The Demoscene Documentary

Check out the six episodes as a YouTube playlist. Still one episode coming this week about Tracking and Scene Music.

Enjoy!

As of now, end of September, we’ve shot all the required footage for all of the episodes of the Demoscene Documentary series.

Late additions were the interviews of the Virtual Dreams crew (Alien and Jaco) as well as Marq of Fit, who is one of our demoscene experts offering his opinion on a wide range of topics such as tracker music.

While we originally wanted to focus on the Finnish scene, we do encompass quite a large spectrum of the demoscene. Focusing on Finland was not about elitism, simply put, there is so many subjects to be covered in the demoscene, that we had to really limit ourselves on the topics to be able to pull this series off. Still, having said that, we do cover demos from all over the place, but all the people we talk to are Finnish, but this is obviously something we want to change in the future, if we get to Demoscene Documentary 2.0.

A special mention must go to Jim “Trixter” Leonard, who many in the scene know from his stellar work with the Mindcandy demo DVD’s (http://www.mindcandydvd.com/). He’s working on a Mindcandy Blu-ray collection right now.

Trixter has helped us out with some superb video captures of demos. This has actually been the biggest struggle for us. Obviously the resolution of the 1990’s era demos is low for the HD era. This is why for example the Second Reality and Panic demos in the Future Crew episode are framed and even then, we had to blow up the videoclips to 200%, so you would actually see something.

In many cases, capturing the demos has proven very difficult since the refresh rates and resolutions are often completely off the wall and ripping them from the DVD’s is not so simple due to differing framerates and other issues. We are doing our best to produce the best possible visual quality to fully represent the work of the various groups and individuals. Which is why simply taping a video from a screen running the demo, is not exactly going to work.,

Riot / Orange & tpolm

The premiere of the Demoscene Documentary with all 7 episodes will be at the Finnish Demoparty Alternative Party 2010
http://www.altparty.org on Friday 22nd October. The Show starts at
Alternative Party Club area after the event's opening ceremony around
9PM. More detailed schedule will be published at the event site
closer to the event so please stay tuned. Alternative Party consists
of digital and media arts, music, presentations and of course the main
attraction: demo competitions held on Saturday evening. Competitions
will be held at the main hall's (Cable Factory, Merikaapelihalli) big
screen with good quality PA and video projector. Main competitions can
also be enjoyed from the smaller screen at the Club area where they
will be beamed live from the main hall.

Demoscene Documentary Premiere
* Alternative Party 2010
* Cable Factory, Tallberginkatu 1 C, Helsinki
* After the opening ceremony at the club area

After the premiere the documentary will be published also on this web site.

You can also find the first episode of the documentary here

beeta

Demoscene documentary and few Future Crew guys on HS article.
In Finnish: http://www.hs.fi/nyt/artikkeli/Miljon%C3%A4%C3%A4ri+palasi+Assemblyyn/1135259...

Interesting stuff at the article and I would claim this documentary
project is a part of the whole puzzle getting more respect for the
scene and demos.

beeta

[pic via CC License: Jordanhill School D&T Dept's / Flickr]

When planning the Demoscene documentary one of the original ideas was that the episodes would look like actual demos.

On the other hand, when we are producing a “Collective Documentary”, we want to get you scener’s involved as much as possible.

So, we would now humbly ask for your contribution to make us introductions for our five remaining episodes.

What exactly are we looking for?

10 to 15 second long intro sequences that you would want to see as the beginning of each episode of the documentary series.

1. Effect/s or an animation and an audio track.

2. Our logo's which are downloadable below
 
3. Most important thing is to add your own credits to your product so that
everyone knows it’s made by you.
 
We’d love if the intro's would have similar effects to what was common in the era that the episode in question is about. So you know, early 1990's demos 3D ducks, torus etc, so we could get the "right" feel for the episodes.

That's pretty much it for the limitations. Nothing really dirty or offensive though, ok!

What do you get out of this?

Fame. The Demoscene Documentary episodes will debut at the Alternative Party -event in late October in Helsinki, Finland. All the episodes will be distributed via YouTube so your work will get a lot of visibility. More importantly, you can make sure that our episodes will start with a bang and have the right look and feel from the beginning.

Timeline of the remaining episodes:

I. The early years Demos: Mental Hangover by Scoopex, Hardwired by Silents and Crionics The first batch of more serious demos, the Amiga influence and moving from the Commodore 64 to the Amiga.

II. Demos: Dope by Complex / Sumea by Virtual Dreams / ZIF by Parallax Phong. 3D scenes take over.

III. Orange & CNCD Demos: X14 and Megablast by Orange, Inside and Deep Psilocybin Mix by CNCD Style and innovation. We discuss the unique and differing styles of Orange and CNCD.

IV. Lifeforce by Andromeda Software Development / Stargazer by Orb and Andromeda / Debris by Farbrausch The 2000 era. Different techniques and styles.

V. Demomusic: Well-known scene composers discuss their work and what makes a great demotune.

Please include the episode that you are referring to on your e-mail.

Additional information

We would expect to get your intros before 1st of October 2010.

The easiest way for us is to get the material in digital formats such as :AVI, MOV, .MP4
Framerate: 25 fps
The size limit is 25mb (gmail doesn’t eat bigger)

If size matters, send your stuff via traditional mail on DVD etc.:

The Demoscene Documentary
Yle New Media Development
Arttu Silvast
Pl 77
00024
YLE Helsinki

Send us the material or any questions concerning the Material Challenge to: materialchallenge@gmail.com

We’d also hope that it’s ok for us to upload your products to our Facebook-page and our YouTube-channel for everyone to give their thumbs up and comments.

Looking forward seeing your Intro’s and contributions.

Thanks!

ps. There might be some delay in answering your questions during August, so don't get nervous.

(download)

Click here to download:

the-material-challenge-send-us-your-intro-s-thorCDmxtpEDzcJewjFl.zip (249 KB)