment by Overman — May 30, 2008 at 9:22 am

    Nah, nothing to be ashamed of here, Trace. You make some good points; drawing a distinct line around the subset “full time indies” may indeed prove more difficult than I anticipated.

    I do want you to know, though, that the only reason I’d seek to draw that line is for the sake of breaking up the discussions (shows) into manageable pieces, not for the sake of making one or the other somehow less legitimate. I think if we’d attempted to cover every iteration of paid machinima work in one show, the duration would have grown out of control. So we decided to start with those who went to work as employees for game companies (even drawing that distinct line wasn’t simple, it turned out), because there are some unique characteristics to their situation that I felt deserved some time.

    And freelancers also deserve their own discussion… though I don’t think it’s out of line (is it?) to suggest that those who have managed to make a full-time income out of it warrant some additional study… because that is something uncommon - even among animators at large.

    Nobody need feel left out. We’ll get around to covering other sides of the topic before too long.

  11. Comment by Hugh "Nomad" Hancock — May 30, 2008 at 10:00 am

    Ah, right, I see. I was confused because of the mention of Moviestorm and also the ILL Clan, who have never been anything approaching games studio hires.

    With the exception of one ill-fated venture into conventional CG, all of Strange Company’s employment has been Machinima for the last 10 years, and I’ve been full-time at SC for all that time. We’re just doing our first non-Machinima series (the Kamikaze Cookery series) now.

    I’ll actually listen to the damn podcast now :)

    BTW, is the hour running time likely to be the usual length? This may be saying more about my time usage than anything else, but that’s quite a lot of time to find in the day!

  12. Comment by Trace — May 30, 2008 at 10:13 am

    I guess it’s my misunderstanding, probably should have actually listened to podcast first instead of reading “who has gone pro, here is a list” above (though I was confused about the addition of ESC). Yup, makes perfect sense to draw line under those working for game companies, it’s a very interesting topic and much to discuss.

    I’m still not sure if you can draw a line under the independent machinimator (ie one who makes enough from machinima to have that as a sole income) as there is no way of judging who is actually living from earnings and who has a failing business. Take the professional SL companies, there are at least 9 that I know of as “professional”. If I were to ask who was living solely from the earnings of machinima, they would all reply “yes”, although I would not be convinced that were the truth. No company will admit to making a loss. So if you are taking that criteria to investigate these type of independent’s, then I’m not sure how accurate the findings will be?

  13. Comment by overman — May 30, 2008 at 10:56 am

    @Trace: Yeah, see, while I’d certainly be concerned about profitability if it were my own venture, I’m not sure I care all that much about it in the context of this discussion, at least not as any kind of qualifier. Looking at my word choice above with reference to “income”, I’ve been unintentionally misleading as to my focus here. I’m not particularly interested in the cash aspect.

    Rather, I’m more interested in the “sole occupation” or “primary occupation” qualifier - what that looks like, how one feels about the work, what impact it has on one’s just-because-I-wanna-make-it film output, which appears to be so drastically affected in the route talked about in this episode. Whether that person is sitting atop a trust fund, or has venture capital backing, or is really slumming it, or slowly going broke… my interest is, what is the effect of doing this kind of work-for-hire all day every day… what’s the effect on that artist’s attitude toward his/her art, especially the personal side of their art? I believe that effect, whatever it may be, has very little to do with whether one is raking in cash. Ever known someone financially secure and miserable? Or financially scraping by yet feeling quite fulfilled?

    That to me is much more interesting than someone’s profit and loss statement, in the same way that I don’t care at all to know what the game company employees’ salaries are. To me, that’s irrelevant. I’m not researching a business model I can emulate to make money (not at this moment, anyway); I’m interested in the job’s impact on them as people, as artists. The research was part observational, part asking the people themselves (those who responded to queries) lots of questions over a period of months. I’ll do the same as my research on the indie side (have already begun some of that, actually).

