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5 Years of ABP: 2008
-I had always been interested in the crime/gangster genre, but in the summer of 2007 I fully immersed myself in it. I watched classic noir like Double Indemnity and modern gangster classics like Pulp Fiction and Goodfellas. It was after watching Goodfellas that I was inspired to write the script for Clockwork and after almost a year of on-and-off work the film was finally completed in April 2008. It was the most intense filming experience we had ever gone through, but it paid off in the end.
Due to the hard work of ABP members and the immense talent and helpful advice of Ricky Grove and Phil Rice, Clockwork became our most successful festival film ever. It ultimately won Machinima.com’s Molotov Alva Machinima Contest and the award for Best Machinima at the 2008 Animatu Festival. In addition, the film has been screened at numerous machinima and animation festivals all over the world.
NEXT POST: 2009 and the Year of the Work-In-Progress
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5 Years of ABP: 2007
-2007 was a very momentous year for ABP. We won our first major award (Best Student Machinima at Machinima Europe for Machinima! With Officer Dan) and completed our last Jedi Academy film, The Parable of Foot-in-Mouth, which was our first collaboration with Ricky Grove, who narrated the film. From then on, we produced films entirely within the Source engine.
-We also entered two Machinima.com trailer competitions— the Bourne Ultimatum Trailer Contest and The Invasion Trailer Contest. These films were our first Half Life 2 Garry’s Mod machinima. Our entry for The Invasion made it into the top ten, but ultimately did not win. However, we were luckier with our Bourne trailer which won first place and our first cash prize which was split among the team.
-Later that year we returned to Officer Dan and completed the third film in the series, Machinima! With Officer Dan: Machinima vs. Frag. Tommy Kraft wrote the score, which was essentially a new version of the Mac vs. PC theme.
NEXT POST: 2008 and Clockwork
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5 Years of ABP: 2006
-In 2006 we submitted Star Wars Gangsta Rap: JKA Edition to Machinimasia, the first machinima festival in Asia. Our machinima won 1st Runner Up Best Student Film, losing first place to Ross Scott’s Civil Protection. Although it was a second place win, it was ABP’s first machinima award and we were immensely excited. The win motivated us to continue to improve our work.
-We then became a subdivision of Hyperdrive, a popular two-man Jedi Academy machinima group known for its high production values. Under the Hyperdrive name, ABP produced The Anger of the Guns, a WWII music video filmed online in Return to Castle Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory. Meanwhile, one of the Hyperdrive members created ABP’s current animated intro logo. However, the guy in charge of Hyperdrive didn’t like our film and was upset that we were not making Star Wars films, so he rudely kicked us out of the company without warning. ABP was independent once more.
-In the summer of 2006, I served as an intern/machinima consultant to the Tribeca Film Festival, which was interested in learning about the emerging art-form. Since I was fairly new to the machinima community, I immersed myself in hours of machinima films, websites, articles, and podcasts like “The Overcast” and “Machinima Live!” After several weeks of this machinima crash course, I put together a fairly comprehensive PowerPoint presentation to introduce the festival executives to machinima. Then I realized it would probably be a lot more fun to start the presentation off with a short, funny introductory video. So, I took the first few slides that defined machinima, gave a basic overview of machinima history, etc. and turned it into Machinima! With Officer Dan. I ultimately decided the film might be a little too bloody to show to the festival executives so I made a cleaner version to show at the presentation. The presentation was a success and everyone seemed to like the video. A few days later, ABP released the original cut of Machinima! With Officer Dan on YouTube and Machinima.com.
-Around this time Drivel also launched the new ABP website that he had been designing and Tommy Kraft joined ABP as a composer.
- Machinima! With Officer Dan: Street Talkin’ started out as an entry for a promotional video contest for the 2006 Machinima Festival in New York City. When we realized we didn’t have enough time to make the deadline, we transformed the film into an episode of the Officer Dan series. Meanwhile, we submitted Machinima! With Officer Dan to the Machinima Festival.
