On Writing, Blogging, and Machinimating

Is a blog supposed to be a diary? Like my handwritten one, this is full of stops and starts. What I learned all over again is that writing a long academic article is much harder than making a machinima, or.... I am not working as hard on my films as I am on my long academic articles. In an article you have a timeline and a deadline, just like a machinima, but instead of clips to be placed next to each other you have paragraphs. In writing there are no overlays; it's very hard to express two different ideas to be taken in at a glance, unless you play on words. Instead of looking for animations you comb research. It is far more difficult to "dissolve" from one idea to the next, or put them in a coherent order. Instead of story or visual effect you have argument and abstraction, and instead of music you have rhetoric that has to please the ear and the mind. It is hardly easier to write a poem--music and image have to be contained in few words. There are writers out there whose prose flows out like milk and honey on first try and it's good. It's agony for me; I average one article a year, and three books in twenty-one. I average about seven machinima a year (so far) and this different form of expression is a blessed relief. Perhaps I will get better at blogging, but I doubt it. Is it a form of journalism? I haven't uncovered its philosophy.

My best machinima in 2011 (best seen on vimeo):

KAPHD

What Isn't Underneath

Two Ways of Looking at You

Yeah

Love Prayer