Volavola at FilmForum and other places

Vola Vola got quite some media attention in Italy these last few weeks.
March 19 the movie was shown for the 1st time in Italy at the FilmForum festival in Gorizia.
There was a nice interview with Alessandro Haber and Berardo Carboni at affaritaliani.it.
This month the movie is also screened at 2 universities in Rome.
Check the movies facebook group for more media coverage links and scraps.
I wasn't there, but I'm told the movie is received very well by the audience!
Hopefully it will be shown in the Netherlands and other countries soon.

Orchestral Investigation #9, and seeing spOts, being dOts @ GAMERZ 05

From Creative Machinery

Orchestral Investigation #9 and seeing spOts, being dOts will be shown at festival GAMERZ 05, in the ARCADE program curated by Isabelle Arvers.

This 5th edition of GAMERZ international multimedia festival will take place from November 26th, 2009 to December 4th, 2009 in Aix-en-Provence.

Volavola on wired.com

Bruce Sterling picked up on Hamlet's Au post and blogged it on wired.com.
No in depth article or anything, but hey! we managed to disorient him ;-)

Also Domenico Quaranta mentioned our little sneak peak, which was picked up by gamescenes, a very nice blog.

Volavola Scene 61 on NPIRL and NWN, and some more about the toon effect

So far the reactions to the scene of Volavola we posted are pretty good!

Bettina Tizzy posted it on Not Possible IRL, one of my favorite blogs.
Hamlet Au posted it on New World Notes, elaborating a little on how we distinguish between what happens in Second Life, and what happens in Real Life, as all the footage was shot in Second Life.
Our solution, to apply a toon effect on the second Second Life footage seems to be received well by the Second Life community.
I agree with Gwyneth Llewelyn, who said "..it doesn't look like SL, but just as an incredibly detailed cartoon! If this catches on, the Japanese studios that spew out a cartoon per week for their so many huge series will start doing it all inside SL... :)".
Rendering this effect is far from RealTime though (about 3 seconds per frame), so maybe not so appropriate for that weekly tv show.

I'm also experimenting with this kind of effect for Woody, to emphasize the "comic" style of Ookoi.
It also has the advantage of not really needing all that detailed shapes and textures in Second Life during shooting.
I guess a "pure machinimatographer" would want to stay away from too much post processing work, but in my opinion it's best to just use the tools appropriate for the result you want to achieve.

Finishing Volavola !

Almost done postprocessing Volavola!

Here is a preview.



In this scene Sofia (puppeteered by Honey Fairweather, voice by Sofia Vigliar) and Matteo (puppeteered by Blued Food, voice by Flavio Aquilone) meet eachother in Second Life and visit the virtual gallery of Gazira Babeli.

The music is original for the movie and done by Andrea Gabriele. It's an adaption of a folk song from Abruzzo called Vola Vola.

Because this machinima version of VolaVola is entirely filmed in Second Life we needed to make clear what happens in Second Life and what happens in Real Life. For this pupose we applied a toon effect on the Second Life scenes.
In the Real Life version of the movie the original footage will be used.

Storyboarding HoT

From HoT

I'm currently working on the storyboard of another video I'm doing with Avatar Orchestra Metaverse. The composition is by Pauline Oliveros and called Heart of Tones.
It will be a music video of around 20 minutes, and I'm very excited about it :-)

Shooting Woody

From ookoi

Last thursday we've been filming for "Woody", a videoclip for the next hit by the sound duo Ookoi. The setting for the clip is the beautiful atmospheric virtual version of the dutch island Ameland in Second Life, hosted by Archipel MediaLab.

4Jetpacks4 at NPIRL

Alpha Auer wrote a very good article about 4Jetpacks4 and the importance of storytelling to 'get immersed' or 'attain presence'.

Attaining presence: 4Jetpacks4 and Bryn Oh

Machinima Vérité

Wagner James Au aka Hamlet Au interviewed me about the making of the 4Jetpacks4 video and posted it on New World Notes.
Since he was on the original tour, and starring in the video, I'm very happy he likes the result! "As an involuntary actor in the machinima, I'm slightly biased, but I think her final product is spectacular and unique, BioShock meets Fritz Lang." he says.. wow!!!
(For the record, I usually don't sneak up on people, and was actually asked to film)

4Jetpacks4

Just finished the video documentation of 4Jetpacks4, an interactive story telling performance lead by Bryn Oh.

In this performance a group of avatars was brought on a tour of a research facility. An unfortunate event results in the arrival of a tornado. The group must flee back to retrieve a jetpack in order to escape.

