Interview with Baron Soosdon

A few weekends back Serephim and I were lucky enough to catch up with Baron Soosdon, the famous WoW Machinima maker. For those unfamiliar with the term, ‘Machinima’ is a marriage of the terms ‘Machine’ and ‘Cinema’ and has come to represent the fast growing movement of player-created gaming movies.

What originally began with simple screen captures of in-game events with basic text overlayed has blossomed into an intricate, beautiful and delicate art form of which Baron Soosdon is a master. This was a really fun interview and I hope you’ll enjoy reading and listening to it!

Want to listen? Download the MP3 of our chat below!
[DOWNLOAD]

Saate: I’d love to start with a question thats been on my mind for a while – I’ve seen you refer to the name Baron Soosdon as your ‘artist name’ in other interviews and I’ve always wondered why. How did the name come about?

Baron Soosdon: It’s quite a long story. The source of the name goes back to the times of Molten Core. Back then I had this warlock named Soosisti and when we were killing Baron Geddon our raid leader used to say ‘Hellfire, stay away from Baron Geddon!’ and when we first downed him I took the kind of like..expression ‘Hellfire, Stay away from Baron Soosdon!’ and then later on I realised that’s a really good Machinima name.

Saate: Can you tell us a little bit about yourself?

Baron Soosdon: Well I finished studying last year and moved back to my hometown. I live in Finland and the city I live in is called Järvenpää. Currently I do machinima for a living. I make a show called ‘N0L1F3’ for the machinima.com website.

Saate: Is that keeping you employed fulltime? Or is it more of something on the side for the time being?

Baron Soosdon: It’s actually a bit of both. I never actually graduated from something related to publishing and editing. On top of that with the economy how it is jobs are hard to get at the moment. I decided that why not use the time I have at the moment to better educate myself.

There are things I still dont know about making movies and I dont have industry contacts really…I wouldnt even know where to search for a job for a guy like me who likes to edit stuff in After Effects.

Saate: Given that your movies are viewed all around the world and not just by EU players, has that changed your perspective and the way you go about making movies?

Baron Soosdon: Not at all, I actually just make the movies my own way. I make them the way I want to when it’s something I’m doing personally. I’d never actually thought about different nationalities. In Unlimited Escapism: To Cure A Hangover it has three languages spoken – I’m speak Finnish, Olibith is speaking French and then there’s Nym speaking English.

So I’m all in for all kinds of crazy ideas usually, and maybe its because Warcraft Machinima is so easy to make. You make these small files and send them across the world to each other and put something together.

Serephim: When you decide to go out and create a new machinima do you have the basic structure set out or do you do it as you go? How much pre-arrangement and work do you do before you start the actual process?

Baron Soosdon: Lately its starting to be a mix of both actually. At the moment I have three machinimas in the making. Two are music videos of which one is 85% complete and the other only a very small fraction. I have the whole concept or idea of what I want to go into them then I cut or add stuff in depending on what feels like it fits there.

Some times I just have to wait to get anywhere – I need really good ideas to make them work.

We have already done the casting for a really big plotline movie called ‘The Palest Horse’ and thats something thats completely planned ahead, script and everything.

Serephim: I get the impression from the quality of your videos and from reading some of your past interviews that ‘perfectionist’ is probably a good way of describing you. Would that be an accurate statement?

Baron Soosdon: Yes it is. Since I mostly make music videos I want them to be perfect. First I want them to look perfect, sometimes I might spend a couple of hours editing a little 3 second scene. The second thing is that it has to sync to the music, like in some scenes I might want the scene to change/move to the beat of the music so that takes a while too.

Saate: What do your friends and family think about your movies? Do you make a point of showing them and do they take much interest?

Baron Soosdon: Well my family doesnt care much about it but some of my friends really like them. From what I hear all the feedback has been very positive.

Saate: What kind of recognition has machinima brought you?

Baron Soosdon: Well I was invited to the Worldwide Invitational last year by Blizzard which I was really happy about. Then I also got to be in a big film festival in Germany which was in Hamburg last summer. I got second place in the machinima contest there with the I’m So Sick video. So I’ve been able to travel around the world which has been really good.

Saate: I was really interested to see you made a reference to Al Lowe of Sierra Games in one of your previous interviews. Does that mean that, like me, you played those adventure games growing up?

Baron Soosdon: Yeah I did, I think it was the first Larry game. I think I was 8 or 9 when I first saw the graphics and was like ‘wow!’.

Saate: Hahah yeah exactly the same for me.

Serephim: With respect to your gameplay itself…are you a raider? Are you a pvper? Do you find that your machinima takes up your gameplay time?

Baron Soosdon: I actually raid every week, we have raids every Wednesday and Sunday. We’ve cleared the 10 man and 25 man TOC’s so far. When I have really project then of course it takes time away from going to raids.

Saate: Well I think we’ve pretty much covered all the questions we had! Thanks so much for your time.

Serephim: We’re very grateful for your time. Particularly in sticking through the vent troubles and getting it working to chat to us.

Baron Soosdon: Thanks for the interview!