Machinima Artist Thuyen Nguyen Directs Cutscenes for Ubisoft's "Heroes Over Europe"

Thuyen Nguyen (me!), writer and director of machinima films including "An Unfair War" and "The Most Powerful Person in the World," was enlisted to author and direct the in-game cinematic cutscenes for Ubisoft's upcoming World War II air combat game "Heroes Over Europe." Using the in-house authoring tool, Nguyen created over 100 real-time cutscenes for the game, helping tell the story of brave Allied pilots and their battle for air superiority against the forces of Axis Germany. The cutscenes took almost a year to complete, which included storyboard development, authoring, action choreography and effect passes.

Developed by Transmission Games in Melbourne, Australia, "Heroes Over Europe" is the sequel to the award-winning "Heroes of the Pacific," and sees players participating in fierce air battles in the skies of Europe. The game has 14 missions, over 40 authentic World War II aircraft, and has online multiplayer support for 16 players. It will be released in September 2009 for Xbox 360, PlayStation3 and PC.

Official Website: http://www.heroesovereurope.com/

An Unfair War Wins Machinima Expo 2008 Jury Award

At the Machinima Expo 2008, An Unfair War was selected as one of the 6 Jury Award winners, alongside Leo Lucien-Bay's "Beast", Ian Chisholm's "Clear Skies", Michelle Petit-Mee's "The Snow Witch", Kerria Seabrooke's "Tiny Nation" and J. Rojas' "Turbulence".

I woke up at 5:30am to attend the presentation ceremony at Jamville in Second Life. It was my first time in Second Life, and it was pretty cool. Here's some pics and commentary of the event. Unfortunately I didn't stay long - had to go to work, being a Monday morning and all. Damn American time zones!


Here I am at the Expo site in Jamville. I didn't bother too much with customizing my avatar, but did put on some sunglasses just in case there was someone else like me.


The outdoor screen. The ceremony started with the screening my The Most Powerful Person in the World. Only saw half of it though because I was busy trying to figure out how to get the video streaming properly.


A view of the audience. A good turn out for the ceremony. There were some technical issues with the voice chat, but ultimately resolved. I was sitting at the back, but moved to the front row to hear the stage better.


That's me as the ceremony continued on. Some hot girls behind me - hopefully they're girls in real life too!


A view from the stage. Note the oversized novelty-sized MachinExpo award on the left.


Me on stage accepting my award, standing alongside the other recipients. I didn't have a mic, so I was unable to voice chat and so typed instead. Not sure if everyone in the audience heard my typing, but I made some good jokes :)


A group photo of the Jury Award recipients. A few of them work at BioWare, and if BioWare is reading this, if you're willing to hire me and ship me and my family to Canada, I'm willing to accept. I'm a machinima director and a game designer!

I wish I could've stayed longer, because it really was nice to virtually hang out with fellow machinima makers. To everyone who came, the organizers and the other filmmakers, thanks for a good Expo!

Machinima Interview

I was interviewed via Skype about machinima and my films. I think it came out very well. You can download and listen to it from machinima.com here.

An Unfair War at Machinima Expo 2008

An Unfair War has been selected as a finalist at this year's Machinima Expo, which is happening on November 9th in Second Life. I'll hopefully be there, if work doesn't kill me first.

MachinExpo 2008 Finalist Announcement

Update: The Most Powerful Person in the World will also be shown (however not in competition). Here is the Second Life link for direct access to the expo site: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Jamville/151/214/23

Me on TV

I was interviewed on ABC's Good Game TV program a few weeks ago, and the episode went to air yesterday. I talk about The Most Powerful Person in the World, sharing screen time with fellow CNF member Paul Callaghan. I'm on for only about 20 seconds, but any TV is good TV, eh?

Watch online here

I'm in The Age...

... interviewed about "Same As It Ever Was."

http://blogs.theage.com.au/screenplay/archives//008837.html

Same As It Ever Was

Production Date: February 29th 2008
Genre: Machinima
Written and Directed by: Thuyen Nguyen
Music by: Lackluster
Length: 3 minutes
Synopsis: Video game critics use the same arguments against gaming as they did for movies, television, music, comics, books...
As featured at: GameSetWatch, The Age, Sumea

Watch online at YouTube
Download high quality version from Archive.org

The Most Powerful Person in the World

Production Date: May 16th 2007
Genre: Machinima / Arthouse
Conceived and Edited by: Thuyen Nguyen
Music by: Lackluster
Length: 5 minutes
Synopsis: A love letter to video games.
As featured at: Gamesetwatch, Kotaku, The Age, Newsweek, Destructoid, Major League Gaming, Ain't It Cool News...

