Moviestorm hits the Big Time

It's been a hell of a fortnight. While we left the rest of the team at home to get on with building beta 1.4, David and I went on a whirlwind tour of LA and New York, meeting some of the people who have been involved in the machinima scene since, well, forever. We did a demo at the Big Time Picture Company, which meant that we were able to show movies in a real Hollywood screening room, on a screen twice as tall as me.

Matt dreams about hitting the Big Time
Hey, I can dream - I'm in Hollywood!

Well, almost. Of course, the one thing we forgot is that Hollywood screening rooms are geared up for projecting movies. Y'know, as in actual film? So we turn up with our lovely modern new-fangled laptop, expecting to connect it to a projector.... d'oh! Well, the nice guys at Big Time say that's no problem, we'll just.... oh, you have a Windows PC? If we'd had a Mac, it'd be just a minor problem, but a PC?

David finally gets the living room of his dreams
You can tell he's the CEO, he's in the suit!

So, after half an hour, we mostly get that sorted out, then we realise we've made dumb move #3. The lap-top's now in the projection booth, and I'm expecting to be able to run Moviestorm and talk people through what I'm doing. Projection booths are soundproof, dummy! They won't hear a frackin' word I'm saying! Eventually, with the aid of a speakerphone, we finally get sorted, half an hour behind schedule. Which is OK, because when we said 6pm, we didn't think about LA traffic, and pretty much everyone else is half an hour late too.

Frank, Jason, Ricky & Ingrid
You meet strange people at midnight in LA.....

When we finally got under way, it all seemed to go pretty well. At least, when we suggested dinner after the demo, none of them ran away screaming, so that was a good sign.

The next few days were a blur of meetings, interspersed with zipping up and down Santa Monica Boulevard, accidentally gatecrashing a party at the Beverly Hilton, airports, lots of interesting restaurants, and more anonymous hotel rooms. However, it was great to find time to meet up with several of our beta testers, and find out from them in person what they think of Moviestorm, and what they'd like to see us doing next. In a word, finish the damn thing, and release it - okay, okay, guys, we're doing it!

Great seeing y'all - let's do it again!