Music Video: Second Life - Virtual U2 Concert

A group of U2 fans, who are also fans of the online 3D environment Second Life, have formed a group called U2 in SL which amounts to the worlds first virtual "tribute band" . . . or at least the first one I have heard of (details here and here). These folks have created online "avatars" who look just like the members of U2. They built a stage, complete with instruments, lighting, and pyrotechnics, they created elaborate animated "scripts" that the stage effects and characters perform for each song and they streamed audio from an actual live performance from a Boston U2 concert as the sound track. Add to this the trimmings of a concert setting such as T-shirt stands and merchandise and about 50 fans who showed up for the event (can't have to many people in one area yet or things slow down) and you have one of the more unique online experiences I have seen so far: an authentic life performance, of sorts, for live people participating in a virtual event. It also looks like they also had some people acting as the "camera crew" who each took video of different members and angles so that they could cut it all together into a concert highlights video which they have posted on YouTube.

Pretty Unique to say the least. They have no affiliation with the real U2. They make no money at all off these events and they have tried several times to contact U2 and their management to legitimize their efforts. The primary goal seems to be to draw awareness to various Bono charities.

What makes this special to me is that it is a creative labor of love that was put together by ordinary people who wanted to push the boundaries of traditional thinking. Because Second Life is a completely open environment that allows members to create and own anything they want (as long as they have the skills or the money to pay someone with skills) it is the perfect platform for these kinds of experiments.

Video Game Filmmaking: Rooster Teeth - Red Vs. Blue episode 1

Red Vs Blue is a collaboration between Burnie Burns, Matt Hullum, and Joel Heyman who later formed Rooster Teeth Productions. It is made enirely in the game Halo 2. I think it is fair to say that this effort has officially become a part of video game Americana. Ask an avid gamer what it is and they will, almost to a person, be able to tell you. The witty writers at Rooster Teeth productions almost didn't get the idea off the ground if not for the success of an anti Mac parody video that they did earlier. This video had caught the eye of Computer Gaming World magazine who wanted to include the video as part of their CD release in an upcoming issue. These guys were young but they weren't dumb, they quickly re-coded the video to advertise Red Vs Blue at the end. That exposure gave them the takeoff that the concept needed to become a major viral hit and the rest is history.

The above video is episode 1 in what has now become a long running series of 100 episodes and counting.

Video Game Filmmaking: Douglas Gayeton - My Second Life

The Submarine Channel sponsors a website called MiniMovies which is beginning to showcase short episodic documentaries by various directors. This one, by director Douglas Gayeton, is shot entirely in the new online community "Second Life" Gayetons bio on minimovies reads:

Douglas Gayeton wrote and directed, together with William Gibson, 'Johnny Mnemonic', the first interactive cd-rom based movie, for Sony Imagesoft. His digital animated series 'Delta State', was named best animated TV series of the year at the 2004 Annecy Film Festival. Gayeton has also created or designed online social networks for such clients as AOL, MSN, Vivendi and Napster.

Video Game Filmmaking: DAoC - My Immortal

This video was created using screen captures from the massively multiplayer online roleplaying video game Dark Age of Camelot. The characters in this game can do various emotes such as drinking (with invisible mugs in this case) or dancing, laughing,crying begging etc. This allows for a primitive sort of acting. Another character is played in first person view and that one acts as a second camera. Between this perspective and the primary characters own camera (played on a seperate computer) a great diversity of shots can be achieved. Other players are recruited as a supporting cast, a screen capture program is used to turn the game play into video clips and they are edited together with sound and/or music like any other footage.

I love this new generation of short films that are being created in video game engines because it represents a really innovative way to create 3D animation sequences. Look for more examples of of this approach in future posts. I have a feeling it was works like this that inspired the Southpark Episode that takes place in the World Of Warcraft.

Unfortunately I don't have much information about the producer of this video since the credits all seem to list people only by their character names in the game.