Wow. The Movie Peer Review Rating System turns one month old today – and I think it’s surpassed our hopes for it already! In the past 30 days, our volunteer reviewers have rated 79 films, passing 21 of them – just over a quarter. That SERIOUSLY decreases the amount of watching I, personally, have to do – which was the impetus for the system in the first place. Several movies have been submitted more than once – the creator took the feedback given by the reviewers and improved the quality of the offering, often resulting in a passing grade the second time through. This was goal two of the system – to improve the overall quality of released materials. Review time hovers around 12 hours these days – a VAST improvement from the days or even weeks that movies once languished in our uploads folder, waiting for me to find time to download and watch them. And the system continues to improve. Our recent call for volunteers netted another 10 (soon to be 12, I think) recruits, with a rather large reserve for the next call. (If you emailed us this week about becoming a reviewer, and you haven’t heard from us, sit tight; we now have your name in the standby pool, and the next time we need a batch of volunteers, you guys are first on the list.) We’ve begun to see videos submitted not for hosting, but simply for feedback from an organized system; we’re fine with this, as long as you understand that what you’re getting is just feedback. The behind-the-scenes tools continue to improve, as well, thanks to Cybrfrk; reviewers have access to their body of reviews, and can look for unexpected (or unwanted) trends, and correct them, if need be. All in all, this system should help EVERYONE interested in the Halo movie scene – content creators, viewers, hosts. We’re thrilled by the enthusiasm, and hope you’re happy with the results thus far!

LiL Poison, the world’s youngest professional gamer, turned 7 yesterday. Happy Birthday! (Thanks, stosh.)

Mothergoat tried his hand at pinning down what makes Halo as good as it is… interesting analysis. Go read!

Red vs Blue episode 56, ‘Calm Before The Storm’, has been posted for sponsors. (This is also a notice to the general public that the free versions will be available in about 2 days – but that won’t stop the flood of email telling us that once they go up…) It’s all about Lopez and Andy in this this one… though the angry Tooth Fairy had me rolling, and Donut rocked. Thanks to zugy for noticing.

I meant to get to some of these yesterday – but then I was gone for most of yesterday. The MPRRS has approved a new slew of movies – first off the blocks is a film called ‘Enemy at the Gates’, a Halo 2 version of the big-screen film of the same name. This one was put together by MotleyCrusader, and has some nice timing and filming. There are some funky volume shifts, so be careful – but overall, a great piece. It’s available in WMP9 format (34.2 mb) or QuickTime format (33.3 mb). Enjoy – more films coming soon.

Thanks a million to HymnToNinkasi, of the PraetoriaGuard – she went through our Links page, site by site, and culled the chaff, the sites that were no longer in existence. w00t! To thank her, you should go visit their website, download their movies, and give ’em feedback. They love that stuff.

Interesting article about game soundtracks over at the Hollywood Reporter; the focus is on the Hitman series, and its composer… but Halo 2, with sales of 120,000 copies for its first volume (12 times the average sales of a game soundtrack), is used as a benchmark. Thanks to Greg O’Connor-Read, of Music 4 Games, for the heads-up.

A tad late, because of family obligations, but it’s time to let you know about another Bungie Weekly What’s Update, posted over at Bungie.net. It’s a pretty big one – it contains information about the new maps to be released in June (including two new teaser screens, of Relic and Backwash), as well as plenty of tidbits about the new playlists, and rank, and employee-shaped clouds. Go read!

A couple of days ago, Mukelo posted a trailer on our forum. I let him know that if we pointed people to a 58 mb video with a positive review, he could expect a couple of thousand downloads, as a minimum, but that if he were willing to submit it to our Movie Peer Review Rating System, we’d be happy to help host. He did. The vid received the highest overall ranking to date. Accordingly, we’ve put up the high-res version he originally posted, plus a QuickTime version of it… as well as a couple of smaller (but not tiny) versions, for the bandwidth-challenged. (The voice acting is in Finnish, with English subtitles – so I didn’t want it to be so small that reading was a hassle.) This is an entertaining, mildly sexist (though in a funny way) look at a clan recruitment effort, with some innovative anime-style overlays. (Given the Halo moviemaking community’s penchant for jumping on what works, and beating it into a cold, gooey pulp, I’m afraid that after this release, we might be in for dozens of overdone video effects… but such is the price of success, I suppose.) Great cinematography, nice humor, overall great piece of work. Grab the version that best fits your needs (please don’t overdo):

