The niche I’m personally focused on with my own HSM machinima efforts is dramatic storytelling. My personal theory is that if I can tell a sufficiently compelling story, the audience will forgive (and, if I’m exceedingly lucky, perhaps not notice) the technical shortcomings. That said, I’m trying some different stuff that isn’t normally seen in Home machinima — step printing, warp effects, overcranking, color spectrum manipulation, different kinds of transitions, even breaking the fourth wall by intercutting real-world photographs — in the hope that it feels more seamless and slightly different than the normal fare.

Question: think I should invest in Sony Vegas? I know you use it for the HomeCast, which is a consistently brilliant product, so I’m curious as to what features it offers that you use most frequently.

Another example of this hairstyle (and color) in different lighting can be found in the Periselene video.

“silencieux” is an attempt at minimalist filmmaking. No furniture pieces, no dialogue, nothing. I wanted to see if a story could be told entirely through images.

The challenge, of course, is how to capture the sense of a haunting with the limitations of Home machinima. How to capture the disjointed sense of fractured time, disembodied apparitions, and so forth. It’s a story told very indirectly, solely through intimation. The only hint to the story, which isn’t in the film, is the excerpt from Poe’s “Annabel Lee” poem. When it comes to gothic poetry, it doesn’t get much better.

If we’ve pulled this off correctly, the film should have a melancholy and slightly unsettling feel to it.

Regarding the glasses: I’ve never been able to get the eyes quite right on my avatar, so I just dispensed with it and put on aviator glasses. Terra’s glasses actually produce a very creepy effect at about 3:06 in the video (blow it up to full screen to see); the way the lighting effects hit her glasses, it looks like her eyes are just these black, soulless voids. Which, considering she’s a ghost in the film, makes it highly appropriate.

“COCORICO”^^ (cock-a-doodle-do in french,rallying cry of the french whose national emblem is the Cock)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTFpf6WaU7I

Norse, i just hope the angels do not really have kidnapped your love …
sorrow.