Winners:

1. Pigment Pye
2. Moebius Overdrive and Allen Kerensky
3. Zigz Stardust

Honorable Mention:

• Mars Matahari and Lilly Lovell
• RamessesIII Pharaoh
• Karheil Lynch

Because Short Fuze is the one giving out prizes, I decided to let them judge. However, the email she gave me to send the films to bounced. I had to contact her through another method and that delayed her ability to judge. I would have explained this earlier, but the death of Ginny Talamasca hit me kind of hard. Oh, and I can’t be in SL much because my video card is overheating and I have to wait for advance payments to come in to get a new one, or have my computer be out of commission for 3+ weeks.

But! I see that Silver and Goldie Goodman took it upon themselves to contact each and every entrant and host their files centrally. Good for them! Now you have a place to go to view the all. Good luck everyone.

Winners will be announced on Wednesday.  The judges are currently reviewing the entries.  I’ve been working on the launch of the new site for all things MMO - Massively.

It has been called to my attention that the Alt-Zoom website is not just broken, but seriously infected with malware.  Please do not visit this site.

If you have visited this site at all, please scan your computer for infection.  I am hosting the Ed Wood Fest on my site so that you won’t have to visit there.

I apologize for the inconvenience.

“It Came From the Origin of Where Bad Things Come From”

Good luck to everyone. Remember to contact me if you need anything!

Given that this post may be buried at a later point, you can also find it in the top right corner as a page.

At 12:01am PDT on Saturday, October 27th, I will post the theme for this year’s festival on the site. You will have roughly 48 hours to complete your Machinima. It is due by 11:59pm PDT on Sunday, October 28th. If you have any questions, I have provided my contact info on the Ed Wood site. Please keep me up informed if you are running a bit late.

For those not familiar with Second Life, movies must be in Quicktime format in order to be viewed in-world. Therefore I am establishing some ground rules for submitting to streamline the process:

• The theme name MUST be in the title of the movie.
• Movies must be 10 minutes or less.
• Movies must be available for download (use blip.tv if you don’t have a server), or encoded to Quicktime H.264 video with AAC sound.
• Please include your group name, nickname, real name, or Second Life name when submitting.
• Please include the name of the platform(s) you used to make the Machinima when submitting.
• Please submit it to machinimoo [at] gmail.

Methods of contact:

• Skype = moomoney
• AIM = moomoneySL
• YIM = sasharudie
• MSN = mooofnapa@hotmail.com
  
• PHONE = 254-230-1444

This festival is put on by fans of Ed Wood and Second Life (Open to other mediums this year!). No Infringement is intended on either of them. By submitting a entry, you grant Alt-Zoom Studios the right to use your film in promotional material, unless you request otherwise. Films with illegal or broadly offensive elements will not be eligible for screening or prizes. We reserve the right to refuse entries not meeting guidelines.

Do you have a Machinima product or a prize (Cash, Lindens, etc) that you’d like to donate to the Ed Wood Festival?  Let me know!  machinimoo [at] gmail.

Short Fuze, creators of independant Machinima software, Moviestorm, have graciously agreed to donate some prizes to the Ed Wood Festival pot!

Here is their prize structure:

1st prize: A free copy of Domestic Drama 02 (when it’s released!), plus
1500 moviestorm points.

2nd prize: A free copy of Domestic Drama 02, plus 1,000 moviestorm points.

3rd prize: A free copy of Domestic Drama 02, plus 500 points

Back in October of 2005, the former Ben Linden, known to the public as BuhBuhCuh Fairchild, set out to create a festival where residents could make machinima and enter it into competition as a group. Thus, Alt-Zoom Studios was born and the Ed Wood Festival would be their first of many festivals. Since then, machinima has grown quite popular, even scoring fancy Hollywood deals.

Come celebrate the third year of Alt-Zoom Studios this weekend, starting with the Ed Wood Festival Highlights of Yesteryear, where I’ll be showing the 13 submitted films from the last two years. They’re bad. REALLY bad - but in a good way! That event is in Lukanida on Friday, October 26th, at 7pm PDT/SLT.

Then, at midnight on Saturday, October 27th, the theme (title) for the Ed Wood Festival will be announced, and residents will have until Sunday night at 11:59pm PDT to submit their entries to moo Money. On Halloween night, Wednesday, October 31st, at 7pm PDT, we will gather in Lukanida to watch the films and the winners will be announced shortly after.

I am inviting all residents to come be a part in the tradition of BAD machinima! For more information, please visit http://edwood.moomoney.net/. If residents have any questions, they can contact moo Money in-world or email her at machinimoo [at] gmail. Hope to see you there!

***2006 POST*** 

When Ben put out the call for machinimists to participate in the Ed Wood Festival, he wanted to open it up to anyone. He sent notices to several of the bigger gaming news sites. I don’t know if he anticipated a negative reaction, but he certainly got one on Kotaku.

It started off with a writer calling SL residents incompetent:

Ed Wood and Second Life go together like chocolate and peanut butter. After all, Ed was a director of inspired incompetence; Second Life is an entire virtual world filled with that incompetence.

Then it progressed to comment flaming, with readers speculating that it must be a slow news week and that they might actually HAVE TO WORK. Ben had the perfect response, though:

;.; My news was better. And I have to take issue with the statement that SL is filled with incompetence - unlike most VWs, competence is not measured by how long you are logged in, killing rats, but rather, how good you are. I understand it is hard to get used to a world that is mostly built by the untrained, but having been a part of that community for over 4 years now, it is amazing how competent those same untrained users have become as time progresses.

That is kind of the crux of the problem - those who are infatuated with SL (like myself) see it for it’s potential, and are investing in that by contributing to the community early. Those who hate on SL, like all the previous commentors and many of Kotaku’s authors, see it how it is today, and are unwilling to invest in it when there seem to be so many more “complete” worlds, even if they are unlikely to grow to be more.

Oh well, it’s still a fun time, and it does draw on many of SL’s strengths - so I hope some folks may want to participate in this years festival.

You rock, Ben! Keep up the good work and thank you for caring about the community.