Download web version (5MB)
Watch online at YouTube
Download high quality version at Archive.org (151MB)

Profile of Me and My Machinima Works

Charlie Drying, a student from RMIT, interviewed me about my machinima films and wrote about it as part of his film research course. Included in the write-up are Bookstore 2&3 and An Unfair War, and also a profile on yours truly. The essay is online now - or at least, I've just found out about it :) So please read someone else's take on me instead of reading my propaganda. Thanks Charlie!

MachinimOz

Details for An Unfair War at Silver Lake Film Festival

An Unfair War will be screened as part of the Machinima Shorts program this Sunday May 6 at 4:45pm. You can buy tickets online here.

For some reason I can't access the official Silver Lake site. Here it is anyway: http://www.silverlakefilmfestival.org/

An Unfair War at Silver Lake Film Festival

An Unfair War will be screened at the 7th Silver Lake Film Festival in Los Angeles, USA. The festival will be on May 3-12 2007 and is one of the top 5 festivals in the city according to L.A. Weekly. Big thanks to Peter Brinson for selecting my film to be part of the machinima program!

Watch "An Unfair War"

Check out the Silver Lake Film Festival site

An Unfair War Festival Screenings

An Unfair War will be screened at the following festivals (Updated):

• Animatu (Portugal) - In Competition
• Bitfilm (Germany) - Screening
  
• Holland Animation Film Festival (The Netherlands) - Screening
• Bradford Animation Festival (U.K.) - Screening - see below
  

You'll note that my call for Bitfilm votes in a previous post didn't help. Oh well.

All three film festivals will be on in November, but unfortunately I won't be able to attend any of them, being half way across the world and all. Oh well x 2.

Update

Richard Gras showed An Unfair War at the Bradford Animation Festival and said, "You'll be pleased to know that your work was shown as part of the Best New Machinima screening at the National Museum of Photography, TV and film in the UK and was the only one that got an ovation (it was shown number 2 in the reel)." Thanks dude!

An Unfair War at Bitfilm Festival 06

Germany's Bitfilm Festival has selected An Unfair War for their machinima competition. A total of 15 films are now viewable online at their website where voting will determine this year's winner. Obviously, it would be great if it was me.

Click here and vote!

What people are saying about An Unfair War:

• "This is a quiet, sincere, anti-war film that has an impact that you just don't find in the mass of machinima being produced in Sims2." - gToon, archive.org review
• "It's telling that machinima can be used to produce such poignant and dramatic stuff - I forgot I was watching polygons almost immediately." - julian, selectparks.net
• "5 stars" - Sims99.com Rating Average
• "He could be Iraqi, Lebanese or an Israeli ~ which is why this animation is so effective." - Allen L Roland
• "The content and delivery is very moving, despite being an animation." - guerrilla news network
• "Very thought provoking" - Dxvid, mprem.com
• "An unusually mature example of machinima." - Ed Halter
• "Moving... surprisingly emotive" - Cory Doctorow
  

An Unfair War - Post Mortem

I've received various emails and comments about my last film An Unfair War. Some supportive, some critical. While a topic such as war is inherently controversial, what most people agree on is that the film's setting is the ongoing American invasion of Iraq. Now, I will admit a major mistake as a filmmaker with regards to this. The film was intended to be ambiguous about its setting and character. It wasn't necessarily meant to be about the Iraqi war - it was meant to be about every war. There are three things in the film that link it too closely to Iraq for my liking:

• Timing - The film was released as the war was (still is) ongoing. Obviously, an anti-war film released during that war is seen as a direct reaction to it.
• Character - The film's only character looks like an Arab, or so I've been told. He isn't though - he's Simlish. He's a video game character (cartoonish, as opposed to the ultrarealism of, say, Unreal 3), made from default parts from The Sims 2.
• Dialogue - One particular line in the film reads, "I don't care if I'm 'defended' or 'liberated'." I'm pretty sure those words were used by the Bush Administration to describe their war at some point.

Other than those points, the film offers no real clue to its setting. There's no naming of a specific country or a nationality or a religion. It was intended to be ambiguous so that the viewer puts their own politics into it, and from that, defines the film's setting and character. That's also why there's no voice over - as the viewer reads the dialogue, they define what the man sounds like in their minds: his tone and accent. The film's ambiguity (should) allow it to apply to any war, because while the location and the participants may change, the message is the same: innocent people die. If I could do a George Lucas, I'd cut about 30 seconds of the film with reference to the points above.

