How YouTube Star Mr. Moon Made His Hilarious Second Life Video

"Ticket to Hell" from popular gaming YouTuber Mr. Moon. like I said last week, is the best and raunchily funniest Second Life "outsider" video in a long while. What’s also amazing, as Moon told me recently, is how he made it. While Mr. Moon has produced epic videos in other online games/MMO like Dayz Z and Ark, this was his first foray into the 17 year old virtual world.

“I always thought [Second Life] would be the perfect place to create some content,” he says. “I had no idea going in what I was going to create, it really all came together in an interesting way.”

I was surprised myself how he created it. Here’s some behind the scenes secrets from Mr. Moon -- spoilers if you haven’t yet seen “Ticket to Hell” (and you should already, it's right up there):

The story was almost completely improvised by he and Vertiigo, his raunchy Australian co-star, soon after a jealous bro in a nightclub began dry humping Moon (shown early on in the movie):  

“Vertiigo and I spoke a bit after I was 'assaulted',” as Moon puts it. “And he had played Second Life for a long stretch of time when he was younger, and knew how to do things. 

“So we both hopped in-game and went to a beach, I told him to just come and introduce yourself and we'll improv it.

“And that's pretty much what the whole movie is. Aside from the end scene, which I had an idea for that we recorded, I then went back and added in the Sanchez character on my own and set it up with a voiceover to finish the movie. So Vertiigo’s first sight of the ending to his character was seen when the video went live, that was quite funny, getting his reaction.

“So me seeing his office, him telling me the boxing gig, and all that follows were me finding out about it for the first time, so my reactions were genuine, that's why I kept in a lot of the laughing and us breaking character many times, we were just having so much fun.”

I has assumed the boxing match was at least scripted, but surprisingly, no -- Mr. Moon says they improvised that too:

“[T]he boxing match was actually 3 rounds that I edited down to one. You can tell that the boxing owner wasn't really entertaining my roleplay, by his reactions to things I was saying, which I thought it made all the funnier

“The random guys we met when we were training even came to the fight, the New York boys we called them, I thought that was great and made sure to show them attending our little fight.”

They shot way more video than wound up in the 70 minute feature. “Was a bit over a month of solid recording.”

A transcendent moment comes around 60 minutes in, when after all that creative smartassery in some of Second Life’s most crude and butt-ugly places, Mr. Moon makes sure to take a tour of truly beautiful locations in the virtual world.

“I really did want to show off some really neat things in the SL universe,” as he puts it. “Not to mention I was having fun doing it. I know I barely even scratched the surface of the things you can do in world, but it was important for me not have the video be a hit piece on SL as many of the YouTube videos I had seen were.”

Any plans to do a follow up in Second Life?

“100%,” says Mr. Moon. So now may be a good time to subscribe to his YouTube channel here.

Comments

[Ephemera Crawford]

I honestly didnt know where they were going in this, and I felt compelled to see how it ended. And the two random guys he met training - perfect SL moment. Also the standup performance in Soho with a typical SL audience. I hope he does more.

[Starshine Halasy]

Great movie, so funny and well done!