Stranger 109

In a previous spotlight I highlighted the winner of The Ataris music video contest. As I have mentioned, these sorts of contests offer a great opportunity for machinimators to have their work viewed by many as well as demonstrate machinima’s commercial viability. Machinima.com has made these competitions a regular part of its campaign to promote machinima, and I applaud their efforts. If you have not watched much machinima before I would urge you to go give a few of the entrants a look. These sorts of contests that provide a specific piece of audio and ask the creators to create either a music video or movie trailer highlight the range of what can be achieved in this medium. The talent varies as with any competition of this sort, but there are strong entrants in both of the current contests. If you are already familiar with the contests, I would then simply urge you to vote on your favorite to help support fellow machinimators. So as not to impact the voting either way, I will reserve my opinion until after the competition and spotlight the winners for each at a later time. But here are outlines of each and the links so you can check them out and vote.

Bourne Ultimatum Trailer

Using the same exact audio from the actual trailer as well as the title graphics, these pieces use varying games from The Movies to HALO to recreate the moody feel of the Bourne trilogy. Final submissions were in by August 20 and voting continues through September 2. Click here to watch and vote.

Strata - Game Over Contest

To promote their new album The End of the World, Strata has offered up four tracks to accompany either a traditional music video or narrative film that features the “most memorable in-game death.” The creator can either chose to use one of the songs or up to all four throughout the piece. Final submissions were in by August 23 and voting continues through September 12. Click here to watch and vote.