-That year, Machinima! With Officer Dan was nominated for a Mackie for Best Off-the-Shelf Machinima. We had finally accomplished our goal of getting one of ABP’s films into the same festival that had inspired the formation of our group in the first place. I was the only ABP member in attendance at the festival, but I had a great time and met a lot of machinima filmmakers and community members. However, we ended up not winning the award that year.
NEXT POST: 2007 and our Final Shift to the Source Engine
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5 Years of ABP: 2005
We’re entering our fifth year here at Amorphous Blob Productions and so we thought it might be fun to look all the way back to the beginning and do a retrospective on how far we’ve come. We’re going to be covering one year of ABP history every few days.
Pre-2005: Before Amorphous Blob
Before 2005, I ran a clan called {SITH} in the PC game Jedi Knight 3: Jedi Academy . The clan had a machinima production division called {SITH} Guild Productions which was originally geared at creating clan promos. Over time, as we became more interested in telling stories than promoting the clan, we began to make narrative films. It was around this time, during the making of a film called The Legend of Solaris, that drivel became my main conspirator and second hand man. He served as the main ingame actor and the principle creative advisor on the project. Soon, drivel’s brother, Pickle, joined the team as well.
Later on, Spock joined the team as an in-game actor and voice actor. The films we made were pretty bad, but we didn’t mind because we were having fun. At the time, we had no idea that what we were making was called “machinima” and that it was a wider phenomenon involving many other games.
2005: Birth of Amorphous Blob
In August 2005 I stumbled across a New York Times article called “The Xbox Auteurs”. It was about Red vs. Blue and seemed to be describing exactly what me and my team had been doing for years—using games to create animated films. The article referred to this art-form as “machinima” so I excitedly googled the word and quickly discovered that there was a vibrant machinima community on Machinima.com, machinima festivals, and tons of people all over the world making machinima. That November I decided to attend the 2005 Machinima Film Festival in New York City to get an idea of what great machinima looks like. My mind was blown by what I saw. The festival was extraordinary and the films were fantastic. I came out of the festival both crushed and exhilarated. Crushed because I finally realized how darn bad my films were and exhilarated because I now had a goal. I admired machinima like Terran Gregory’s and Ezra Ferguson’s The Return and Jason Choi’s Only The Strong Survive with their beautiful cinematography and incredibly high production values. I promised myself that one day I’d make a film worthy of this machinima festival. It was time to get serious about machinima production!
I left the {SITH} clan and started a new production group with drivel, Spock, and a few others from {SITH} Guild Productions. Drivel came up with a catchy new name, designed a new logo, and launched the first ABP website. Amorphous Blob Productions was born!
-Our first machinima under our new name was Star Wars Gangsta Rap: JKA Edition. We took the song (with permission) from the popular flash animation Star Wars Gangsta Rap and made a machinima version in Jedi Knight 3: Jedi Academy. To this day, the machinima remains our most popular film in terms of views (mostly due to the fact that it featured the famous song by BentTV). It was during the making of this film that PowerDusk and Mace Solo (the future voice of Officer Dan) joined ABP.
NEXT POST: 2006 and the Birth of Officer Dan
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ABP Update
I just got back from beautiful, sunny Costa Rica and thought I’d update everyone about what’s happening at ABP.
We are well into post-production on our sci-fi/crime project. Talented Moviestorm machinimator and voice actor Jorge Campos has joined the voice cast along with professional actor Joe Thomas. Tommy Kraft is also working on some visual effects for the film. Very soon we will be moving into the last stages of post-production which includes music scoring, sound design, and some tweaking of the visuals.
Here is another teaser image from the film. The man in the chair is the main character, Howard Grant:
In other news, Clockwise: Part 1 (the sequel to our award-winning Clockwork) is finally nearing completion!! Phil “Overman” Rice has finished up an amazing score for the movie including two original songs sung by Phil himself! Meanwhile, Ricky Grove is hard at work on the sound design. We’re really excited to show everyone the film! Clockwise: Part 1 is only the first of three films that will ultimately be recombined into one longer film. We had originally intended to release Clockwise in five parts but we decided to cut the script down and are now planning to release it as a trilogy.
2010 is going to be a good year for ABP. That’s all the news for now. We’ll keep you updated.
- Nefarious Guy
