SecondCast Goes to the Machinima Festival
Posted Monday, November 6th, 2006, at 9:31 am Eastern by Mark Wallace
Check out SecondCast, Episode #42, in which Johnny Ming roams the halls of the 2006 Machinima Festival of the Academy of Machinima Arts and Sciences. (I was there too, but would only sit still to be interviewed by Johnny about the New York City “Pay Walker’s Rent” Marathon.) There was some great machinima on display, and some interesting characters on the podcast, as always. Unfortunately, though we were all rooting for Pierce Portocarrero’s excellent Game Over to win one of the several awards for which it was nominated, Pierce will have to wait until next year. That’s understandble, though, in an environment in which a film about restroom etiquette wins the prize for best writing.
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I had a chance to see Male Restroom Etiquette on GooTube and thought it was very entertaining. I can understand the need to express disappointment, but saying that the “environment” was at fault is pretty shallow - particularly for this blog.
Environment may or may not be the wrong word. But let’s keep in mind that the environment at the awards did include a woman playing a ditzy blonde who got up on stage to make ditzy scripted remarks to fill the moments when award recipients couldn’t be present to accept their awards. I was quite impressed with the event as a whole, but not so impressed at that choice. Machinima is a great opportunity to foster the involvement of women in the medium and in games in general. I was disappointed to see female gamers specifically dissed like that. (Pardon the technical language there.)
Male Restroom Etiquette is definitely entertaining — although much like the scatological humor of Saturday Night Live, it goes on a bit too long for my tastes. Was it the best writing of the five nominees? (The other four were The Adventures of Bill & John: Danger Attacks at Dawn, Deviation, Red vs. Blue - Season 4, and Slightly Later Man.) That’s also arguable, and probably largely a matter of taste. I just think it’s early days for the machinima community (better word?), and that we’ll see tastes start to broaden more as a more varied selection of films is produced. Which may be a better way of saying what I was trying to say in the post above.
I heard several people comment at the festival itself about the “ditzy blonde” thing being inappropriate… or at least incongruous with the message our medium wants to send about who we are. Perhaps, understood as parody, it’s not quite as offensive, but still I agree: we can do better there.
I, too, was surprised to see “Game Over” not take home any awards. In my conversations with fellow attendees, it was one of the artistic standouts without question. I’ll look forward to Pierce’s future works with great anticipation.