...which is just pretentious double-speak for "what shall I do now?" and "where have all the flowers gone?", in effect.
Well, there's Deep War that I'm intending to make (underwater sci-fi mini-series; I don't have the resources, either voice actors nor time, at the moment to commit to a longer option), amongst a few other half-baked ideas whizzing around in my brain, but if there is no audience these days (with TMU seemingly all but abandoned except by a few die-hards and the movie site effectively slowly ageing away like a fine wine.... no surprise as the dearth of regular content over the years that's been uploaded seems to suggest), is it worth expending some much time and effort as I used to?
I'm being honest, here; I used to love making movies and a lot of that was satisfaction that the finished product struck chords with a lot of people who made some very nice (and, I'm pretty sure, overly nice) comments (that I'm almost definate in some cases were a lot nicer than the product actually deserved!)
Well, there's always a market for smart, intelligently told stories, so I'm told, so we'll see 😜)
Which segues me into my long point; whilst it's sad to see the old girl (TMU and the attendant community) slowly ebbing away, to be honest it's not a massive surprise.
Some left when their passion to make movies left them...
Some left when the cost of making movies became too high (either in terms of cash to purchase the needed resources to make the films they wanted to make, or in terms of time they could spend on such projects)...
Some have moved onto bigger and better things (mainly the iClone community, which appears to be the only one of the "Big Three" of my time still surging ahead, with The Movies slowly withering on the vine, harder to get working with each iteration of Windows, it'll eventually die off completely when the last user can't get it running on their machine, and Moviestorms left to rot as Short Fuse drop what could have been a world-class, easy to use animation engine into the dust to concentrate on their new VR pre-viz tool)...
(/rant on
In an ideal world, MS would have been kept running alongside the development of this, but sadly this ain't an ideal world; I can still vent my frustration at the company for not prevailing with it, even in the face of the obvious need for them to move on to other things to keep their company afloat.... but, still charging £150 for the full product (and a load of packs I don't need as I bought them with points years ago) as a permanent license is ridiculous, given the complete lack of support and development the product has had in the last few years. I'd buy it in a heartbeat, I like it that much, but not for that price. And there's no option for a permanent license other than that; everything else is "rent for x period of time".
Drop the cost and I'll think about my last purchase from you in deference to the initial efforts you put in to creating a decent tool whose future was let slip by lack of development and promotion, despite a glowing start....
/rant off).
It's a shame, but I suppose it was idealistic to expect the "old crew" to still be hanging on in there, 9 years after I had to withdraw, still soldiering on with the same passion, wit and intensity as when I left.
I salute, applaud and respect the efforts of thebiz, JohnnyEx, Mac, Bezzer, Biggsy and the crew (not to mention the Big White Bwana, Ken himself, without whom our little "haven of insanity in a crazy world" would have long ago sunk to the bottom of Davy Jones' Locker) to still keep the old ship a-sailing, even as the leaks sprang open and she slowly began to slip beneath the waters, but am resigned now to realising that those heady days of fun and laughter, tears and anger and late-night movie production meetings til the early (very early in a lot of cases, thanks Chris, K4 and Norrie😉) hours are long gone, never to return.
I've spent many a happy and nostalgic hour pouring over the forums and re-reading some of the old threads; remembering faces old and new, conversations, dramas, jokes and above all the hours and hours of effort we all threw into our passion..... making movies.
Well, for me at least, that passion has experienced a resurgence and I'm back at in, in some form or another, for a while at least.
It'd be nice if there were a few more of the old crowd still around who'd like to take a spin around the block with me as well, if only the "once around" for old time's sake...
Wow, that was a lot more melancholic than I was expecting to write, but "nostalgia weighs heavy on the soul and mind, as age weighs heavy on the body" as someone should have said (if they actually haven't already, and I'm just paraphrasing without realising it 😏)
Damn my stream of consiousness writing :)
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