The video shows beautiful art by Bryn Oh, Glyph Graves and Nonnatus Korhonen, who also play the scientists. It also features a most amazing tornado by Tryptofaa Sands. The visitors are SLebrities Alpha Auer, Bettina Tizzy, Chimera Cosmos, Hamlet Au, Larry Pixel, Max Newbold and Tayzia Abattoir.

The piece was performed at the Caerleon Sim in Second Life, and curated by Georg Janick, for the Virtual Art Initiative, and the video will be exhibited in the will in the Harbor Gallery at the University of Massachusetts at Boston in April 2010.

More info at the Creative Machinery website.

Avatar Orchestra Metaverse at NRK television

Here is the archived stream of spekter interviewing Leif Inge aka Gumnosophistai Nurmi featuring Avatar Orchestra Metaverse containing some seconds of Orchestral Investigation #9 :-)

http://www1.nrk.no/nett-tv/klipp/480658

AOM starting at around 39:00

From Creative Machinery

Avatar Orchestra Metaverse on Norwegian television

Norwegian broadcaster NRK has interviewed Avatar Orchestra Metaverse member Gumnosophistai Nurmi about Second Life for it's "spekter" program. Spekter is a background information program, and its todays is about internet and how the new networking uses like Facebook Twitter and Second Life affect our lives.
If all goes well, we will see Gumno and hopefully a fragment of the machinima Orchestral Investigation #9 as the last item of the show.

The spekter show will be broadcast tonight at 20:10 CET at NRK 2.
http://www.nrk.no/programmer/sider/spekter/

Residency at Caerleon

From Creative Machinery

I am very glad to have a residency at the Virtual Art Initiative. I have a huge space at the Caerleon sims to work on a video installation or whatever I want.

Also I'm involved in the creation of machinima documenting an 8 month project of collaborative exploration of the fundamental dimensions that make the art of virtual worlds a unique aesthetic medium. Each of these dimensions - immersion, interaction, ambiguity of identity, environmental fluidity, artificial agency, and globally networked collaboration - is being explored in a collaboration of artists under the direction of a project leader lasting approximately six weeks.
The collaborations are being thoroughly documented in images, text, and machinima film, and will generate work that will be exhibited in the "real world" Harbor Gallery at the University of Massachusetts at Boston in April 2010.

The first dimension - immersion - is currently being explored by Bryn Oh, Glyph Graves and Nonnatus Korhonen, in the project Immersiva, an immersive interactive story telling performance.

From Creative Machinery

Evo Szuyuan machinima at ARENA

From Creative Machinery

From february 13, 2009 at 12am PST to February 15, 2009 at 12am PST I have a video exhibition at ARENA, organized by uqbar. media art culture and Rinascimento Virtuale.
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Uqbar/47/222/722

On 4 screens in the shape of a 50 x 50 x 30 meter box I will show 4 videos I worked on in 2008: seeing spOts, being dOts, Orchestral Investigation #9, 17 Unsong Songs, and the draft trailer for Fly me / Volavola.

From Creative Machinery

From Creative Machinery

Article on Volavola at digicult and more

Marco Riciputi wrote another nice article about Volavola / Fly me - the movie after interviewing me for the 41st issue of digimag, the italian e-magazine on digital culture.

Overall the draft trailers for the movie have been received very well, and people around the world are genuine curious to see the final result! The project was posted on the Korean Virtual World news blog TOV virtual, the Russian blog experiment.ru, The Second Life Thailand fan site, Warhol Stars, New World Notes, and more.
There is also an interview with Berardo Carboni on Show Farm, and the trailers are now in the official Second Life machinima showcase.

Volavola at Second Times

An article about Volavola appeared at Japans Major Second Life blog, The Second Times.
http://www.secondtimes.net/news/world/20090115_volavola.html

Volavola at Cafe Babel

Marco Riciputi joined us at the set of Volavola and wrote the article Second Life and cinema: awaiting Hollywood for cafebabel.com

Volavola draft trailers

Berardo Carboni and Simone Bellonio just finished two fast draft trailers for the movie Fly me / Volavola.

The fast energetic Hudson Mohawke version and the slower, more dramatic, Donizetti version.

17 Unsong Songs Machinima

And here is the machinima documentary of the major solo installation 17 Unsong Songs by Adam Ramona at East of Odyssey, Second Life.

The video played as a loop of 17 minutes and 17 seconds at the the Premier of Queensland's National New Media Award Exhibition at the Premier of Queensland's National New Media Award Exhibition at the Gallery of Modern Art(GoMA).

More info at the Creative Machinery website.

Woody at Art Month Ameland

From Creative Machinery

During novembers Art month Ameland Haglet Alter is hosting Ameland in 3D. During this period I'll be working on "Woody", a videoclip / short movie I'm making with Ookoi.