Here's a Hypnotically Beautiful "Handheld" SL Machinima

This is a hypnotically beautiful "handheld" Second Life machinima by Marx Catteneo, depicting The Cube Project in Second Life, in which over two dozen virtual artists created a massive exhibit where they could "only use two distinct virtual objects: a black cube, and a white cube." The in-world event was also striking, but watch how Marx depicts it:

While Marx doesn't specify what he means by "handheld" in the YouTube description, presumably he held up an iPhone or other camera device to the monitor, to give the video an added etheral quality, a technique I first saw used by ColeMarie Soleil a couple years ago. Speaking of which, Ms. Soleil is the one who sent me this machinima, and says this about it:

"What stands out about this machinima is that it does not try and be a standard film, which is something that I feel many machinimists make the mistake of doing," she tells me. "It embraces the medium for what it is. The use of shadows within the black and white regions. The abstract way it is shot. The immersive feel to the flow of the editing and camera work. The choice of music. Even if the video does run a very high 10 plus minutes, it does not wind up feeling as lengthy as it is. Very much one of the finer moments in documenting SL artwork. Also as a sidenote: The split screen is very effective as the scenes change. Overall it is just a really love piece of machinima which is neither trying too hard nor too little. It is just right. Would be nice to see more simplistic classy videos like this. Perfect example of less is more." Agreed on both counts!

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Comments

[colemarie]

yeah was a rather nice video to see pop up in my ims

[Marx Catteneo]

First of all my thanx to Wagner James Au and ColeMarie Soleil for this post on my video.

One remark on "handheld machinima" it's the brand name of my machinima work, like my RL work is released under the name "Fiction Films".

For those interested in the way this machinima was created here's a description of the process:
In the shooting of The Cube Project machinima i used alt zoom and Space Navigator modes depending on the movement i was planning, though also a number of shots had their camera movement evolving from what i saw unfold from the art works during the actual shot.
To film such a large number of sims was a pretty hard job, there were times i was about to give up but what kept me going was every next art work i saw that inspired me enough to film another one. The shooting took me 2 days each a few hours of filming.

Following the atmosphere of the art exhibition i decided to restrict myself in my video as much as the artists were restricted by the black and white cubes, I made exact square windows on the 16:9 frame and forced myself to stay within those tight boundaries.
After some try outs i gave every art work/sim the same amount of time: 30 seconds (though some would have deserved more time it would keep the total running time acceptable and not give more exposure to certain art works)
All footage was shot in color with a blueish windlight setting but basically only the sky had bright colors, i turned the images into almost black and white to stick to the exhibition theme.
The restricting with the onscreen cubes frame was a curse and a blessing at the same time, the editing process became very complex as it's a 4D puzzle; not only the image can be moved and cropped behind the black frames but it also changes over time and is in "dialogue" with the other frame if that holds a different image.
Working this way it became obvious one aspect had a very strong effect; after showing 2 different images going to the full screen version (an actual 16:9 image behind the frame) had a highly satisfying effect on myself as viewer, every art work got at least one part showing the full screen. Another striking feature about this workflow was the amount of variation possible within the restriction.
I edited the entire without sound and when it was finished i went looking for a soundtrack that wouldn't take too much attention by itself so the art work would remain the true focus of the video. I found an ambient music piece that had a length very close to what i needed (it was about 12 seconds too short) i ended up time stretching it because cutting in the actual music would make it less harmonic as a music piece. Due to this way of constructing the audio visual combination, any moment in which music and images seem to be synced is pure coincidence.