Imagining "The Dumb Man": SL Machinima Auteur Lainy Voom's Latest Movie

When Lainy Voom first heard Sherwood Anderson's mysterious short story, "The Dumb Man", she says, "It stopped me in my tracks, made me absolutely still while I listened."  It was about death and desire, and it refused easy understanding.  "I like that it raises questions but the questions are never resolved." So the images it evoked lingered in her head for months, until she had her own answers to them.  The result is this machinima (high resolution version above, YouTube version below), easily among the very most ambitious and mesmerizing works of the form. 

There's a lot to say about "The Dumb Man" of Lainy Voom, but as with her first SL machinima, "Tale from Midnight City", which instantly established her as an auteur in the medium, it's probably better to watch first, then read on for more.

Lainy found "The Dumb Man" via a link on the Creative Commons* site, leading her to Telltale Weekly, a series of CC-licensed spoken word files read by Alex Wilson.  "As soon as I heard the speaker reading  [it]," she tells me, "I found myself playing it constantly over a period of a few months and never becoming tired of it with a whole array of images swirling about.  It’s highly emotive and poetic."  That was also a challenge, with no clear narrative, and symbolic elements that resisted obvious interpretation.   

"This project was a huge challenge for me.  I battled with the movie being too literal in places, the scenes are so ingrained (both in my head and also the movie) that I don’t think I could improve on those at this stage.  I tried not to put any imagery I thought might be an answer into the film." 

With floating doors, giant eyeballs, and other fantastic elements, the most surprising thing about her "Dumb Man" is how few shots were created in post-production.  "They are all done in SL," she says, "absolutely no post prod apart from two green screen shots (the shadow heads and the close-up of the white man with the eyes.)"  The same goes for the crisp, deep-hued imagery:  "No post prod color etc. added either, all done in-world (apart from one color correction of the dandy guy laying on the floor for one shot.)" So the bulk of the effects were shot live, working with available Second Life elements, like a Dogme video produced in a world where reality is utterly mutable.

To create the sky of words, for example, "I made an Alpha file, then added a 'rotate image' script to one, and a 'rotate object' to another. I made the text glow with the new feature in WindLight."  Needing a small earth to run on, or a door floating on the sea, "I just made a revolving planet and placed it on the sea, similarly with the door." 

So too with images that were utterly dreamlike: "I had a poseball script on top of the eyeball (which also had the revolving script in it) and added a running animation." 

It's a haunting and fragile work, open to interpretation, and Lainy prefers to leave it that way: "I want the viewer to reach his/her own conclusion," she says, offering yet another layer of symbols atop the equally foreboding dreamscape of Anderson's original prose. "It’s not an altogether successful translation of the story, but I’m content with what I achieved." 

Disclosure: I'm an occasional-if-proud consultant for Creative Commons, and worked with Lainy on an unrelated machinima project.

Comments

[rikomatic]

Incredible! So dreamlike and haunting.

[Lavanya Hartnell]

Wow. Super creative presentation. It must have taken a lot of work to find all the right animations, clothes, etc. Wonderfully executed!

[Dan]

Amazing. After randomly running across the vid on YouTube, I absolutely had to read more about it. Thanks for providing the info.