New World Notes' Top 10 Second Life Machinima of 2010

Here's my personal top ten favorite Second Life machinima of 2010, videos with innovative visual effects, bravura editing, beautiful cinematography, great storytelling, and sometimes, all four, counting down from the top:

10 - BobE Schism's "Hanging Out to Dry", with surreal and witty use of Second Life props and effects matched to cool music:

9 - Lainy Voom's "Dagon", a magnificent Second Life machinima based on H.P. Lovecraft's short story:

8 - Toxic Menges' "Little Red Riding Hood", kung fu edition:

7 - Akira Balog's story of an android at the end of the world:

6 - Bryn Oh's music video for a Moby track, "Stay With Me":

5 - Lyric Lundquist's "trix", brilliant merging of deeply personal real world video with SL machinima:

 

Final top four for 2010 after the break:

Still from Lainy Voom's Dagon

4 - Sean Krueger's hilarious "Man vs. Second Life Part 2", a pitch perfect parody of SL and those Discovery Channel survival shows. You don't have to see Part 1 to enjoy the sequel, but you should watch that one too.

3 - BobE Schism's "Sometimes Colder Than Ice", a transcendentally powerful short inspired by a passage from Paul Auster:

2 - Sam Lowry's "It's a Wonderful Second Life", a patriotic tribute to the spirit of user-generated content:

1 - Finally, Phaylen Fairchild's "Harbinger", a very dark, Saw-meets-Second Life horror thriller. Not to my usual taste such bloody sadism, but from my purely critical perspective, a near-perfect blending of story, material, and production values. And if Hollywood doesn't buy the movie rights for this, they're crazy:

Honorable Mentions

• Mad Metaverse: Opening Titles to "Mad Men" Remade in Second Life
• Second Life Machinima Captured With Webcam to Unreal Effect
• Lyric Lundquist Explores Insilico in Wireframe
• Second Life Cyberpunk From a Studio in Prague
• Steff Ling Plays With "Pencils"

Lots of other good to great machinima here. This list, by the way, doesn't include real world movies and videos that incorporated Second Life machinima, such as RU There, Life 2.0, My Avatar and Me, and Hot Tub Time Machine.

Did I miss any from 2010 that deserve a mention? Please post YouTube links in Comments!

Update, 1/1/11: Due to a tagging mishap, I nearly forgot to mention this one, which would probably be in the Top 10, if not close to it: Arbit Delacroix's "Plant Her": Machinima Video for Indie Triphop Band Potlatch:

Potlatch - "Plant Her" (Music video) from Arbit Delacroix on Vimeo.

Comments

[Isadora Fiddlesticks]

great selection, i agree with all of your choices here! :)

[Leondra]

Great list! I spent quite some time just yesterday trying to find Sam Lowry's "Its a Wonderful Second Life". I wanted to send to a friend as an example of great stuff in SL. Now I have your whole list bookmarked, too.

[Gary Hayes]

Shame you didn't report on this one that received two national TV airings in Oz and several elsewhere :) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iegbwMXsF8c ENTANGLEMENT THEORY (Second Life Mixed Reality Dance Film)

Happy New Year