Olibith is a French player who has succeeded in leaving his mark on the international WoW Community with his outstanding videos based upon the World of Warcraft universe. His blog, updated on a regular basis, gives us his new Machinima at a steady pace, along with his thoughts, small pieces of information, and his art. In this interview, we uncover this colorful character and delve into the little secrets underlying the creation of his masterpieces.
First, could you give us a quick introduction of who you are and what steps have led you to this point in your creative life?
I haven’t been a teenager for a long time even if I still have some of the symptoms. I’m a happy dad and a graphic designer/illustrator, currently seeking a new job.
I started playing WoW as soon as it became available, around February the 11th 2005; I must say that I had been waiting for a MMORPG to be released on the Macintosh for a while, as I didn’t have a PC back then. I had played Blizzard games since Diablo 2, and I was eagerly waiting for WoW, praying that my G4 733mhz would be powerful enough to run it. Luckily I finally found a PC between the cheese and the socks alley of a supermarket, as my poor lovely Mac didn’t like the 40 player raids. I started making Machinimas around April 2006. I didn’t know this word then, I just thought that the song from the Bonzo Dog Band, “Urban Spaceman,” went really well with my character, Olibith, and his role-playing.
I searched the web for a way to grab videos from the game; I had Windows Movie Maker on my PC, and made my first clip in one day. And then, through meeting people and trying new software, I found an enthralling way to mix images, sound, and ideas. Something like a palpable excitement, some adrenaline in suppository form; I haven’t been able to stop since then and I’ve got a good proportion of my cortex always running this as a background task.
Recently, your creations were selected for a few conventions about Machinimas all around the world. What is your reaction to this and did feedback from an international audience change anything with the way you work?
It’s quite recent and it gives me more motivation to continue. This does not change my way of seeing things, as the sine qua non condition is to have fun before anything else. I’ve just had a huge desire to improve my technical knowledge in order to have a much wider playground. Everything started when I tried to upload one of my musical videos onto a big WoW website one night, and the next morning, my movie was listed as the “movie of the day!” I was totally nuts.
This is when I started to exchange mails with other machinima makers, taking their advice, and, more specifically, when I started watching movies made by other people. It was a slap in the face, as the quality and the professionalism of some guys were beyond my imagination. I still wonder how I could have captivated the viewers with my first videos and the freeware I used back then. This was the biggest change in my way of working: going from freeware to pro software, which allowed me to do almost anything from video incrustation, special effects, the use and creation of sound effects, audio mixing, dialog and voice dubbing, storyboards… I was screwed; I would never have my Netherdrake. More than the audience, it was the international machinima community that changed and is still changing my way of having fun.
What do you think about the French Machinima scene? What trials did you have to go through in order to be more present on the international scene? How are your contacts with other French Machinima makers?
Climbing the steps
Being a moviemaker also involves participating in film festivals and contests in order to promote your own productions. Olibith understands this very well, and has recently left his dark video editing room for the sparkle and glitter of show business, and, of course, the acknowledgement of his peers. It was in Barcelona in 2007 that the Bitfilm Festival took place, and awarded our little friend Olibith with the “Machinima Award” for his piece of work entitled “I'm Only Sleeping”.
I started to look directly at the international websites about WoW and didn’t see many French people there. The language is clearly an obstacle for the viral and anarchic broadcasting of our productions.
The real machinima lovers are only a fistful in each country. If I wanted a real audience, I had to be international, and as my taste in the matter of movies and music was mostly Anglo-Saxon, it was a no-brainer for me. So, no, no contact with my fellow French citizens, but they are more than welcome to join me where everything takes place - the machinima scene is growing more each year.
Most of your creations are full of a very peculiar humor, how do you set up your limits? Do you use the famous Gnomish screen tests to evaluate your gags?
I only have one limit: never hurt anybody’s feelings. Otherwise, it just has to make me laugh so I push the idea until it no longer makes me laugh, then I take a step back, and here I am: the perfect balance. The funny thing is, people don’t have the same limits everywhere in the world; the most borderline gags get much stronger positive feedback from France than from anywhere else. Our childhood wasn’t forged by the same comic artists all around the world. And about those famous Gnomish Screen-tests, gnomes have already so many gags to be evaluated that they can’t stay silent during a movie projection! Just go to a meeting from Gnomes Inc. on Kirin Tor, and you’ll see how much bustle there is! Ok, you need to speak the gnome language (and French), but you have to try. Just set your buzzbox to original language with subtitles.
How much time do you spend directing a short movie and what are the big steps involved?
The idea can take a lot of time to be profiled and take shape - as an example, as I’m writing this, it’s been 15 days that I’m ruminating over something and I’m just on the verge of seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. But when it starts, it never ends. I usually start with a rough story board, writing down all the emerging ideas in about one to two hours. Then I directly start a sequence, the one which will reassure me the most on the viability and the feasibility of the concept.
The video editing can be really swift if the original idea is really simple. With “I'm Only Sleeping” it took me sometimes up to 5 hours of video editing for only 10 seconds of the final product (yup, I still have my disposable PC), but on average, let’s say it’s about 5 hours of editing for 30 seconds to 1 minute of the movie. Then comes the voice recording. I can tell you that when I try to sound like an orc doing a commercial speech, an angry elf female or a surprised chicken, I lose all kind of credibility in my living room. And doing this while everyone’s sleeping is out of the question!
Once it’s done, I work on the sound environment and sound effects: if I can successfully and quickly do what I want, the synch of audio and effects takes one full evening. Right after, I watch everything in a loop and I cut a piece here, add an effect there, and redo a whole sequence… I watch everything again one time for the sound, one more time for the colors, and one more for the luminosity etc. etc. etc… This is roughly five hours of psychopathic activities, but they are mandatory.
Then comes the time for rendering, where you click on “ok” and spend a few hours blowing on the computer hoping that it doesn’t freeze. Last, but not least, I upload the file to the usual websites and hide myself in a corner waiting for the verdicts of the viewers, if there are any. Once everything is done, I usually go into a kind of depression, an empty state of mind where I start to farm again, then an idea pops up and bam! I’m back to the beginning of the process described here.
Finally, do you have some advice for beginning directors?
The only advice I have is to never do artistic choices based upon the anticipated reaction of the viewers. The only person you know well enough to identify their expectations is yourself, so please yourself, amuse yourself, scare yourself. What’s left is only the cherry on the top of a cake where you are the baker!
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
