Want to make short films?

Have you tried going to BlameSociety.net? No? Then you should. Check out Chad Vader, Darth's supposed twin on Earth...

Making short films and getting them noticed
By: Hazimin Sulaiman

full article: http://www.nst.com.my/Current_News/techNu/Monday/Notebook/20080310123933/Article/index_html

IF you love films, surf to blamesociety.net and fromheretoawesome.com (FHTA for short). Similarly, you can also go to Youtube.com and search for both. They serve as examples that filmmaking has been democratised: as long as you have a video camera and some software on a computer to do some editing, shooting a short film is not a problem. The problem is getting your short film distributed to make money.

This is where FHTA’s idea of getting noticed by harnessing the power of the Internet comes in.

Blamesociety.net’s claim to fame was through its Chad Vader: Day Shift Manager episodes; a hilarious parody series of Star Wars’ Darth Vader’s supposed brother working at a supermarket (on present day Earth, it seems).

Founders Matt Sloan and Aaron Yonda, who not only write, produce and star in their many other short films since 1993, have garnered a lot of attention. The success story, Chad Vader received over 15 million views online, broadcasted on Good Morning America, Spike TV and G4 and was selected by George Lucas himself as Best Star Wars Fan Film of 2007!

Getting noticed means opportunities in this business. In fact, both Sloan and Yonda now make films for a living. They owe it to public access stations which they describe as being video-business incubators which teach the young about skills and all aspects of broadcast communications.

They feel public access to television is important to local communities, hence their efforts to save a Wisconsin public access station (www.saveaccesswisconsin.org).

The FHTA is another avenue for indie movie-makers. Think of FHTA as a virtual film festival as it’s unlikely for most independent movie-makers to get noticed and go to an actual film festival in the first place.

In August 2007, Arin Crumley (Four Eyed Monsters) and Mike Belmont (We Are the Strange), both indie movie-makers, came up with a concept to create a virtual conference film festival. On their Web site, they say that they “decided that the virtual event would be an experiment to connect filmmakers with audiences and the event could become a model for open content distribution, which allows filmmakers to have a say in how their films were reaching audiences.”

FHTA claims that their experiment is off to a great start. From the looks of the corporate logos and icons on their site, it has garnered an amazing list of partners. These partnerships will be leveraged to distribute across mutiple platforms such as mobile, online, theatrical and direct into living rooms. The main idea? To design the fest in such a fashion that the revenue goes directly into the filmmakers’ pockets.

Filmmakers will get to set their own price, retain rights to their work and be able to reach global audiences directly. All that with no submission fees and let the audience judge the works. A three-minute submission will be determined by the judges on whether it should be expanded into a longer film and the prize is a worldwide distribution via FHTA.

How FHTA works is described on their Web site. It seems like a plausible method to get around distributors who often want a great portion of whatever profits a film can rake in these days.

Will such an idea take off here? Who would fund this? Local independent filmmakers should band together because they will then have a bigger pool of talent and resources to tap into.

Personalised Google Themes

Google Teams Up with Leading Artists to Create Fun New Themes

INTERNET giant Google Inc., has teamed up with leading artists to creatte new themes for iGoogle. Google recently launched a collection of new themes created by leading artists, designers, actors and other personalities for iGoogle, Google's personalized homepage.

With iGoogle, users can choose and arrange the content they want to see on their Google homepage to personalise their Web experience. Google has collaborated with almost 70 artists from around the world, inviting them to use iGoogle as their canvas by creating unique, dynamic themes for users to decorate and personalize their homepages.

My iGoogle page:

Of course you can customise by changing artist themes and adding gadgets

The entire list of participating artists and their themes from around the world, can be found at www.google.com/artistthemes.According to said Derek Callow, Marketing Manager, Google Southeast Asia, Google has teamed with artists and other public figures as a way to give iGoogle users more fun, cool options to personalize their Google homepage. “We’re providing users
with some great new homepage designs and giving these artists a way to be discovered and to express themselves to millions of people on the Internet,” says Callow.

Participating international and Asian artists include Akira Isogawa, Alice Mak, Anne Geddes, Carrie Chau, Coldplay, Dale Chihuly, Diane von Furstenburg, Dolce&Gabbana, Jackie Chan, Jeff Koons, Kwon Ki-Soo, Young-Hee Lee, Mark Ecko, Mark Morris, Michael Graves, Nigo, Oscar de la Renta, Philippe Starck, PPAPER, Robert Mankoff, Rolf Harris, Tezuka Osamu, Tory Burch and Yann Arthus-Bertrand.All of the themes are dynamic, which change throughout the day.

