An Open Letter to SIFF Supporters & Participants
Dear Sims Machinima Community:
It is no secret that the Sims International Film Festival – the only Sims machinima festival of its kind - is undergoing a lot of changes, including a change of management. An official statement on the reasons behind the management change will be made public at the end of this festival season. I can assure you that the new SIFF management/owners, myself and Gus Rockman, have the best interests of SIFF at heart. We have been with SIFF for a number of years and understand the importance it has to the Sims Community.
I would like to take this time to share with everyone some of the changes that will be made and some of the things that we have in mind for the future of the machinima festival as we are putting together the new website.
Director profiles/machinima database: As most of you are aware we have been asking for directors that have been involved in SIFF to send us a brief bio with picture and links to their YouTube channel and social networking sites. We are building a searchable machinima database of everything that has been shown over the SIFF seasons that will link to director profiles. You will be able to access director information, relevant machinima (embedded from YouTube – no leaving the site to watch something), and posters all in one place. We feel that this will be an awesome promotional tool.
Articles: We will be hosting written tutorials, director interviews, machinima reviews, articles relevant to voice actors and more directly on the site. This will make them easily accessible (you will be able to search the site by keywords) and will allow Chrome/Firefox plugins to translate them into different languages. (As a side note we are looking into an onsite translator.) It is our goal to help machnimators as much as possible. That means everyone from the person who is just getting started in machinima to providing resources that the seasoned machinimators will find helpful.
YouTube: YouTube will be used to host not only SIFF playlists, but we will be adding our own original content in the way of tutorials and machinima reviews.
Podcasts: Podcasting will allow us to do interviews with directors in real time. It will also potentially provide a platform where people can call in or use chat to interact with us and our guests in real time. We will also use this platform to discuss SIFF events during SIFF season, review machinima and more.
SIFF: This is something we are really excited about. SIFF is too important, too exciting, too big to a spot on a dropdown menu or be buried in a forum. SIFF will now take place in real time right on the website. The front page of the site will feature the trailer playlist as it grows, and on release date those trailers will be changed out for the full length entries. There will be an easy to find featured gallery for promotional posters.
These are just a few of the things we have planned. There are a number of things we are working out the details on and will reveal when we have them finalized. We will also provide a small forum for people to ask for and receive help and feedback as well as promote their projects. We also plan on providing a site chat box for members to interact with each other.
If anyone has any suggestions on how we can offer support to the machinima community or help promote everyone, we are open to them.
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