    @Trace and @Hugh: Moviestorm and Ill Clan/Electric Sheep got dragged into the list by virtue of the employer-employee kind of relationship; people working for a business, as employees more or less. Non-freelance. But once we started venturing that way, it’s like whoa, we could keep growing this all day and we’d lose focus, so we reined it in back toward games companies. But that’s the quality that made those entities come up - they are companies selling products and services, they’re not film production groups. So I want to clarify again that the Strange Company and other freelancers’ omission wasn’t one of ignorance or forgetfulness, it was just non sequitur in relation to how the list and pre-show discussion evolved. Again, the notes don’t make this clear on their own - but they were never intended to stand on their own in the first place, so there you go.

  14. Comment by Trace — May 30, 2008 at 11:54 am

    But Phil, I am in total agreement with what you have just posted! What I was replying to was this, to quote:

    “We plan to do another show down the road focusing on full-time independent machinima creators (those for whom their machinima work is their financial sustenance).”

    You didn’t mention there were other criteria, only the income one in regards to the next show.

    Also,

    “Didn’t know Strange Company was living off its machinima income for all those years, I thought you guys were freelancing when it was available but not relying on it to put bread on the table. That’s good to know and we’ll be sure to cover that in the program devoted to independents”.

    Further implying income was criteria for judging independents and drawing a line under them.

    I see now that this isn’t the main focus, and I’m in agreement with you, communication breakdown strikes again.

  15. Comment by overman — May 30, 2008 at 12:36 pm

    Yup, it’s my fault, poor word choice and emphasis on my part. I meant to emphasize “doing nothing else but that” when I was talking about “living off it” / “sustenance”, but the way I worded it emphasized the dollars instead.

    Income is such an obscure word anyway, I should never have invoked it. Conventionally it is used in two ways that contradict one another. One definition makes it the synonym of sales / revenues / cash inflow brought in as a result of transactions. The other usage makes it a synonym of profit, which is something else entirely.

  16. Comment by Ricky Grove — May 30, 2008 at 12:45 pm

    So, did anyone actually listen to the show? And if so, did you like it? Phil and I put a lot of time and effort into getting it together. My new “Ricky’s Wonderful World of Sound” is something I’m very proud of and will be an on-going series within a series.

  17. Comment by Ricky Grove — May 30, 2008 at 12:49 pm

    Phil, I like the new intro music very much! And although I was hoping that the show would be a little shorter (30-40 mins), I think the length will vary from show to show. Since this is our first effort together, it took a little longer. Just give us a little time.

  18. Comment by Buddy_DoQ — May 30, 2008 at 12:58 pm

    Excellent episode gentlemen! Ricky, I especially appreciated your segment on sound. It’s something we’ve always discussed in-house, but unfortunately, we haven’t been model students. (Yes, even despite the nom at the first MFF, much learning we have.)

    Thanks for the nod Hugh, but I’d like to clarify just a bit. Aside from Barry, who is enjoying one last summer before heading off to ASU, everyone at DoQ holds a normal 9-5 day job. Barry and I will be full-time for about 3 weeks this summer, but after that… who knows!?

    HOWEVER!

    Thanks to our DoQ work, we did get summer teaching jobs teaching Machinima to the greatest youngsters on earth. Not a game-company, but we were hired out for the fact that we were “experts” for the class they wanted to hold.

  19. Comment by Buddy_DoQ — May 30, 2008 at 1:06 pm

    I just remembered! It didn’t pan through, but we have been approached to be guest speakers at a college, which had (at the time) a new course in game-design. The department head/professor was intrigued by Machinima, and wanted to fly us out to speak. It’s another way of working, and making a living through machinima, for those who fancy speaking in front of an audience.

  20. Comment by overman — May 30, 2008 at 1:11 pm

    Yeah, I forgot to answer that when Hugh asked about length. We’ll be shooting for 30-40 minutes as Ricky said, and we agreed to give ourselves some leeway on this first episode since it was our first together and also because it had been so very long since the last show. Maybe even 20-30 minutes if we can.

