Wayken Ayres

What kind of help are you looking for?

Is this a full length feature, or a short film? In any production, it's a matter of money and who's willing to put in their time to do it. How much depends on the quality of production you are looking for. At Machinima Studios, I am raising funds to conduct a full studio operation, but I'm not ready to take on writers quite yet. In live-action filming, you would find a production company that is interested in your work (must be careful who you approach) and has the money, or has resources to obtain money to produce films. With machinima, it isn't as well defined. This is a topic of the September magazine issue by the way, so I do have some thoughts on the subject. Like I said, I'm not in the position to produce yet, but others may be if you search. I am raising funds...but that takes a while. I don't have a rich uncle...lol. Wish I did. Anyway, find a machinima creator that has the equipment and resources to create your film. I will warn, the average machinima creators (as far as I've seen anyway) prefer to create their own stuff and aren't interested in taking on someone else's project, particularly if the cost and time is on them and they may not see their money back from it. Something to keep in mind. The more professional online machinima communities may be a good place to start also. One could be slmachinimaarts.ning.com to find some machinima creators. You're welcome to contact me at wayne@machinimastudios.tv if you want, although I'm not sure how much help I can be at this point.

Just launched an online magazine for machinima. It's free to read and download. I am looking to grow the publication bigger and better each month. Take a look at the first issue. http://issuu.com/waynegraves/docs/issue001

Hi Medhue, I know things are changing a bit with youtube, I will have to do more research on what the changes are. But you're right, what you get from such sites is minimal, if anything, unless you have a huge number of viewers, perhaps in the millions. So, someone shouldn't expect to see anything right away. A lot of consistent, quality work may result in something down the road, but no guarantees. I can certainly understand any frustration with making marketable machinima in SL, although I think it can be done. Prep work in machinima is like any other film medium, there is always a huge amount of preproduction steps to work through. I don't build sets myself, I buy sets or hire builders. Money is an issue, but there some cheap options to get started with, even free stuff that can be easily upgraded if necessary. I have a post on my site that describes using a green screen. Live action productions use it, so why not machinima? There are some tricks to getting audio and avatar lips to work in post production, but I'm not going to get into that here, it's something I'm going to be putting into my blogs at http://machinimatalk.com

This is a blog from http://machinimatalk.com Making money with machinima: There is a lot of machinima projects out there, but one of the biggest questions I see on forums and blogs (besides “how to” questions) is the question of making money. How (if possible) does someone make money with machinima? I can certainly understand wanting to get paid for one’s work and in these tough economic times people are looking for ways to make an extra income.Or least a few extra bucks. With most machinima being game play footage, walkthroughs, or other tutorials, making money is difficult, particularly when copyrighted material is being used. If you’re good enough you may be able to get hosted on sites such as Machinima.com and get paid for views, but I can’t speak to the legalities of this method, since I don’t use this form of machinima. I can only speak for what I do and what I’ve learned through my experience. I use Second Life as my engine, a platform that does allow commercial use. It also allows building your sets from the ground up, so it can fit onto whatever storyline you desire. Personally, I prefer script based machinima, so Second Life works well for my needs. I buy the licenses to the music I use, and if I need to film on a built sim, I will ask permission from the sim owners. This helps cover me for commercial use. Now, if you have a product that you know is ready for commercial distribution, the question then becomes…”how do I make money?” Unless you have money for marketing, this may not be the easiest question to answer. One common way is to have your work hosted on sites that share advertising revenue. Unless you’re a partner with youtube, it won’t pay to host your material. There are other sites, such blip.tv which shares ad revenue with the content creators. Just do a search for video hosting sites, then check to see if they share revenue, their method of payment, etc. The main problem now is…traffic. Lets say you host on blip. Well, like youtube and other hosting sites you may get some initial hits, but they don’t last long as your video gets buried under a host of others being uploaded to the site. Not a formula for longevity. Something that I have done is host the video on my own site. I do have my videos hosted on blip, then I embed them on my site so visitors can stream the show from there. I can have money come from a few places at this point. One, the revenue from showing the video itself through revenue sharing sites. Two, selling a high definition copy of the videos (assuming I have all the rights to do so) with any extra footage not seen through your sites video stream that you might include to entice sales. Three, I can also have affiliate links on the site in case someone is looking to spend some money, keeping in mind not to overdue it with the ads. So, I now need traffic to get the most views I can to make the most money I can! Make sense? Here’s where your marketing skills come into play, especially if you don’t have money to throw at the problem. You can still use the video hosting sites, such as youtube, that don’t pay. If you have a storyline machinima, make a trailer, or perhaps a few different ones, 30 seconds to a minute in length, with your website at the end. Load the trailers on the sites to advertise your film. Not at the same time, mind you. If you make a few trailers that look different and load each a couple days apart from each other, this will help you keep your “advertisement” visible longer before they’re completely buried. You can also create a blog series to submit to major blog sites. If you make a series on whatever aspect of machinima you choose, such as your story concept, the making of, why you enjoy the art, etc., this will help keep your information in front of an audience. I use Posterous, which is a blog site that you can link your other blog accounts to and have one blog sent to each of your accounts. This is a huge time saver if you open a number of accounts, from blogger to twitter, even facebook. If you have an interesting show concept, perhaps you can start a video blog or podcast and talk about it on a regular basis, of course linking your website to your hosting accounts so people can find your machinima. If you have some extra money, some paid ads might be an idea, but be careful with this one, since you don't know how well your machinima will do. The market isn't as well defined in this area as it is in live action film. These are just a few ideas. As a personal disclaimer, check with the licensing of the game engine you use and be sure you’re not going to break any laws. I wish you the best of luck. Visit our new site at http://machinimatalk.com

As I launch a machinima magazine (scheduled to launch January, but want to move it up), I am looking for more content from people who have something to say. Looking for articles. The magazine is another way to get people from outside the art to take notice. You can see what I'm doing at http://machinimastudios.tv I am looking for people who have been involved in machinima (actively) for a long while and has experience in their art...perhaps has reached a certain level of quality in their craft. An article can be on anything you desire to talk about...where machinima is going, your obstacles and overcoming, tricks on finding opportunities, what makes good machinima...anything that can connect a reader with the artist and the art. An article should be at least a page, if not two or three. Of course a bio and information on the writer will be included. Unfortunately, I am unable to pay for articles at this time, but I will do what I can to advertise you and your work. You can contact me through the site.