The new collection provides users with a diverse selection of themes to reflect personal style on personalised a Google homepage. Can't decide? Google has a sampler theme that rotates
through all of the participating artists' themes.

Review of Lenovo's X300 up at autaspace.blogspot.com

Lenovo's new anorexic baby, the X300 is really thin...In fact, it can be lighter than Air, the MacBook Air that is...

Product review at: http://autaspace.blogspot.com/2008/05/new-lenovo-x300-lighter-than-air.html

Cybercafes are here to stay!

Gaming in cybercafes will be on the rise for sometime, especially given the rather low broadband speeds we have in Malaysia...I was with some journalist in Bali for an IT event, the one from Singapore said that he is getting 10Mbps (there are faster services in Singapore as well) and the one from Hong Kong had a 15Mbps connection. He Hong Kong journalist also said that PCCW also provides fiber-to-the-home, up to 100Mbps...Me? I was to ashamed to say. Of course, I already knew that we're really behind after covering some international broadband forums before...

Here's a link to a rather obscure story on cybercafes and why they're not afraid about hotspots and braodband to the home: http://autaspace.blogspot.com/2008/04/cybercafes-not-worried-about-hotspots.html

Free movies on-line!

Here's a link to an article about some great public domain movies you can watch on-line:

http://autaspace.blogspot.com/2008/04/free-movies-on-line.html

Autaspace! is another blog of mine...

A past article related to local gaming industry

This version is slightly more detailed and longer than the hard-copy published version. Sorry I lost the pictures. They were mainly Team Fortress 2 pictures.

Local gaming development IP to rise
By Hazimin Sulaiman

CODEMASTERS has a presence in Malaysia, working along with local company Vision New Media. Electronics Arts is setting up shop with our southern neighbours, Singapore. These are world computer game heavyweights which would be a boon for the local creative content development industry to have on our shores. There are of course local game developers in Malaysia such as Pheonix and GameBrains. But it seems that in most cases, the games development industry in Malaysia still lacks its own Intellectual Property; most projects handled by these companies are outsourced jobs, with the IP belonging to respective foreign entities.

The interactive-entertainment industry itself is very enticing especially in 2007 video game software sales reached a staggering USD$9.5 billion. Compare that to the top-ten Hollywood blockbusters which generated USD$2.6 billion last year. Unless the local gaming industry gets a boost, it is likely that the local games development industry will remain at a service provider level for a long time.

Not owning unique IP can in the long run spell disaster if somehow a games developer decides to shift to other places which offer lower wages and other incentives. There is hope. As established foreign games entities realiase Malaysia's potential to produce quality work. We have some resources in terms of multimedia and animation talents but it takes more expertise to make a computer or video game. A game requires more people than a movie production. In that respect, relying on an established gaming engine is a good way to jump start the local games industry.

Datuk Hj. Abdul Hamid Mustapha, executive chairman of Online e-Club Management Sdn Bhd which owns NOESIS Interactive Sdn Bhd believes that one of the best ways to break into the lucerative games industry is by creating mods. The clear message is that one should not underestimate the power of game mods.Mods or game modifications is a key reason why games like Counter Strike (running on the Half Life engine) refuse to die.

In 1996, alterations to id Software's Doom resulted in modified versions. These mods extended the life of the game way beyond the point where its excitement would have died down. Since one must have the original game to play mods, sales went beyond the shelf life of normal computer games.Using this template Half-Life has made Valve Software's revenue stream steadily increase. Valve mainly attributes its success to three mods: Day of Defeat, Team Fortress and Counter Strike. In the first year Half-Life sold two million units. In its third year after its launch, it sold 3.8 million units. Over all, the Half Life franchise sold over 11 million units.

NOESIS Interactive intends to offer gaming development courses through franchisee university and colleges. Courses are scheduled to start by June, 2008. Leveraging on its partners Valve Software and NOESIS Interactive USA, NOESIS Interactive believes that we have an ecosystem in place to welcome a whole new generation of game developers from training, community development right through to digital distribution of games for commercialisation opportunities. In simple terms it means that budding game developers can take up the course from participating university and colleges and receive a certification in respective programmes such as 3D content creation with Softimage XSI, character design and integration with Half-Life 2, custom props and animation for source powered games, advanced character animation for gamers with Softimage XSI and advanced source level design bundle source level design essentials.