    A couple tips I’ve received outside of here, people I forgot to mention:

    - Ryan and John Ebenger, WoW filmmakers, work for Bioware. I had no idea, very cool.

    - Baron Soosdon apparently produces work for Machinima.com, however I’m somewhat familiar with the way M.com approaches machinimators and I’m pretty sure he’s a freelance contractor (and producing what he decides to) not an employee so we’ll probably get in touch with him for the freelance show(s). And Machinima.com isn’t a game company, but if we mentioned WeGame.com we’ve got to…. argh! You see the conundrum we ran into? :)

  21. Comment by Kate — May 30, 2008 at 3:00 pm

    @Ricky I listened and enjoyed! I’m really glad this podcast is going forward with so much energy & Ricky’s contribution adds well to the mix. The notes here do make more sense in the context of the show, but I think it’s realistic to suppose there will be many more who read the notes first and save the download for a suitable time. Rather than unnaturally compressing the show content, maybe the notes would benefit from a tweak sometimes with that in mind?

  22. Comment by overman — May 30, 2008 at 3:53 pm

    @Kate - Indeed, I’ll learn from this and give that more thought on future eps. I’ve already applied some tweaks to the notes on this show, do you think they help clarify at all?

  23. Comment by 3dfilmmaker — May 30, 2008 at 6:35 pm

    Hey guys, great show! As you can imagine this went around quickly here at work among the machinima peers. :) I love the fact you guys provided some feedback on what people can focus on if they are interested in ‘going pro’. It was a great topic.

    Even though our career movement may seem to take away from the community, I’m hoping it is also a catalyst for people to take their machinima creativity more seriously. Working on machinima is more valid than ever to demonstrating your skills and talent.

    I would love to hear more adventures in Ricky’s Wonderful World series too!

    Ken

  24. Comment by Ricky Grove — May 31, 2008 at 12:04 am

    @Buddy_DoQ Thanks for the good words. Hope to do future episodes on “Noise, and how to get rid of it”, “Software”, “Recording Dialogue in your closet”, etc. You get the idea. Yes, and you can sure we are all trying to get better with sound. Hope my short little ‘casts nudge people in that direction. BTW, download the zip folder for all of the sounds you heard on the show. That train at the end is really great in the full version.

    @Ken. Great perspective on the idea of the pro machinimators as examples of taking machinima more seriously. Totally true. And we very much wanted to present some ideas on how to prepare/learn to become a better machinima filmmaker so as to do it for the gaming industry. Yep, I promise to get those new Ricky’s Wonderful World of Sound out as often as I can. I plan on starting on Mass Effect tonight, maybe something related to game sound/dialogue? Hmnn, now there’s a thought…..

  25. Comment by Overman — May 31, 2008 at 12:52 am

    @Ken, thanks so much for your comments, and for listening! We really wanted to treat this potentially sensitive topic in a fair and respectful manner, and I’m glad to hear it received that way.

    @Buddy, I enjoy hearing about those experiences you have at the summer camp (is it called SummerTech?), I look forward to hearing about it again this year. I imagine there are few machinima-related experiences quite as fulfilling as seeing kids’ eyes light up with inspiration when you put those tools in their hands.

  26. Comment by Hugh "Nomad" Hancock — May 31, 2008 at 12:27 pm

    Oops, forgot about John and Ryan. And I’ve met them, too, at Bioware. Good catch.

  27. Comment by Nefarious Guy — May 31, 2008 at 6:13 pm

    Great show guys and a very thoughtful conversation on “pro machinima”. I really enjoyed the “Ricky’s Wonderful World of Sound” segment too. Ricky is a great co-host. Looking forward to the next Overcast!