• WMP9 Large (720×576, 57.9 mb): mythica.org | bungie.org | original site
• QuickTime Large (720×576, 56.7 mb): bungie.org | mythica.org
• WMP9 Medium (480×384, 31.2 mb): bungie.org | mythica.org
• QuickTime Medium (480×384, 27.6 mb): mythica.org | bungie.org

Looks like there will be more vids released later today…

Today’s One One Se7en looks at the hazards of multitasking. I think some credit for the concept goes to Patroclus, but I’m not positive.

Today’s w00tness focuses on Halo’s Hunter – nice pic! (Thanks, Endbringer)

VGman17 posted a countdown to the new maps coming out in June – if you simply MUST know how long it’ll be before you can play Backwash, go visit! Update: you might experience a freeze due to faulty Flash programming if you visit this page. Works fine in Firefox on OSX and XP, and on Safari (OSX), but seems to have a problem on IE6/XP. All that’s there is a countdown (currently at 52 days) to the June maps; take this into account when deciding whether to follow the link.

A few days ago, LightingXCE dropped by our forum to mention that he’d been working on recreating LibraryMP for Halo Custom Edition. (LibraryMP was an early modding effort by Monoxide which allowed multiplayer gameplay in Halo’s Library. We mentioned it in January 2004, though the vid in the linked forum post no longer exists.) Well, according to this post on the Gearbox Forums (thanks, MasterGrief), the map has actually been released! Go grab a copy (link is in the first post), and give it a shot!

Garry Webber points out a Halo mention in today’s Exerminatus Now.

Evil_Kefka points out a Flash movie he’s got at Newgrounds; it’s a look at how powerful the plasma grenade has become since the AutoUpdate. Nice graphics.

Leave it to Halo Babies to come up with new, less-violent uses for some of the weapons in Halo 2.

Until recently, the scoring algorithm at the Movie Peer Review Rating System gave extra weight to smaller movies, on the principle that if it wasn’t a hassle to download (or serve), it didn’t have to be QUITE as good. We’ve rethought that rule… but tonight, there are two short films that made the cut with the weighting advantage. (They’re the last two that will get through this way.) The first was actually released last week – announced, and hosted, on its own site. Necrosis Episode 1 holds the honor of being the first machinima to make use of the Dialogue Databank exclusively for its voice acting. You can grab the original WMP9 version (7.6 mb) or a QuickTime version (8.1 mb) from our server. Also, casuela submitted a trailer for an upcoming series known as ‘Le Marche’, a World War II-type movie. It’s quite short, and quite small – 3.1 mb in WMP9 format, or 4 mb in QuickTime format. Give it a shot! Additional news about the MPRRS – it looks like we’ll be increasing the pool of reviewers very soon; if you’re interested in helping out, send us mail!

Bungie’s side of the story for last night’s Halo Humpday Challenge has been posted – it’s an entertaining read. It’s okay to have awful stats if your team wins anyway. I’m not sure I like the title ‘Anti-MLG’ that was tossed at HBO… but I can’t deny we like chaotic gametypes (monosnipe CTF is positively tame compared to some of the stuff that gets played). Go read!

Chris Bryan continues to work on Halo-related pieces – if you check his wearable Master Chief suit page, you’ll find a new picture; he’s put together a pair of M7/Caseless SMGs that look pretty nice! (He wonders whether he should make ’em shiny, or leave ’em matte… personally, I like ’em the way they are.)

Last week, Stryke Force released hi-res versions of their first couple of episodes. People liked them – so they’ve released hi-res versions of episodes 3, 4, and 5. WMP9 versions are up on their downloads page right now – QuickTime links should be up soon. This is one of the more polished machinima series out there – if you haven’t seen it, go grab copies! (And don’t forget to stop by their forum and let ’em know what you think.)