Tell us a little bit about yourself, where you grew up, and any life events that may have shaped who you are.

I know you really enjoy reading a lot, and the fact that you work at a bookstore specializing in rare and unique books, you have the opportunity to read some of the finest works. What is tops on your own bookshelf, and do you enjoy a specific genre or author most?

You're an accomplished actor with quite the list of credits in your resume. Folks may best recognize your role as Duke Henry the Red in the Sam Raimi movie "Army of Darkness". However, is there any particular role, or performance you enjoyed the most?

Another question that could take a long time to answer. The short version includes the role of "Strindberg" in Night of Tribades; Aston in "The Caretaker" and Schlink in "Jungle of Cities".

You have also had quite a bit of stage performance. Do you prefer the set or stage?

Oh, the stage, no question. The lack of support, the indifference and  lack of respect for actors on most Hollywood sets makes this question an easy one to answer.

Back to "Army of Darkness", it would seem to be a fun experience on the set of that particular film. Any memorable experiences on the set?

Many interesting things happened during this shoot. Sam Raimi is like a big kid with a camera; he was excited and passionate about his work the whole time. In fact, unlike other sets, it was almost always more fun than work.

There was one hair-raising incident that occured about half-way through filming. We were all out east of Los Angeles way down in a huge mining pit filming a lot of the medieval outdoor scenes. One shot we shot comes early in the film and it involves Ash's (the Bruce Campbell part) car falling out of a huge time tunnel with Ash falling in right next to it. Well, the car was on a huge crane and was to be dropped about 30 or 40 feet; Ash would be on a ladder and jump into the shot just before the car hits. Sam had set up about 5 cameras, most running very fast in order to create a slow motion effect. Almost the entire cast and crew were present for the shot (about 50 people).

Unfortunately, the cable stuck after the car released and the entire crane came crashing down the hill towards us all. There was a horrifying moment when we all thought we'd be hit, but the huge crane arm stuck into the ground and stopped it from moving any closer towards us (we were about 40 yards away, I think). The crane operator was smart and ducked under the crane as it fell, so he was ok, but there was terror in the air for about 10 seconds.

I remember there was a long pause and then Sam yelled "Cut!", and the the first A.D. (he was a very tough fellow) yelled out "We will be shooting in the opposite direction for the rest of the day". Man, that fellow had nerves of steel. A couple days later they brought in a massive crane (twice the size of the earlier one) and got the shot just fine.

Let's talk about Machinima. Still a new art form, it is rapidly growing, with easily accessible tools and the means to distribute via YouTube and Stage 6. When did you first get intrigued by Machinima, and what was your first venture into this art form?

I imagine that your acting experience plays a big part in how you approach a project. Is this true?

What are you currently working on, or involved in?

I've already mentioned that this year will be a year to direct  my own machinima films. I plan on  creating several small projects (mostly experimental works) with the big push being the adaptation of Macbeth. I hope to finish it by November.  I think it will be 4 or  5 short  episodes which I'll  combine  into a  short (1 hour) feature. But we will see how it develops. I'm finishing up the adaptation now and putting together an international team (probably about 4 people).

What do you feel is your best work as a Machinima filmmaker?

Your voicework in "The Days After" is really fantastic, as well as the music mix. What equipment/programs do you use in voice recording and mixing sound and music?

Thanks a lot, Nick. I'm very proud of that work. I remember the two recording sessions very well. I created a small closet studio lined with rugs in my apartment. The microphone (in this case a XXX) runs out under the door into the living room and into a mixer (XXX) on the desk and then into my XFI soundcard front panel. I got up very early (6am) so that my voice would have that early morning rasp. I usually do at least 4 or 5 takes of each scene. I try to imagine the given circumstances of each scene and then try different acting choices. Fortunately, I was able to come up with something that worked very well.

After I recorded the monologues, I had Ingrid Moon (who plays opposite me) over for a living room session for the dialogue scenes. This was a bit harder work since Ingrid is relatively unskilled as an actor and I had to do a lot of coaching. I like her natural personality and she learns quickly, so we were able to come up with several takes that once patched together worked well. The make-out scene in the film was a bit awkward to do as a voice over since we both are good friends and didn't want to actually make out for the film. After visualizing the scene and talking it through a bit, we were able to come up with the incidental sounds of kissing and sighs that worked for the scene. I was very pleased with the performance that she came up with.

