Lindens Shoot for Blockbuster with Machinima Film
by Alphaville Herald on 06/03/06 at 10:09 pm
by Dow Jonas
Forget the Oscars: blockbuster moviemaking is coming to Second Life in the form of a machinima movie produced in SL by Eric Linden and Bedazzled Studios, a group of SL’s top architects and content creators who have designed and built an elaborate stage set for the project. Titled “Silver Bells and Golden Spurs,” the Western-themed film is said to be going forward with a budget that will allow its producers to pay residents to take roles in the film, expanding on a demo version of the film already available.
The project seems designed at least in part to make machinima into the Next Big Thing in Second Life — if it wasn’t a Big Thing already. More than likely, it is also designed to drum up yet more buzz for Linden Lab’s project, and attract new residents to the tooned-up klieg lights and red carpet textures. Trailers featuring a demo version of the film — made at a cost of US$555 — can be found on the Second Life Web site’s machinima page, along with a video tutorial on rolling your own, and Eric Linden’s white paper on machinima in Second Life, which not only gives tips on how to do machinima but briefly outlines business opportunities in the sector as well.
Machinima — making films out of the actions of the screen-captured actions of human-driven avatars and NPCs within video games — was once limited for the most part to teenage kids making homemade videos of their favorite Final Fantasy sequences. In more recent years it has come out of suburban dens to become the hottest thing in the art world this season, with SL residents like Pierce Portocarrero taking part in major real-world machinima festivals.
Work on “Silver Bells and Golden Spurs,” according to some of the actors involved, apparently includes no actual acting. Instead, the people controlling the characters will be donning a pre-designed and -clothed avatar made especially for the task, and using a pre-arranged sequence of animations — almost like joining in the scripts for line-dancing at SL’s country and western saloons.
We await word about the fascinating breakthroughs in technology involved in getting the lifeless, expressionless faces of the avatars in Second Life to knit their eyebrows and frown; to wink; and to look shocked — all highlights in the trailer. No doubt this involves something similar to the existing animation-override kits already popular in Second Life as well as some pretty amazing puppetry.
And when the limos disgorge those celebrity avatars on SLOscar Night, you know the Herald will be there.
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