  28. Comment by Michelle — June 1, 2008 at 4:55 pm

    Great show this week, Phil and Ricky! Ditto on what Ken wrote. It’s nice to hear we’re missed, even though it did sound like hearing an obituary at times ;). One of the nice things about working amongst a cluster of other machinimators is that we regularly natter about machinima and related topics sometimes over lunch or whatever, so for us it doesn’t feel like we’ve actually left at all or forgotten about machinima.

    Looking forward to the next show!

  29. Comment by Suhnder — June 2, 2008 at 2:55 pm

    Agree with all, this was a great show. You guys make a great duo and your voices complement each other to boot. I actually like a longer show length due to my long commute. Ricky’s Wonderful World of Sound is a great idea, a podcast is the perfect place for something like that.

    About my employer, earlier this year Shiny Entertainment merged with another game company, The Collective, and changed our name to Double Helix. So I’m still at the same place, as you suspected.

    That statement about the machinima/filmmaking itch being scratched at work is all too true. I can only take so much of one hobby in a day… I have many ideas of my own that I’ve been wanting to make films out of for the last few years, but I’m finding it hard to get the motivation and commit to it. I suppose its natural that one’s hobby differs strongly from what they do at the workplace, and in my case, I’ve been really getting into music which was something I always found kinda scary before.

  30. Comment by TODNYC — June 4, 2008 at 3:47 am

    Gosh, reading through these comments gave me heartburn. Thank god I had Ricky’s meditive (sp?) soundscape report to bring the nerves back down.

    Is this the Car Talk of Machinima?

    This advocacy of Machinima will continue to put the bullseye right on your back, if you’re not taking cheap jabs from the likes of me (ie:moviestorm grousing) you’re taking well meaning rejoinders from those who’s work you trumpet. I’m glad you’ve found Ricky to share the target with.

    Do not let the griping get you down, just know it means you are the respected authority on Machinima, and that authority has been earned by your commitment to professionalism. This shared episode is a prime example of that level of work, and a consistent release schedule will be icing.

    I’d suggest giving Ricky’s segment the end slot, might just be the producer in me. The tone seems to make it a natch for the closing. Wind us up, wind us down puppetmasters.

    Well done, and welcome back.

    PS, Ricky’s past tense retort made me laugh, but definitely hit the heart. Fingers crossed for another live festival.

  31. Comment by Mongoose — June 5, 2008 at 11:34 am

    Great show, guys! Good theme, good structure, and I really enjoyed Ricky’s sound segment.

    All together now, boys’n'girls, it’s the Mongoose Mantra: “Film is an AUDIO-visual medium!”

  32. Comment by Ricky Grove — June 12, 2008 at 4:18 pm

    Sorry for not checking back earlier for all of these excellent comments! Thanks for the support everyone. Glad to hear you are all chatting about machinima at work, Michelle. And thanks for the clarification on your company, Jason. It’s kind of “scary”, as you say, to hear you are getting into music: look out world. Todd, your comments are always entertaining whether they are funny our tough. I like your idea of putting RWOS at the end. Phil and I will talk it over.

    Appreciate all of the good feedback on my “World of Sound” segment. I’m currently recording a burning steak on the stove for the good of the next show which will be on how some sounds can be completely different when used creatively. Should be fun!

  33. Comment by moo Money — June 22, 2008 at 7:54 am

    It’s been my experience that very few people that don’t work for the game companies make a full-time living off of machinima. There are quite a few Second Lifers that do sparse contract work, but nothing too regular. I myself have been making a full-time living off of the promotion, blogging, and production of machinima for coming up on 2 years in August, and beyond that, hit 2 years total involvement officially last month. It’s been a wild ride.

    I’ve done it all without heavy self-promotion and I’m only just now making a portfolio site. If I can get work without soliciting or advertising it, that just goes to show how popular contract machinima is getting.

  34. Comment by second income — September 25, 2008 at 6:13 pm

    this is great…thanks for the information

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