Lainy Voom's "Dagon", Magnificent Second Life Machinima of H.P. Lovecraft Short Story

It's been many months since Lainy Voom uploaded a personal machinima project, but as it turns out, the Second Life machinima master (and an occasional collaborator of mine) has been hard at work on something astoundingly ambitious: a machinima-based retelling of H.P. Lovecraft's short story "Dagon", a tale of madness and mad discoveries. Put aside ten minutes where you can shut off all distractions, and watch:

Dagon - HP Lovecraft from Lainy Voom on Vimeo.

As she always does, Lainy's composition and photography is awesome. Add to this the resonant sound design (often an overlooked element in other machinima productions) provided by the Free Sound Project, and you're watching another landmark in virtual world narrative.

Hat tip to Gala Charron for pointing me to Lainy's latest!

Comments

[Nahasa Singh]

Excellent ! HPL fans are grateful !

Hamlet, please correct the Free Sound Project link,
it should be http://www.freesound.org/

[Ignatius Onomatopoeia]

Outstanding work. I find it more powerful than Lovecraft's original story. Poor HPL, repulsed by even the sight of seafood (from L. Sprague de Camp's bio of HPL).

"Dagon" and "Call of Cthulhu" and "Shadow Over Innsmouth" make so much sense in light of that fact.

Still, Voom's ending captures the *real* Lovecraftian horror of the tale: that humanity's time on earth is brief and something older than us will replace us. In fact, it might be at our front door right now.

That aspect of Lovecraft's work still gives me shivers...the line “We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far.”

Thanks for a fright in the bright hours of the morning. I'm glad I didn't watch this in the small, quiet hours.

[Hamlet Au]

Thanks for the pointer, Nahasa, fixed!

[Bettina Tizzy]

Superb, Lainy! What Ignatius said... :)

But hey... too many credits! Has it really come to that? If so, we've gone too far.

[Harper Ganesvoort]

I wouldn't mind seeing a transcription of the credits myself; those were way too small for my slowly failing eyesight. But a great film!

[Moebius Overdrive]

Wow, very nicely done. I applaud your production.