Machinima Spotlight: The Snow Witch
I’m back! My apologies for the rather lengthy hiatus. I have been doing a lot of traveling for various conferences and have been actively pursuing a faculty position on the academic job market. But things have settled down and I want to get back to both writing (as well as playing videogames). Part of the traveling I did recently took me to Leicester in the U.K. for the very first machinima film festival in Europe. Spanning three days, the festival was a great testament to the growing community surrounding machinima. I even had an opportunity to chat with Bernie Burns about the success of Rooster Teeth and the Red vs Blue series. There were so many entries this year that truly pushed the boundaries of what machinimators are now capable of doing. I highly recommend checking them all out if you get a chance. A complete list of the nominations is available at the festival website. At least be sure to check out the winners which are available on Machinima.com. The film that ran away with the most wins, including best picture and best direction, was the feature length film by Nanoflix (an Australian production house) entitled Stolen Life. It’s a great film and I would love to spotlight it, but it is only available as DVD and I like to keep this space for machinima readily available for the readers. Therefore, I chose to spotlight the film that one best story: The Snow Witch
Based on an original Japanese ghost story, Michelle Pettit-Mee’s The Snow Witch represents one the most dramatic transformations of the The Sims 2 engine to create a machinima film. Aside from a few of the canned and overly-dramatic animations that are a telltale sign of the Sims, the piece creates scenes and settings that seem as far removed from the game as I have ever seen. Since the story is primarily told through narration, Michelle was able to avoid the lip-syncing issues that comes with the Sims. Rather than give anything away, I’ll just say that the story unfurls in a traditional folk tale pace with an interesting twist at the end. But it is the mis-en-scene of the piece as well as the great sound design that really made it stand out from so many of the films I had a chance to see at the festival. More important the film is one of the only entries made by a woman, which is an aspect of the machinima community that often goes overlooked. Like so many other media forms before, machinima has had a slow adoption rate of women both making films and getting them seen. Sites like Sims99 and Sim-movies have made tremendous strides providing places for Sims-based machinima which has the largest collective of female machinimators than any other engine. So I was more than pleased to see Michelle’s piece not only nominated, but win. Hopefully we will see more and more women like Michelle getting their work out there (for more from Michelle checkout her site Britannica Dreams). Machinima may have been born of the hyper-masculinized world of shooters, but it has steadily evolved into something considerably more complex. As the increase of women gamers indicates more and more women finding comfort in virtual spaces, we can only hope this will translate into the realm of machinima. The Snow Witch marks an important step in that direction.
I’m so glad you mentioned the sound design, Robert! Ricky Grove (gToon) did an outstanding job on it and it completely transformed the film as far as I’m concerned.
Hopefully we’ll see more women enter their work into festivals in the future, especially with the growing popularity in engines such as Moviestorm and Second Life.
Thanks for the kind words!
Good to have you back writing again. Wish you best of luck on the academic position. Thanks for the swell review of “Snow Witch”. You thoughts echo mine almost exactly. Michelle is one of the few woman working in machinima and I hope her success inspires more women to express themselves using this medium. And thanks for the good words about the sound design. Phil Rice (aka Overman) helped out a bit. Very proud of this film.
Ricky
[...] REVIEW: The Snow Witch - Robert Jones (Stranger109) is back, this time talking about the Britannica Dreams masterpiece. [...]
Overman’s Blog » OverByte #4 said this on December 8, 2007 at 10:40 am
“the film is one of the only entries made by a woman” I was so puzzled by this remark that I got in touch with Tracy Harwood who organised the festival. Without reference to her notes (she is currently overseas) Tracy remembered at least five female Mach Europe nominees, and thinks there may have been more.
Kate
I probably should have said “few” instead of “only” because I certainly did not want to suggest that it was THE only film by a woman. But I hope my main point was not lost in my poor rhetorical choice of words. Lets say there were 5 women nominated. Out of the nearly 50 nominees, that’s still not a great number. In no way was I indicting Tracy Hardwood or the festival. I was speaking to the larger issue concerning the lack of female presence in machinima that this instance merely reflects. As a woman and fan of machinima, I would hope you share in this concern. Either way, thanks for keeping me on my toes.
Absolutely, I think sims movie making has a cuture of using copyrighted music which makes many films ineligible for festivals. Michelle’s film would be outstanding in any arena, but is part of a larger culture of female film making rather than an isolated incident. I am most familiar with sims, second life and moviestorm, but I know there are women movie creators working with many of the more traditionally male games engines also. Maybe the question should be ‘why aren’t the women more visible?’ rather than, why aren’t they here?
When I entered the Motion Picture Indusrty in 1974, I was amazed to find so many women, who may not have been as visible as the men, but there was no doubt who were the puppeteers and who were the puppets. And over the years I discovered that the Film Industry was becoming more dominated by women (many still invisible) but increrasingly in charge of the fates of many films and careers. I think women can be far more calculating in just how to expose themselves to the world. Men had long held the front seat, so when women move forward they are very sure of their footing. Machinima is a relatively new art form, based on a heavily “male orianted target group” - namely games. Given time, women will become more visible and dominant. And I for one who has worked extensively by the side of creative women in the live film industry and now working in partnership with a machinima film making woman on the most interesting project I have done in years - I welcome the direction the new wind is blowing.
Kate
Well said. I’m so glad you’ve made it a point to keep on me about this. You’re absolutely spot on with it being not so much about too few of women making machinima so much as it is about exposure. And again, this is not an indictment of the Machinima Festival Europe, which I felt was an excellent festival and testament to the future of the medium, but instead an ongoing concern I have as both an advocate of machinima and women in media. I wonder if a website dedicated to women making machinima might be in order, highlighting their presence in the field. Something to consider.
Hi there
Just wanted to add a couple of words on your discussion here.
Personally I think the male/female discussion is a bit of a red herring - true to say that traditionally women in the games industry/sector have been few BUT I think good work should stand out in all competition and it is very evident that the market context is changing rapidly (furthermore, this is not an industry where physical strength is a determinant, at least that wasn’t an obvious aspect when we put the European Festival together).
In more general terms, perhaps commenting here from a film festival perspective but also from my years of experience in business as a woman, I’d be wary of creating a ‘women only’ forum for your work. That’s not to diminish the relevance of a feminist view but I tend to feel there are better ways of classifying machinimas - there are now many genres of machinima films emerging which could be better organised, and enable the viewing public to differentiate and recognise pieces more clearly… not that I’m suggesting the same genre headings be adopted as other media forms necessarily. I would like to call upon the community to be more creative about how work is classified.
Creative engine/s alone are clearly inadequate!
Tracy