Good thoughtful comments from Kate Nova, reflecting on that amazing (and heavily post-processed) Second Life machinima from Teal Aurelia:
It's a gorgeous video! And a very cool "how to" companion video. [Watch above] Wonderful work by Aurelia and I wish her a great career journey!
One of the reasons people sometimes go gaga over Christopher Nolan films is that his fiction is "real". If a 747 crashes into a building, he buys a 747 and crashes it into a building. All the films with CGI 747s are amazing. But there's something both visually and conceptually powerful about Nolan making "real fiction".
I love Aurelia's story and vision. Yet the idea of "bringing all these influences together" while beautiful and wonderfully intentioned, is "fake". The different SL personalities that we see walking together never did walk together. It's all (excellent) green screen. [See above]
There's nothing wrong with any of this, and yes, the results are impressive!
For herself, Kate makes the case for "documentary" machinima:
Nonetheless, my own interest is in more documentary-like presentations of SL experiences. If a photo or video shows two or a dozen avatars together, I'm interested in them actually being together. Perhaps for an afternoon; perhaps only for the few minutes of the capture; but together "for real". What I find so compelling about a world like SL is that it is a place. Zoom is a useful tool, but it is not a place. Zoom is me at my place talking to you at your place. SL is you and I in the same place interacting with each other. Maybe sharing thoughts, or maybe throwing frogs at each other. Green screen machinima is awesome, but it's SL as a production tool rather than a place.
For sure there's plenty of room for both. But let's not forget about "real virtual" documentation. Great documentary films don't have the gloss of ILM or Weta Digital production, yet they're important, or essential, for their reality. I hope we can keep our eyes open for less visually stunning, but also important "real virtual" content.
I like both varieties myself! But in all honesty, Second Life's architecture simply isn't capable of generating great looking, AAA-quality footage without heavy post-processing. Consider Isabelle Cheren's marvelous music video which she had to shoot far above Second Life and away from everyone else, simply to achieve a AAA-level framerate. There's so much great high quality user-made 3D content in SL, but ironically, the best way to showcase SL content is to extract and polish it in post.
That's my take, at least. How about you?
I have to respectfully disagree with the overall sentiment of this commentary. Kate Nova’s case for “documentary machinima” is argued without any visual examples to compare and contrast Teal Auerlia’s work to. It is fine to have an opinion about the use of post-production in machinima, but it is also important to educate and familiarize yourself with the community you are having a dialogue about–in all its facets. The Second Life machinima community is composed of artists that produce video content from all types of genres.
I also feel your opinion about Second Life not being able to produce quality machinimas without being heavily edited in post is more of a reflection of your personal experience with machinima, and is not the reality for a lot of us in the community. There are plenty of machinima artists on the grid that have achieved great looking machinimas with little to no assistance in post production.
I encourage both you and Kate Nova to take some time to look up (or revisit) artists like Sere Vene, Malus Castamere, Seri Cast, Shawn Gunner, Kelie Ladys, Lipe Vortex, Any Souza, Polyhistor Serpente and many more. You would be surprised at what you can find. The creativity these artists possess push boundaries, raise bars, and sometimes make us question our own “virtual reality” of what feels “real” or “fake” to us.
Posted by: Vrutega | Monday, November 14, 2022 at 05:44 PM
> I encourage both you and Kate Nova to take some time to look up (or revisit) artists like Sere Vene, Malus Castamere, Seri Cast, Shawn Gunner, Kelie Ladys, Lipe Vortex, Any Souza, Polyhistor Serpente and many more
By all means, please post YouTube links to your favorites here, I'd love to see them and I'm sure many readers would too.
Posted by: Wagner James Au | Tuesday, November 15, 2022 at 12:17 AM
I agree whole-heartedly with Kate. It was an impressive work and very clever and certainly well edited, but all the time I was watching I was concentrating way too much on the "fake" background. It was too far removed from reality -- even the virtual kind -- for me to enjoy it fully.
I have the same issue with many movies these days who "artfully" layer characters in front of lovely and usually romantic European destinations. I get distracted because I can see what they are doing.
SL has come a long ways and much is possible as well as impressive without resorting to overlays and post processing effects.
Typing with one finger on my notebook and heading off to bed so a shorter comment than usual. Not a bad thing.
Posted by: chic aeon | Wednesday, November 16, 2022 at 09:24 PM