Explorers on Horses near Geyser

Three men and their horses, checking out a geyser in Yellowstone, circa 1915.  No idea which geyser it is.

Cowboys on the Plains

A dozen cowboys out on the plains. See below for a detail.

The Passion of the McCain

To celebrate my short film "The Passion of the McCain" breaking 60,000 combined views across YouTube and Machinima.com, this post will mirror some of the design decisions and content for the film. The recent increase in views is largely due to the inclusion of the film in the 2008 Cambridge Film Festival, where "Passion" was invited to be screened as part of a special program on machinima styles and techniques. Reviews so far have been mostly positive.

It is interesting to read the comments on YouTube, et al where available. Those who approach the film from a typical machinima's viewer's perspective (i.e. a typical gamer) tend to not like it, because it hides the underlying video game characters and style. they tend to prefer films made wholly within a particular game's reality, which is nonsense, as most games tend to have a fairly boring and conformist world-view. Shoot this, dodge that, escape[ist] here. I, on the other hand, believe that because it hides the underlying game, it is inherently better than stock characters in stock situations. Halo's Master Chief doesn't event have a visible face, so how can he act?

Regardless, the film was fun to put together. Take a look for yourself here, here, here, or below:

Men Sawing Lumber

At The Sideshow (Utah State Fair)

Not featured in the sideshow, but present nonetheless: fanatic evangelic scrapbookers, a AK-47 carved out of wood, $16 lemonades with nary a lemon to be found, 9-5 pencil mouse pushers from Midvale thinking they have better lives than carnies, funnel cake, bulging dairy cow mammary veins, someone singing a capella at the Crest Toothpaste booth, all the booths by the main sponsor - an LDS apocalyptic (i.e. The Second Coming) preparedness organization - featuring food storage buckets, generators, and emergency scrapbook supplies to document it all.

If you survive it all (the fair, or the apocalypse), this is your reward:

A Man Standing Near Lake Yellowstone

This picture was taken near Fishing Cone, in the West Thumb Geyser Basin near Yellowstone Lake in Yellowstone National Park. Approximately here:



This area is unique in that geysers and hotspots are on and in the lake. A story from the 1870 Washburn Expedition tells of a man trout fishing near one particular cone in the water, and the fish got off the line, flipped into the thermal vent, and boiled itself. No work on how sulfur infused lake trout tastes.

This photo was probably taken in the mid to late 1910's to early 1920's. During that time, the West Thumb area was a popular tourist destination in the Yellowstone area. Arriving on stagecoach from the Old Faithful Lodge (still a great building), travelers could depart nearby on a steamboat that would take them to the northern end of the lake.

Also, Lake Yellowstone looks like a hunched-over backpacker. West Thumb should be called Hiker's Head.