Hey everyone. For those who care, my name is Santiago. I am 20 years old and a student of Electronic Engineering from Spain. Quaking since 2008. I blame my older brother for making me love and hate this shit haha. My hobbies are listening to and making music, reading manga, chinese novels and gaming. I've been introduced to roleplaying a few months ago, and I've grown to quite like pathfinder with a couple of friends. I was reluctant at first but eventually I took the bait. :P I have one cat that I love very much and a beloved MX-518 inherited from the mighty Memphis himself.

My introduction to Quake 3 happened when I watched Event Horizon 3 in 2008. I was blown up with the vast array of possibilities that trickjumping offered, and how cool they looked on screen when synced to the beat. Shortly after I started playing defrag with my brother and I grinded the fuck out of that...

Fast-forward to 2009 and Lith and Bazz ask me to render some defrag runs and fastcaps for youtube. Following that kiddy.se contacts me and asks me if I'm interested in making a defrag movie with his WR demos. I agreed to his proposal and made a preview in the following months, but I was quite unsatisfied with the quality. I remember 720p was the norm back then, however my rig couldn't handle video editing at that quality, so I had to stick to 1024x768.

The development stopped back then. That lost preview had drank a lot from KOS and his w3sp strafes masterpiece. Every song was from BoC iirc xD. After a 3 year hiatus in which I made other movies, in April 2013 I bought a graphics card and armed myself with courage to finish Limitos. By the end of July it was finished, and after a few re-renders and we released it on October. I'm a pretty lazy and laid back guy, so if you expect to get shit done quick hire someone else haha.

I'm self-taught. No formal training. I've taken an interest in frame composition and color theory recently, and consequently watched a few videos in that topic, but no classes whatsoever. When I made my movies I was clueless of any theory behind it. Purely instinct based moviemaking, I guess.

My chain goes like this: (UDT)-> q3mme ->Virtual Dub -> Sony Vegas -> After Effects -> Sony Vegas -> meGUI. I've used Blender and Boujou once in Velada for nooby 3D editing. For sound, Acid Pro for arranging the audio mixes so that everything is cool and in place. Now I dabble in Reaper, because it rules.

Well, in my humble attempts to make movies... :D I focus on making a strong connection between the music and the video footage. I think music is really important in a movie, so I start by choosing songs. Most of the time I'll already have a few songs stuck in my head, and I'll use those. For defrag movies, after collecting demos, I do some maths and see how many runs I can cram up per song, and make something of a script. I render the first person runs and place them according to my script. After that, I watch everything, and make note of where 3rd person footage would fit. Then I work out the transitions between 1st person and 3rd person. If I don't think a run is exciting enough I'll ditch it, and look for another. Same with songs.

It's not written in stone to me, and I might deviate from this a bit when working on a movie, but broadly speaking I follow that procedure.

In 2008 my brother made Event Vertical (yes), which had runs and tricks from a couple of friends and a couple of defraggers. I guess watching my brother make that movie planted a seed in my brain. After that I was just obsessed with Quake.

Event Horizon 3 was influential to me for the reasons mentioned early. With "f33l" by KOS I discoved that you can force a certain vibe or atmosphere with the right instrumentation and editing. With "Speedcapture Promo" by KOS I discovered that you can transform a videogame footage into something of your own by using 3D tracking e.g.. With "Celestia" by McCormic I learned the importance of making a well balanced mix between whatever happens in the screen and the music. e.g. if a track sounds rather cold, the color palette would thus turn colder. If it's festive then warmer. Slow-mo calls for unsaturated colors... If you think like this you can make a movie more coherent. There were more movies that I really enjoyed and fueled my motivation. Naming a few: Live 2 Fly, Tricking iT, The Contenders 2, Cow Promode, Claw and Order, Lippu, Morning Never Came, hate freestyle 2, epinephrine, MaZe, Velocity 2, Trick 'em All 3 ...

I'm more or less equally proud of all my work, but if I had to choose then probably Limitos because it reached a greater audience.

Probably more inclined to minimal, although I do appreciate a good editing well done. Personally I think it's better to not mess a lot with fragmovies, and to make the frags and the pacing the focus of the movie. There is room to get creative, but a lot of heavy editing and recams might do more harm than good. For defrag movies you have more leverage.

Ultra edited movies are truly good if they're done properly. Just make the focus of the movie clear. If the movie is too edited make the viewer focus on that aspect of the movie, and make the rest secondary. (see: Morning Never Came)

I think the average gamer might benefit from watching impressive movies to increase the retain factor and hype themselves to play more and longer. It would be in the videogame companies' best interest to keep producing these kind of goodies, since movies keep the scene alive and that means more benefit.

From the technical side of things, I think the medium can evolve, starting with VR movies. Like, having real HDR which reacts to your pupils, or being able to focus screen elements at will. Although that sounds vomit inducing, it might work with the right technology. I also think higher screen framerates and ppi might finally mean the dead of motionblur. Couple that with truly immersive Dolby Atmos sound, and you got something here.

Thinking in a more sci-fi manner, interactive movies would be nice. Slowing down or accelerating a scene with your thoughts, or watching a 3D scene from a different perspective at will... It would be interesting to see the medium evolve in that direction. :P

I'm not quite up to date with the current moviemaking techniques since I'm hardly an expert myself. h265 has been in development over the last few years, and it's quite an improvement over h264 in terms of quality-size. Then again, with the ever increasing pc storage capabilities it doesn't really make a big difference. But for archiving purposes it will be hugely appreciated.

Try to have fun and decypher why you like some movies and dislike others.

Play More Promode!!!!!!!!11 Big shout-out to myT for making the amazing demo sorting tool UDT, making finding frags 1000x easier. Big shout-out to the q3mme development team, which made many movies come to reality. And cheers to everyone keeping the quake scene alive, and all my viewers and subscribers in youtube.