Volavola screening in Casino Luxembourg

From Creative Machinery

From 29 January to 1st May 2011 Casino Luxembourg is hosting an exhibition of Human Atopic Space presented in the “Aquarium” and the basement. The members of Human Atopic Space are highlighting artists at the centre of an exhibition where virtual realities are either at the heart of the creative process or are vectors of a reflection which engages them.

The exhibition AFK (Away From Keyboard)is curated by Margherita Balzerani. As a part of the exhibition Vola Vola will be screened thursday 21 April 2011 at 7 p.m.

Festivals in the Ile-de-France

Dominique Moulon revisits the years festivals in the Ile-de-France in this article on newmediaart.eu.

One of the festivals that is highlighted in his article is Atopic, that featured the avant premiere of Volavola.

Fly Me- Vola Vola wins Simona Gesmundo Award!

On May 18 2010, Berardo Carboni was given the "Creativity Award" for Volavola / Fly me, the first feature shot entirely in Second Life, for "it's novelty and the important results achieved by the film".
The award was given during the 4th edition of the International Prize Simona Gesmundo animated shorts at the Teatro Totò, which was held in Naples.
The "Creativity Award" is annually awarded to an author for the use of new technology, which foreshadows the future in the field of cinema and animation.

Simona Gesmundo, was a talented young Italian woman interested in artificial intelligence applied to cinema and an author of animation short films. Therefore, the International Award of Animation Short Films was created, which puts the attention on new technology and innovation.

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.

Atopic Festival

From Creative Machinery

The Atopic festival will be held from 27 october to 4 november at La Cite des Sciences in Paris. It is an art festival dedicated to virtual reality art, and the first machinima festival in France.

I'm very happy that seeing spOts, being dOts will be screened in the "Creative" section.

Also november the 2nd Volavola will have it's premiere at the festival on the IMAX screen of La Geode.

Volavola article @ digicult

After seeing the preview clip of Volavola Marco Riciputi interviewed me about it, and wrote an article for the october issue of Digimag, the magazine of digicult.it, the Italiab e-magazine about digital culture and electronic art.
Here you can read the article in Italian. (Soon an english translation will be online).

Volavola Preview and Making-of Special @ art.clouds 2009

From Creative Machinery

I will be doing a presentation about the "The Making of Volavola" at the media festival art.clouds 2009 [ghosts in the machine] in Regensburg Germany.

The festival will run from 8 to 17 october, at several locations in Regensburg, and features movies, lectures, performances, workshops and more.

15 October at 20:00 I will talk about how Volavola was made, and show a preview of the movie at the Akademiesalon, Andreasstr. 28.

Please visit the art.clouds 2009 [ghosts in the machine] blog for more information about the festival, and the Volavola / Fly me post for details about my presentation.

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.

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.

Volavola / Fly Me at Rinascimento Virtuale

From Creative Machinery

Volavola / Fly Me is being presented at the Exhibition Rinascimento Virtuale, curated by Mario Gerosa from October 21, 2008 till january 7, 2009 at The Museum of Natural History at the University of Florence.

more info at http://www.yourwaytoflorence.com/virtual-renaissance-art-in-second-life-exhibition-florence.htm

Fly me / Volavola progresses

We're halfway in making the feature length machinima "Fly me / Volavola", and here's a video showing a selection of shots. The material is not yet edited, or dubbed, and doesn't reflect the story, but will hopefully give an impression of the atmosphere and unveil a little bit of where it is going.


"Fly me / Volavola" is a movie about love, and how it becomes more difficult to know what is real and what is not. The story is filmed once as a regular Real Life movie and once in Second Life, but the 2 movies are interlinked.

The movie is directed by Berardo Carboni, who previously directed Shooting Silvio. The script is written by Berardo Carboni and Mario Gerosa.

More information can be found at the Creative Machinery Website, and at the Volavola Myspace page.

Promo Fly me / Volavola

We declared the promo of Volavola finished!
"Fly me / Volavola" is a movie about love, and how it becomes more difficult to know what is real and what is not. The story is filmed once as a regular Real Life movie and once in Second Life, but the 2 movies are interlinked. The promo doesn't really reflect the story, but was meant as a proof of concept.

The movie is directed by Berardo Carboni, who previously directed Shooting Silvio. The script is written by Berardo Carboni and Mario Gerosa.

More information can be found at the Creative Machinery Website, and at the Volavola Myspace page.