In the end, this film isn't about President Bush or Iraqi insurgents or Hezbollah guerrillas or the Israeli government or Sudanese warlords or Chechen rebels; it's about the people who are counted in the 'collateral damage' column. People who die because they are born as they are, living in the wrong place and at the wrong time.

An Unfair War Makes Headlines

An Unfair War has started to appear all around the web at other sites besides mine! While you can find the film at Sims99.com and Machinima.com, I think the ball really got rolling when Boing Boing said some kind words about it yesterday. EP3.es has an article on it too, and while the text is in Spanish (and therefore unreadable by me), the Flash layout is lovely. How come text looks better in a foreign language? And perhaps not surprisingly, An Unfair War has popped up on YouTube... twice... and I had nothing to do with either!

Thanks everyone!

An Unfair War

Production Date: June 7th 2006
Genre: Drama / Machinima
Written and Directed by: Thuyen Nguyen
Length: 5 minutes
Synopsis: From the middle of a warzone, an innocent man uses the internet to tell his story.
Screenings: Animatu (Portugal), Bitfilm (Germany), Holland Animation Film Festival (The Netherlands), Bradford Animation Festival (U.K.), Silver Lake Film Festival (USA)

Download web version (4MB)

Download high quality version at archive.org (32MB)

Transformers Jump!

Here's a physics and highlight reel using Atari's Transformers game which I made years ago but only now decided to share with the interweb. I guess you could call it Machinima, though quite unlike Bookstore 2 or 3 (see sidebar for links).

Why is it called "Jump"? Well, I guess you haven't heard of the famous Warthog Jump video (which you really should watch, even if you don't like Halo).

Apologies now for using the most-overused song in stunt videos (Blur's "Song 2") and a Michael Mann track (I was listening to Soulwax at the time)...

Bookstore at 2005 ION International Animation and Film Festival

Bookstore 2&3 has been officially selected for this year's ION Film Festival! Unlike the Machinima Film Festival, Bookstore will be shown in its entirety thus making ION's screening the U.S. premiere!

It's times like this that I wish I could afford airline tickets...

ION International Animation and Film Festival 2005 selections

Bookstore at 2005 Machinima Film Festival

Bookstore 2&3 has been selected for screening at the 2005 Machinima Film Festival in November. No award nominations, sadly. It'll be in the comedy category (not surprisingly).

2005 Award Nominations and Selections

2005 Machinima Film Festival

I just posted my entry into this year's Machinima Film Festival. I cut Bookstore 2 and Bookstore 3 together into one 15-minute film. The new Frankenstein-esque version is imaginatively entitled Bookstore 2&3.

Here's to its success, hopefully!

Bookstore 3 ~ Harry Strikes Back

Production Date: July 25th 2005
Genre: Comedy / Machinima
Starring: Mark Angeli, Justin Halliday, Warren Hawkes, Kate Inabinet, Thuyen Nguyen
Written and Directed by: Thuyen Nguyen
Length: 8 minutes
Synopsis: Tom, Richard and Emily are called into the Bookstore, unaware of the dangerous situation awaiting them...
Awards: Official selection, Machinima Film Festival 2005; Official selection, ION International Animation and Film Festival 2005

Download web version (6MB)

Download high quality version from archive.org (38MB)

Bookstore 2 in PC GAMER UK Magazine

Bookstore 2 ~ A Reunion of Sorts is featured on the coverdisc of this month's PC GAMER UK magazine as part of their monthly machinima showcase. Additionally, the original live-action Bookstore has been included as a bonus.

PC GAMER is Britain's best selling PC games magazine. Issue 149 is available now across the UK, and the rest of the world in shops that import the magazine.

Click here for a scan of the magazine article.

Machinima.com Again

Wow. Bookstore 2 is now on the front page of Machinima.com as a Featured Show! Thanks guys!

http://www.machinima.com

For more Bookstore 2 info, please check out my original post.

Machinima.com

Bookstore 2 has been listed at Machinima.com, the premiere site for all things machinima.

Check it out here.

Bookstore 2 ~ A Reunion of Sorts

Production Date: February 6th 2005
Genre: Comedy / Machinima
Starring: Mark Angeli, Lincoln Flynn, Justin Halliday, Warren Hawkes, Kate Inabinet, Thuyen Nguyen
Written and Directed by: Thuyen Nguyen
Length: 8 minutes
Synopsis: Tom wants to know what happened during Richard and Emily's date. Meanwhile, Harry finds two common souls with him in prison...
Awards: Machinima of the Month, PC GAMER UK Magazine June 2005; Official selection, Machinima Film Festival 2005; Official selection, ION International Animation and Film Festival 2005

Download web version (6MB)

Download high quality version from archive.org (37MB)