overcast #010
Episode 10 features an interview with Ben Grussi, a.k.a. zs_gamemaster, who shares his thoughts on where machinima has been, where it’s going, and how we’re doing right now. Audio quality was a little spotty, we’re still figuring out the best way to record Skype (as is the rest of the podcasting world). Bear with us, and enjoy Ben’s first audio appearance in the machinima world (save only a 3-second cameo in one machinima production… do you know which one?).
REPEAT Special bulletin! You now have four ways you can use to get your feedback or ideas to the show:
- New! SKYPE VOICEMAIL! Messages of interest will be played live on the air! Have fun with this! See the voicemail button at the top of this page. Don’t yet have Skype? Get it here.
- E-mail to me [at] theovercast [dot] com,
- Leave a comment at theovercast.com
- or drop a post in the z-studios forum.
This Week’s Hot List (URLs from the show’s content):
- Fraps v2.8 Released
- DivX v6.4 Released
- Pixel Pulse Magazine Hiring SL Machinimists Machinimators, etc.
- Reuters Reporting from Second Life
- Overman’s Blog on Corporate Involvment in Machinima
- Buddy of DoQ: Advertising Intrusion into Gaming
- Poser 7 LipSync Demo
- Clip of the Week: Charlie Stross Podcast Interview
- Accelerando by Charles Stross
- Interview: Ben Grussi
- Mention: Diary of a Camper
- Mention: Ranger Gone Bad
- Mention: Devil’s Covenant (Part 1, Part 2)
- Mention: Seal of Nehara
Comment by Ricky Grove — October 23, 2006 at 9:38 pm
Excellent, enjoyable show, Overman. I’m glad you are finally able to get some interviews on the show and Ben is perfect guest. I loved his comment:
“…strapping a rocket on your back, but you don’t know how to use it because you just invented it”
a great metaphor for how machinima should work. I wish more rockets were strapped to backs. Even against peoples will..
I want to go back and watch Diary and Ranger again. “Seal of Nahara” will definitely be on my list after Ben’s comments. It is so interesting to hear him comment on having no yardstick to measure where we are. I’ve often felt the same way. Maybe it’s at festival times (like the upcoming NY Fest) were we kind of take a look at what we are doing.
Enjoyed the tech comments. You might also mention the Stage 6 video site that DivX has set up using their codec. You can go there via this link:
http://stage6.divx.com/?divx2s6=videostopgap
Not a bad alternative to the ubiquitous YT. Ive heard of Charles Stross, but haven’t had the motivation to pick up one of his books. That’s changed. Will definitely be reading him soon.
Loved the music for this episode. Weaving it in the interview works great. Did I hear some Days After music in there?
Thanks for another great show! Appreciate it.
-gToon
Comment by overman — October 24, 2006 at 12:09 am
You betcha! Days After was one of the selections indeed, good ear! Thanks so much for listening, and for your support.
RE: Stross, I’m reading Accelerando right now, it’s a mindbender.
Comment by Gennifer "Eriyanna" Henderson — October 24, 2006 at 5:09 am
Loved the episode…. I will forever refer to the masses in the genre now as “machinimators” vs. “machinimists”. The reason for this, only due to the awesome sound effects that we’ve come to expect from you. lol
Eriyanna
Myndflame[dot]com
Comment by cd — October 24, 2006 at 5:46 am
Great episode again. I’m happy to see that discussion on ‘classic’ machinima
movies coming up. I’m trying to get them for my machinima lecture but failed
so far. Just found only the demo files and couldn’t get them to run on my
Quake installation (have the free demo version and that seems to miss some files only available when you bought the game I guess). I had a thread on M.com
a while a ago and someone offered to grab these ‘classics’ as video. But nothing happend so far.
http://www.machinima.com/PHPBB/viewtopic.php?t=6694
The mentioned Seal of Nahara is at least referenced at M.com to be downloadable as
DivX video, but the download says ‘NO FILE HERE’.
It would be great if someone could make those ‘classics’ available again
for us who never had a chance to watch them so far.
Comment by Suhnder — October 24, 2006 at 6:49 pm
Machinimators indeed! Thank you, I hate the word Machinimist.
Was great to hear you Ben!
Great point about letting things go its natural way… made me think about things.
cd yea, that was me. Unfortunately I’ve been swamped with a lot of stuff lately and haven’t been able to do much on this.
I’ll be putting up Diary of a Camper and Seal of Nehara (one of my faves!) up this week.
Comment by cd — October 25, 2006 at 5:27 pm
Tnx so much Suhnder. And good luck and fun with your new job.
Comment by Gerard Delaney — October 26, 2006 at 2:48 am
This was a very enjoyable overcast, my favorite thus far, the interview asked alot of good questions and I always like to hear about the machinima community and how it was in the time before I got into this machinimation thing. Thanks Overman
Comment by Johnnie Ingram — November 23, 2006 at 6:47 am
I’ve only just got around to listening to this (shame on me, I know). Great episode as usual, and great to hear Ben’s voice again.
Charlie Stross lives in Edinburgh, and is actually a big machinima fan. He’s one of the creative consultants on BloodSpell, and has a cameo in one of the early episodes as a guard who gets horribly killed.
And yes, he’s a frighteningly intelligent man.