Blade Runner in a Box: Second Life Adventure Kit Inspired by Roy Batty's "Tannhauser Gate" Speech

Remember the famous scene in Blade Runner where the dying replicant named Roy Batty talks about watching "C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser Gate"? Of course you do. And I bet you wondered what those were, and maybe even wanted to visit them yourself. Now in Second Life, you can (at least one version of same.) Behold, the Tannhauser Gate:

This isn't a traditional machinima, but a demonstration of an adventure-in-a-box product created by Zeja Pyle. His Tannhauser Gate comes with an orbital launcher, a spaceport, a spacecraft, and, of course, a hyperspace gate station called Tannhauser. All the effects you see in the machinima are scripted into the kit, Zeja tells me: "100% of the visual effects are from the product itself," she says. (Somewhat ironically, the soundtrack dialog for the machinima is borrowed from another 80's sci-fi classic, Aliens.) Alas, there's no in-world demo: "There is no permanent installation of it in-world," says Zeja, "because the installation is changing around the traveler. People must buy the product to experience it... but they can do it with all their friends." Then again, it only costs L$1100 (under 5 bucks), which is still cheaper than buying Blade Runner on DVD. If you do give his Tannhauser Gate a whirl, report back here if it's worthy of Roy Batty's dying breath. (Not to mention Rutger Hauer's ham-tastic acting.)

Comments

[Wizard Gynoid]

this video has a copyright claim at the end. it might be interesting to see if the producers of the "Aliens" movie care that snippets of Ripley and Corporal Hicks' dialogues are used here without attribution.

[brinda allen]

@Wizard Gynoid, Yup... I thought that dialog sounded familiar....here we go again.

[Hamlet Au]

Wiz, do a search for *Aliens* clips on YouTube, I see a bunch that have been up there for months if not years. YouTube's copyright identification, notification, and resolution system has gotten extremely good, at least for larger media companies, enabling copyright holders to not only identify what videos their content is being used in, but also giving them options beyond just having the video removed. In many cases, for instance, the rights holder can and will let the video stay up, but add an advertising channel to collect revenue/clickthroughs from it. (All this is one big reason I prefer to link to YouTube videos, since Google has that whole infrastructure in place.) But in any case, when there are likely hundreds of thousands of YouTube videos online with whole long movie/TV clips and entire songs, a video with about 30 seconds of soundtrack fragments disassociated from their original visual track is probably way way way down the priority list of Newscorp. (And in any case, this particular one is arguably a fair use parody of 80s sci fi.)

Or to put it another way: Chill out and just watch the video. :)

[Harper Ganesvoort]

I don't know about copyright problems,
but this machinima is seriously good! A down
side: when my son saw this, I had to
explain what Blade Runner was. Time keeps
tickin', tickin' away....

(Please excuse the weird formatting. I'm
writing this on my iPhone.)

[Hamlet Au]

OMFG you gotta get your son to watch *Blade Runner*! Tell him it stars the old guy in the hat who was in that movie with Shia LaBeouf.

[Arcadia Codesmith]

Why risk a cease and desist when it's so much fun to write, perform and engineer your own original dialog?

You never know when somebody will try (again) to resurrect the Aliens franchise, and when they do they might take a renewed interest in shutting down infringers.

And even if you're taking the "civil disobedience against antiquated copyright laws" stance, it's common courtesy to credit your sources.

Final note: Rutger Hauer is a consummate thespian. I think "ham-tastic" is a bit unfair.

[Wizard Gynoid]

erm, so hamlet, you're saying it's okay for this guy/girl to erm claim copyright and not do an attribution? doesn't sound right to me, irregardless of whether it's fair use or not. SL peeps are a bit sensitive about IP rights i think.

[Hamlet Au]

"SL peeps are a bit sensitive about IP rights i think."

Wiz, I'm not sure that's the case when so much SL content is based on, derived, outright copied, or otherwise inspired by various books/movies/TV shows/videogames/songs/toys/etc. In any event, I assume Zeja meant the copyright mark to refer to the SL creation, not all the content of the video. But I asked her to comment on that here.

[II Singh]

Substandard low poly build with public domain textures. There are certainly better ones on the grid. The overall cinematic pacing was awkward and a bit clunky. Some nice scene transitions but as far as a sci-fi genre machinima I think Cyber-girl still reigns supreme. I wouldn't necessarily want to use this as a sample of the "state-of-the-art" possible in-world on Second Life to folks who are outsiders. The whole thing comes off as a bit mid to late 1990-ish graphics wise. Almost Wing Commander I or II.

[Zeja Pyle]

Exactly. The copyright is to cover the product in SL and all the works it as required to do it... Certainly not to pretend to have rights on Alien, use only for the voices in the movie.
Now, if someone here consider that i must remove it and trash it, let me know, i will do it.

Should i trash it also because the space suite has been bought from another user in SL and they are not from me ?
Where is the limit?

[Zeja Pyle]

I have never pretend to have done a good movie... I have simply did it to display my product cause the concept is not easy to display in a demo. The rendering is inside the limit fo Second Life, and this have probably a real value only for the Second life users.
The movie has been done in one night, I had not really more time to invest. Also i'm french speaking and my voice is not acceptable in english, nor the one of the people around me.

I'm very sorry if this blog has take this movie for any 7th art attempt... cause this was really not the target here.

[Extropia DaSilva]

"....Seventeen DAYS? Man, we ain't gonna last seventeen HOURS! Those things are gonna come in here just like they did before. They're gonna come here and they're gonna KILL US!!!".