Janine "Iris Ophelia" Hawkins' ongoing review of gaming and virtual world style
Here's a Second Life machinima posted this past weekend with some serious style. Blaq Magik's "Battle" is brief, but in that brief window of time it demonstrates a lot of powerful techniques. If you're already about to skip to the comments to deliver some choice zinger about baggy pants and rap music, you can keep your #dadjokes to yourself. Not everyone's going to like Blaq's work, but everyone should still respect it.
Even if you can't appreciate the style, the music, or the seamless b-boy animations on display, you should absolutely be able to appreciate the technique demonstrated in this thirty second slice of a Second Life dance battle. Here's why it works so well:
There are a lot of little stylistic elements coming together to make this clip what it is. First you have the cinematic effects -- the letterboxing, the depth of field, the lens flare -- big surface elements that deliver polished and flattering virtual world footage.
And then there's the camera work. It's smooth (or at least smoother than clicking around on SL's standard camera controls would allow) but there's still a bit of jerkiness and instability. It's not a bad thing, because the overall effect of that feels more authentic than most machinima camera work ever does. It's not a camera on a dolly, but in the hands of a very capable cameraperson.
You can check out more of Blaq Magik's machinima over on YouTube.
TweetJanine Hawkins (@bleatingheart on Twitter, Iris Ophelia in Second Life) has been writing about virtual worlds and video games for nearly a decade, and has had her work featured on Paste, Kotaku, Jezebel and The Mary Sue.
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