Here is the final version of Ending With Andre, my first attempt at machinima.
Ending With Andre was selected for the 2005 Machinima Film Festival in New York. It screened on November 12, 2005 at the Museum of the Moving Image.
The file is 33 Mb. This movie is in QuickTime format.
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Download Ending With Andre
I have just begun a Masters by research degree. By project. The project is a television program. I know how to make a TV program but I am not sure how to frame it as research. I understand this is quite a contentious issue within universities.
Here is Episode 1 of Ending With Andre, my first attempt at machinima.
This is very much a draft version. For a start, it’s got me doing the voice-over. I think it would be better with a female voice, although probably staying in the third person.
Mills Mess is a three ball juggling trick I have been trying to master for several months. It is particularly difficult because all three balls follow a different path through the air. I’m getting to the stage after a great deal of practice where I can Mills Mess pretty consistently, which is a very satisfying feeling. I also feel it is a process where I have learnt a lot about juggling and why I like it.
In general, I am a very rational person. Juggling is not at all rational. Juggling teachers I have had are prone to say “Don’t think about it, do it”. Which is a statement that somewhat offends me. I like to understand things I am doing and I can’t really accept that understanding something would get in the way of doing it properly. Yet I think I now know what they mean.
Learning a juggling trick is very much about going through a process – usually of endless repetition and much dropping of the balls – during which, in my experience, cerebral activities are very important but conscious, rational ones aren’t. It is about throwing and catching three (or more) balls with a high level of speed and control. The balls are flying through the air so quickly that if you try to think through the mechanics of what you are doing you drop them. But, over a period of time, your brain seems to be rewired so that what previously seemed impossibly complicated now seems straightforward.
Incidentally, the same issue applies to watching the balls. If you try to focus on any particular ball as you are throwing and catching, they all hit the ground. So to juggle effectively, you seem to need a vague, overall vision of what is happening without watching anything in particular.