Pretium Vita

I've been working on the article I meant to put up this week, but it's just not forming up as well as I would like.  It's an important issue and I want to do it justice, and for some reason my writing lately has felt kind of like that last paper you need to write at 4:00 AM the night before your final is due.  As a result, I decided I'd rather deliver a good article to you later than try and pump out something mediocre, especially on the topic I've been writing about.  You'll find out what it is next week, in an article that will hopefully do justice to the topic.

So I'll use the placeholder I've had prepared for just this situation, if you'll excuse a bit of advertising myself.  Last year my university had its annual film festival, where the 10 best of the submitted 10-minute films were shown at a ceremony and awarded in various categories based on the judges' decisions.  I decided to make a film for it.  For the sake of being different (and because I'd messed with it before and really enjoyed it), I made a machinima using Halo: Reach.  Most entries were live action, of course, but this festival had seen a few alternative types of films, including stop-motion and animation.  Machinima, however, had never been done before, and I wanted to see how well it was received.  So, I made Pretium Vita.

In the end, it did not win any awards, though Jessica Nelson was nominated as best supporting actress for her role as Rachel.  One of the judges came to me later and explained that, being unfamiliar with machinima, the judges were unaware as to how much effort had gone into the film on my part, and did not award it anything because they thought the program did most of the work.  But it was a good experience, and I think the final product turned out well.

Sorry you didn't get the usual article, but I hope you enjoy the film.  Next week I'll be back to normal.