As far as equipment is concerned, I've got mostly mid-level hardware that works well with my self-built system. I use 3 different microphones: a Behringer condensor mic, an Audio Technica condensor and a general purpose Shure mic. I use a Behringer Eurorack mixer which works very well with my XFI soundcard. Each mic has a particular sonic signature and I pick the one I think works best for the project at hand. I'm a big fan of Adobe Audition and use the 3.0 version on my machine. I supplement that with lots of VST plug-ins for Audition, many of which are free and work very well. I also use SoundForge occasionally, but only for certain functions that Audition doesn't have (like the audio pencil to re-draw the wav file). I use Sennheiser headphones for most of my editing, but I also have a nice set of monitor speakers from M-Audio. The speakers have a very flat response which I like.

Tell us a little bit about your Machiniplex website, and how that came about.

Machiniplex is the brainchild of Jason Choi. He brought me in on the project along with Ingrid Moon. It's also a natural progression since a good deal of the machinima community has become more international and de-centralized. Most people have moved away from web-site forums and are collaborating via Skype and events like the Machiniplex "opening night" where were premiere the film and have the director present for Questions.

How has your experience been in collaborating online with others?

Online  collaboration has been  a real surprise to me. I avoided it a good deal, choosing to work solo and just send my work to the director when it was done (I'm talking about voice acting and sound work). But with the advent of tools like Skype and Stixy, you can collaborate in real time with people from all over the world. Last year my goal was to work with as many different people as possible and with only one exception my collaborative experience was excellent. I rehearsed in real time, I coached actors in real time, I posted sound to a shared desktop, I had real time voice chat to go over scenes we were viewing in real time together.

It's been a real eye opener for me and I think, if I can speculate a bit here, that collaboration will become as easy as email in the future for machinima filmmakers. I think that it's possible for some programs to be used entirely online. These programs will also have a multi-player element (like World of Warcraft) that will allow for easy real-time collaboration because it will be built in to the program itself. Second Life is very much the model I'm thinking of here, but the emphasis will be entirely on filmmaking. Antics entry into machinma from pre-viz will get companies like Adobe thinking that it's time to create a movie-making tool.

Are there any upcoming events, or any particular machinima filmmakers we should be watching for?

Moviestorm is the program that is designed specifically for the machimima filmmaker. It's run by filmmakers and has a very strong presence in the machininima community. IClone has the machinima filmmaker in mind, but they are also appealing to a wider audience of "fun" filmmakers who want to make an animated film to send as a video postcard, or for the person who wants to make an interesting video for a new favorite song that they can share on a forum. Antics3d is a recent entrant into the machinima film market and shows great promise. Their focus initially was on pre-viz for live action filmmakers. Now that they've made their base program available for free and are appealing to the machinima filmmaker, their profile should rise a good deal and provide excellent competition for Moviestorm and IClone.

I think IClone is probably the furthest along in development, but it's also the most expensive. Moviestorm and Antics3d are taking the "free program, but buy the add-on packs" approach. The expense of IClone will probably keep it from becoming a standard tool for machinima filmmakers, while the other two are going to appeal with their 'free" approach. I wonder if IClone will change their marketing strategy in the next year to match that of their competitors.

Moreover, the drift to non-game machinima is being driven by the increasing inaction on the part of game companies to appeal to machinima filmmakers and the machinima comunity. Only a handful of major game companies (Epic, Bioware) have made any real effort to consider licensing their games for machinima. Microsoft and Blizzard have gone some way to acknowledge machinima filmmakers and provide some sort of framework to work with, but IMO it's a very think safety net. However, this matter has created some debate in the community and there are some prominent filmmakers who see this development in much more optimistic terms. Perhaps it's my natural cynicism for corporate efforts at being the "good guy'. I keep seeing the cover of Pink Floyd's "Wish You Were Here" album with the two flaming businessmen shaking hands; pretty much says it all to me.

Are there any people in particular that you feel are owed the highest respect in machinima?

There are several good filmmakers in machinima, but for my money Phil Rice (aka Overman) is the best we have right now. He not only creates works of machinima art, but he is devoted to serving the community with his Overcast podcast and his personal blog.

What do you see in the future for Machinima in general, and more specifically your role in moving this art form further?

• Ricky's Personal Web Site
• Ricky's Renderosity Home Page
• Ricky's Renderosity Articles
• Machiniplex (high quality machinima showcase)
• www.machiniplex3.blogspot.com (information & commentary on machinima films & filmmakers)
• Machinima Premiere (Mprem)
• The Overcast
• Iliad Bookshop