Here's a warm but melancholy machinima for a cold Tuesday morning, brought to you by expressionist master Lyric Lundquist, who I profiled last year. In "trix", she combines Second Life footage with real video of herself and her girlfriend, Kelly, and blends that together into a heavily post-processed flurry of deep texture and color. She says the song that accompanies it, "You Don't Know Me," by Apparat, is deeply personal, and so is the inspiration for making the machinima in the first place. "[I]t was an outrageously cathartic process making it after I went through something emotionally tragic in real life," Lyric writes in her director's notes, and when I ask what she means by that, only offers this opaque reply: "Monogamy is a tricky thing, isn't it?"
So it is. And so is making something that's so visually hypnotic, it seems like neither machinima nor real life video. Lyric shares some post-production secrets and credits after the break:
Lyric Lundquist's Production Notes
I used a number of effects to create "trix," but the most commonly used were "Mirror," which gave it that kind of butterfly vision effect, and effects under "Image Control," where I altered the colors to give the images a warm, orangey/red hue, while inverting others to give it an added layer of interest. I also heavily layered the clips, each with varying degrees of opacity with the intention to produce depth and give the viewer something new to look for each time they watch it.
"trix" Credits
In the video is myself, my avatar Lyric Lundquist, my real life girlfriend Kelly, Case Tomorrow, Vhaera Sands, Story Yakatura, and Distressed Jewell. I also used a light particle attachment that Skills Hak gave to me as a present through a lot of the video, the star particles are made by the ever-so-lovely Ms. Mia Snow, and the willow tree branches swaying are from Bryn Oh's Immersiva.
Meh, I prefer
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j_ndjsqu5FI
Posted by: Ricepot Rincewind | Tuesday, January 12, 2010 at 12:43 PM