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The second post on this blog (Jan 2008) was called Machinima: Filmmaking Of The Future. For me, it still feels like something from the future even though the process in this video is less elaborate than the one outlined in that earlier post. I love that I’m able to work with most anyone, in real-time, in an amazing world where you can create just about anything you want – even goofy robots that love to curse.

The example Talkbot episode in this video is “Back To Normal” from yesterday. The embeded video is 1280 x 720 so if you put it in fullscreen mode you’ll be able to see all of the details. I’ll warn you that the video is nearly 37 minutes long (and 275MB) as many sections are of me working things out in real time. It’s also about as simple an episode as we can make and it actually took about an hour and a half to create. What was cut out was some of the story brainstorming, reworking one of Lifal’s lines of dialog, music selection and lots of progress bars and app launching.

Links to software and services used:
Open Atrium
Celtx
Dropbox
Skype
Final Cut Studio
AT&T Text-to-Speech demo
Crazytalk
Second Life

Passage to Zhong Fu was originally made for the 48 Hour Film Project in Second Life but since I work for Millions of Us, one of the sponsors of the event, our team wasn’t eligible to compete. That said, making this film, for me, was never about any kind of competition. Rather it was all about having a focused opportunity to create something with a set of artistic constraints not under your control. That’s the competition – one against yourself – that I’m always interested in pursuing.

Another reason for doing this was that it was an opportunity to put our little machinima team to work on something of it’s own creation. I’ve been working with Poid and ducky on a bunch of projects for work and we’ve been having a great time. After Poid worked with Dizzy on DynaFleur she suggested we ask him to join us on this. I can’t tell you what a fantastic idea that was – just listen to the soundtrack on this, you’ll be blown away.

If your unfamiliar with the 48 Hr Film Project, how it works is that all teams are given 3 random items that they must include; a prop, a character and a line of dialog. Addtionally, each team is randomly assigned a genre that they must work with. For this, all teams had to have a flamingo as a prop, the character Tony Martin – teacher and the line of dialog, “That’s the way that it goes.” As for genre, we were tasked to make a “road movie.” One of the most satisfying things about this project is that I think we made good use of all of the restrictions. They had us come up with a film that we wouldn’t have made otherwise and yet it feels completely our own.

So what I’m posting here is a little different than the one we turned in after 48 hours. This is probably the 50-something hour version. We added back in the scene with the cage which we originally had to cut to meet the time requirements. Doing that meant that Dizzy had to compose some new music as that scene really joins the two before it and the one after as a single musical section. Poid and I also shot a new ending scene. The original had Poid walking down a city street but that came from the initial idea which sort of evolved as we shot and edited the piece. I like this ending much better because it brings us back to where the film starts, having changed – which, I think, is the theme and was the inspiration for adding the I Ching quote at the beginning.

If you’re into Second Life, please join us for the screening this Sunday, February 3, 2008 from noon – 2 p.m. SLT (PST). Screening SLURL.

Poid put together a whole site for the film —> here.
Also, check out her photo set on Flickr.

I think I was about 11 years old the first time I though about making a film. I was inspired by reading, in Starlog magazine, about how special effects were done. The problem though was that it cost millions of dollars to do that kind of stuff. I remember thinking that animation was the way to go because you’d be able to create anything you could draw. So I spent a lot of time imagining and drawing. I used to make comic books and spaceship models and movie posters but an actual film was still beyond my grasp back in 5th grade.

Now, 30 years later, I’m living that dream. Thanks to machinima and Second Life we can fairly quickly create most anything we can imagine and film it in real time. It’s a lot like real world filmmaking but much faster. Forget about waiting for the sun to be in the right position, now you can just stick it where you want it. Need to get that giant set piece out of your way for a moment? Or need to duplicate a set? No problem. These things are trivial in a virtual environment. For my latest project, What Is Scion City?, we had a whole digital backlot created – the virtual desert that covers the Scion City of the future. Additionally we had all of the underground sets floating a few hundred meters above the desert. And because our backlot is part of a persistent, shared, virtual world accessible from anywhere, it allowed us to work with great people no matter where they were located.

The directors of What Is Scion City worked from three different continents – Douglas and I here in North America, Trace Sanderson in Europe and PG Provenzano in Australia. Finding a good time to meet was a little difficult but when we did, Second Life and Skype made it all work. Most of everything I shot was done with the help of Poid Mahovlich in the U.K. and duckyfresh Wantanabe somewhere in the Eastern time zone. We spent hours on Skype and in Second Life – forming a little team. It was great to have people to work with who were truly interested in what was being done as opposed to just the people that happen to be available in that location.

Another thing about our process that was interesting for me was the way we able to trade digital assets back and forth over the internet with ease. We used a P2P app called SpinXpress, made by a company that I used to work for, to create a private network between the directors. So none of our work had to entrusted to a third party or posted somewhere on the Internet until we were ready. As the pieces were coming together we shared rough cuts with each other and then when they were done the other directors sent me their HD files directly over our private network. And because I could have things download automatically and continuously reconnect if there was network congestion I was able to get things from Australia without problems even though I was rarely sitting at my computer when PG was.

For me the most exciting thing about all of this is really how enabling all of these pieces of technology are. I’m already amazed at what we can do and this is just the beginning. I can’t wait to work on the next thing where we apply all the lessons we learned working on this. It’s a quickly compounding iterative process.

Photo set by Poid Mahovlich

Last weekend I had had the pleasure of attending the opening of Dyna Fleur, an immersive art installation in Second Life (teleport). By now it’s been written about in great detail a number of times (here and here) so I’m not even going to attempt to give you any more than my quick personal version.

I was blown away by it’s beauty and playfulness. The moment you enter and the work responds to you with movement and sound is fantastic. I had to go back through several times just for that. Hopefully this video gives you a tiny sense of it. I was also impressed at how well all of the elements – images, sounds, shapes, movement and landscape – are so well integrated, creating an elegantly nuanced piece.

The other thing I wanted to mention is that the whole reason I was there to begin with is because my new friend and collaborator, Poid Mahovlich (she did the terraforming) told me about it. I bring this up because it’s, for me, another example of how the network facilitates connections between like minds. I met Poid a few weeks ago after posting a help wanted notice for a machinima project (more on that in another post) and she was one to respond almost instantly.