Wanted - the best machinimators in the world!

Short Fuze wants more top-flight machinimators to show the world what Moviestorm can really do in the hands of experts. We're looking for established individuals or studios to produce absolutely top-quality movies using Moviestorm. You would be joining a small but rapidly growing team.

This is most likely to be a part-time role or freelance / contract work, and you can work from home or in our (Cambridge, UK) offices. It would involve a mixture of commissioned pieces where we are responding to requests from IPR owners (TV, movies and music) and your own original work, and we're after anything from drama and comedy to music video or experimental work. What matters is quality, delivery to time and fanatical devotion to the art. We're looking for movies that go beyond existing "gamer" machinima, and will appeal to a wider audience.

We'll provide full technical support, and you'll also get access to custom artwork and professional sound facilities. Payment terms by negotiation.

If you're interested, email me directly (matt [at] shortfuze.co.uk) and send links to your portfolio of machinima work (in any engine) and other film work if you have it, as well as details of any machinima or film awards you have won. You will need to demonstrate your proficiency with character performance, camerawork, editing and post-production.

Please indicate what type of films you like to make and your level of technical expertise. We would particularly welcome applications from people who are making movies in languages other than English, though this is not a requirement.

Start dates vary from immediate to October 2007.

Moviestorm hits the Big Time

It's been a hell of a fortnight. While we left the rest of the team at home to get on with building beta 1.4, David and I went on a whirlwind tour of LA and New York, meeting some of the people who have been involved in the machinima scene since, well, forever. We did a demo at the Big Time Picture Company, which meant that we were able to show movies in a real Hollywood screening room, on a screen twice as tall as me.

Matt dreams about hitting the Big Time
Hey, I can dream - I'm in Hollywood!

Well, almost. Of course, the one thing we forgot is that Hollywood screening rooms are geared up for projecting movies. Y'know, as in actual film? So we turn up with our lovely modern new-fangled laptop, expecting to connect it to a projector.... d'oh! Well, the nice guys at Big Time say that's no problem, we'll just.... oh, you have a Windows PC? If we'd had a Mac, it'd be just a minor problem, but a PC?

David finally gets the living room of his dreams
You can tell he's the CEO, he's in the suit!

So, after half an hour, we mostly get that sorted out, then we realise we've made dumb move #3. The lap-top's now in the projection booth, and I'm expecting to be able to run Moviestorm and talk people through what I'm doing. Projection booths are soundproof, dummy! They won't hear a frackin' word I'm saying! Eventually, with the aid of a speakerphone, we finally get sorted, half an hour behind schedule. Which is OK, because when we said 6pm, we didn't think about LA traffic, and pretty much everyone else is half an hour late too.

Frank, Jason, Ricky & Ingrid
You meet strange people at midnight in LA.....

When we finally got under way, it all seemed to go pretty well. At least, when we suggested dinner after the demo, none of them ran away screaming, so that was a good sign.

The next few days were a blur of meetings, interspersed with zipping up and down Santa Monica Boulevard, accidentally gatecrashing a party at the Beverly Hilton, airports, lots of interesting restaurants, and more anonymous hotel rooms. However, it was great to find time to meet up with several of our beta testers, and find out from them in person what they think of Moviestorm, and what they'd like to see us doing next. In a word, finish the damn thing, and release it - okay, okay, guys, we're doing it!

Great seeing y'all - let's do it again!