Machinima making is a lonely process. We either have the UI off and can't hear what anyone is typing - or we're offline editing. It's not unusual for many of us to be more familiar with a persons You Tube ID than their avatar's name.
During the few years machinima has been around in Second Life, attempts have been made amongst ourselves to open common lines of communication - both to help promote our work and to have others to talk shop with. Unfortunately, and probably because machinima is so time intensive, this never got very far. So, when the inaugural Month Of Machinima, sponsored by The Linden Endowment for the Arts was announced last month, the announcement was greeted with cautious optimism. We're dealing with SL - ya know?
The story so far: sometime during the last week of April, 13 avatars received a notecard announcing that they had been selected for MoM - and their films would be screened inworld on May 4. On the morning of May 4 there was a hurried notice on the Linden blog to "c'mon down" to the show.
As usual, the event was packed with all the machinima makers that didn't get selected. We might want to scratch your eyes out - but we're all in this boat together. And that was it! Not even a blurb from Hamlet Au (sorry Hamlet - but these days you're the go to place for this stuff by default). Seems there's no Endowment in the LEA - but maybe calling it Linden Arts would have been a bridge too far.
Lab Promotion? Some of us received our monthly Linden Sandbox thing, which featured a new machinima by Chantal Harvey - one of the LEA Judges; a "Look of the Month" featuring Toxic Menges - one of the inaugural machinima artists; and a link to a separate You Tube channel for the rest of the inaugural artists. I've been acquainted with Chantal and Toxic for a long time and their work is some of the best Second Life has to offer. They didn't deserve being the butt of The Lab's appalling social tone deafness.
So, since somebody has to make a fuss over all the sweat, tears and sore bums suffered from crouching over this art form called Second Life Machinima - here's our Four Paws Up tribute to the Inaugural Machinima Artists of the LEA.
- Pyewacket
To Inhabit A House Of Uneasy Chairs' by Hypatia Pickens.
'The Unkempt Hair Of The Dead' by Penumbra Carter.
'Attack Of The Robots' by Osprey Therian.
'The Disease: Outbreak In Here' by Ole Etzel.
'Paradox 34' by Nasos Psarris.
'Karma Kong' by Daveypup Nirpaw.
'Nighthawks' by Frankie Rockett.
'Dreamer's Journey' by Rocksea Renegade.
'Oh boy, what a MESH' by Draxtor Despres.
'Toxing' by D'Lish.
'Coloured Pencils' by Steff Ling.
'Without Words' by Toxic Menges.
'Oscar Goldberg Speaks Out' by Crap Mariner
You make a great point Pye. The only people who really knew about the event were either the machinimatographers who submitted entries or their groups. If the purpose of this exercise is to promote machinima, the Lab has tripped at the first hurdle.
ReplyDeleteI tried to ask the question to Rhett Linden at today's Machinima Monday group about whether the Lab would do more to push machinima to a wider audience and he basically said "we've done loads". Before I could quote examples where they could've done more, I was shot down publicly.
ReplyDeleteHow DARE they shoot the bunny!
ReplyDelete(Does you needs a band-aid?)