These certification means that the holder can be instantly put to work on games which specifically use the Half-Life engine. Besides Softimage, other 3D animation tools such as Autodesk Maya and 3ds Max-based courses are also offered. The project based training is open to all students, teaching professionals or those who want to upgrade their skills."NOESIS Interactive is a project conceived, produced and managed by Online e-Club Management Sdn Bhd to address the inadequancies of the Asian Electronic Game Industry. Currently there is only a handful of local games titles that have been released in this region," says Abdul Hamid. This he thinks is largely due to the lack of resources and more crucially the lack of access to any game engines. As for the pool of skilled designers, artists and coders it is believed by NOESIS Interactive that it is small and scattered, with most young talents are yet to be discovered.

NOESIS is also set to leverage on its connections in Brunei, Cambodia, China, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore and Vietnam; since e-Club Management is the regional official distributor for Valve Software. With that, locally produced IP coming out from this has a good chance of being distributed as mods to these countries. The IP rights will also remain with Malaysians. Malaysia can use this opportunity to market its own unique culture as its own IP as well. Placement of facts or cultural objects can picque one's curiosity and influence them to find out more. This has a similar effect to placing products in movies.

Silat, the Malaysian form of martial arts for example, has been eyed by a Dutch-based company DGames Sdb Bhd. According to its advisor Azlan Ghanie, himself a respected martial artist and chief editor of the local martial arts magazine, Seni Beladiri, DGames representatives are keen to create an online computer game where players from all over the world can band together to fight the forces of darkness. "I hope that silat form of fighting will be depicted in the online game to introduce Malaysian silat to world," Azlan says.

DGames is synonamous with the child prodigy Paul du Long, who created his first online game when he was only 11 years old. His father Glenn du Long intends to have his son mentor local talents, as he has done for thousands of children in Europe. "We are scheduling the launch of the proposed game sometime in May or June in Kuala Lumpur," says Azlan.

DGames is keen to have Malaysia as a hub for developing online games. Malaysia it seems has hidden gems which can attract established names from the gaming development industry. But to build up the industry, it takes more than a bunch of companies. The pool of skilled and talent for example, needs to be polished enough to gain the confidence from these would be employers from overseas. We need to learn what we can from tried and tested formulas first, just like the Japanese animators, before branching out on our own.

Jin On-line?

Play with Jin on-line

By Hazimin Sulaiman

JIN, in Malay means geanie, which in turn originates from the Arabic equivalent 'Jann.' As of now, iG-Interactive Sdn Bhd, a top online game publisher and one of the pioneers of Malay language online game publisher in Malaysia and Singapore, has in partnership with game developer, TQ Digital Entertainment (China), launched JIN Online (http://www.jin.com.my/) for public open beta. It seems to be yet another “PayU2Play” massive multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) by iGI. In JIN, you are immersed and trasported into a fantasy-based MMORPG virtual world of JIN. Gamers can choose one of the 2 heroic game characters, the Warrior or the Mage.

JIN Online gamers will enjoy months of fun and exciting game-play commanding their heroes and pets to adventure the vast land of Atlantis and challenging monsters and real players with the power of sword and magic. What's more is that you can have pets which actually evolve into genies! As gamaplay progresses you can summon up to 3 genies concurrently, to help protect you from harm via convergence and attack tactics. The pet system provides a lot of genies to summon from. Some have super strength, some magic and some can self-destruct in sacrifice while others will possess enemies' spirit to impair them.

To help working adults to get into the game, JIN Online introduces a perfectly designed `Offline Training' system, a first in MMORPGs. As the name depicts, Offline Training allows you to train and level-up your heroes and genies even when your computer is switched off. The emphasis for Jin is team-work of tightly knitted common online game components which includes an excellent legion and competition system; effective trade system; player mentoring; rewarding and other various systems guarantee JIN Online to be highly interactive and full of fun.

In conjunction with the launch, IGI will be running JIN Online Illustration and Comic Competition as well with the prizes of RM1,500, RM1,000 and RM500 for the Grand, Second and Third winner of each category and 5 consolation prizes each. More details will be available on our website as well. JIN Online CD starter packs are available at your local cyber-café, game-shop, news-stand early March, 2008 nationwide.