Good thoughtful comments from Kate Nova, reflecting on that amazing (and heavily post-processed) Second Life machinima from Teal Aurelia:
It's a gorgeous video! And a very cool "how to" companion video. [Watch above] Wonderful work by Aurelia and I wish her a great career journey!
One of the reasons people sometimes go gaga over Christopher Nolan films is that his fiction is "real". If a 747 crashes into a building, he buys a 747 and crashes it into a building. All the films with CGI 747s are amazing. But there's something both visually and conceptually powerful about Nolan making "real fiction".
I love Aurelia's story and vision. Yet the idea of "bringing all these influences together" while beautiful and wonderfully intentioned, is "fake". The different SL personalities that we see walking together never did walk together. It's all (excellent) green screen. [See above]
There's nothing wrong with any of this, and yes, the results are impressive!
For herself, Kate makes the case for "documentary" machinima:
Nonetheless, my own interest is in more documentary-like presentations of SL experiences. If a photo or video shows two or a dozen avatars together, I'm interested in them actually being together. Perhaps for an afternoon; perhaps only for the few minutes of the capture; but together "for real". What I find so compelling about a world like SL is that it is a place. Zoom is a useful tool, but it is not a place. Zoom is me at my place talking to you at your place. SL is you and I in the same place interacting with each other. Maybe sharing thoughts, or maybe throwing frogs at each other. Green screen machinima is awesome, but it's SL as a production tool rather than a place.
For sure there's plenty of room for both. But let's not forget about "real virtual" documentation. Great documentary films don't have the gloss of ILM or Weta Digital production, yet they're important, or essential, for their reality. I hope we can keep our eyes open for less visually stunning, but also important "real virtual" content.
I like both varieties myself! But in all honesty, Second Life's architecture simply isn't capable of generating great looking, AAA-quality footage without heavy post-processing. Consider Isabelle Cheren's marvelous music video which she had to shoot far above Second Life and away from everyone else, simply to achieve a AAA-level framerate. There's so much great high quality user-made 3D content in SL, but ironically, the best way to showcase SL content is to extract and polish it in post.
That's my take, at least. How about you?
Wagner James Au / New World Notes 
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