2023 Machinima: My Year in Review
I’m pretty proud of my work this year. I grew -alot- from ‘The Unseen Visitor’ to the first full episode of Namara and I’m so proud of my growth. I learned so much about filming, lighting, editing, and my skills literally grew exponentionally.
The promo I made for Bay City Studios is something I’m pretty proud of and I feel like it truely reflects my growth over the year. I think it’s a fun habit I’ll do every year, clipping my past footage to make a little reel that shows the highlights from that year. You can see it below.
Finally, I had some pretty big accomplishments this year that I’m proud of. They were as followed:
Bay City Studios: It’s not just me making videos anymore. There are more of us, and we’re working together to make something - together. This is so exciting for me, because I -love- collaberating with people that also love creating things in Second Life. I really hope that the ‘Casting Call’ group proves to be a valuable resource not just for my team for creating new machinimas moving forward, but that other ‘movie makers’ will also be able to find ‘actors’ for their creations moving forward. I think video is such a powerful tool for Second Life, maybe even it’s MOST powerful when it comes to marketing. The more cool content out there, the more likely Second Life is to be around for years to come. And I’m ALL about that.
Namara: I made a 30 minute episode of a show. No, actually - it’s bigger than that. I started a machinima series. HECK YEAH.
Blogger: I’m pretty proud of all of the work I’ve done for every event and brand I’ve blogged for. I’ve also really enjoyed watching other creatives and how they choose to market the items they pick. I consistently blog for BeSpoke (which you guys already know), and I really like the team and how flexible they are. They make it easy to want to work hard to make their item look good.
Bay City Machinima Education Center: This has been a pet project I’ve slowly been working on all year. It’s been ‘open to the public’, but never formally announced (until now), and it’s full of displays and links to different machinima makers I’ve found and studied. It’s also got displays for different ‘how to videos’ that not only I’ve created, but other people have created on how to do different things with filming, building etc. (I totally nerded out and gave them all ‘stars’ on a ‘Bay City Walk of Fame’, too.) It’s been a fun way to display all of the learnings I’ve gained over the last year in an ‘educational form’, and I hope that other budding 'film makers’ like myself find it useful in their creative endeavors.
Last but not least, special thanks to a few people:
Virginia Stella: She made a comment on a video of mine (not a mean one), that -really- pushed me to consider uping my game and changing my camera angles.
Gonje Anton: He was my ‘partner in crime’ for almost everything this year. Any time I needed feedback, an idea, to be pushed, a re-do, an avatar, or help with lighting, he was there. And when I say ‘an avatar’, this guy is THE GUY to find all the deals and make avatars. I’m so grateful that he handles the shopping for the mountain of avatars it takes to make Namara - Ya’ll: He’s got a SPREADSHEET.(Love you, Boo.)
See ya’ll at the Prim Drop!! :)
