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The 2006 Machinima Awards were announced this past weekend.
The winner of the best picture, best editing, and best independent machinima was “The Adventures of Bill and John: Danger Attacks at Dawn “:
I am amazed at how clever this is, using a flight based computer game as the gaming engine for filming.
Second Life’s “Bells and Spurs” won best commercial machinima.
Links to nominated machinima and the winners for each category here.
Slatenight 1.2 is available now - in Second Life at any Slatenight kiosk, and at the website slatenight.com
Articles this issue include the following:
Deus Ex Machina: “God From The Machine” (this one is the most popular by far, discussing the nexus between science fiction and technology, projecting into the future etc)
Hope, Fear and the Future: Burning Life 2006 (related to an in world event that mirrors an offline event called the Burning Man
Kids go Global in Second Life Part 1 (about the teen grid)
The White Cube of the Virtual World Art Space, part one
The White Cube of the Virtual World Art Space, part two (two fantastic articles about remediation by Christy Dena)Avatars, Power and the Ethics of Freedom in Second Life (this one is mine!)
August Take5 Festival Worth the Wait! (about the machinima festival last month)
Crimson Falls Asylum & Village (about role-playing in SL)
All the (Virtual) Worlds a Stage
(and another article by me about a theatre performance in SL - images featured on the cover above)
and there’s lots more about art, identity, relationships in SL, musical events, SL lifestyles and more! Phew… and issue 3 is shaping up nicely, with some fabulous articles covering the arts, education, culture, and life in Second Life.
*laughing* this is just too funny…
In preparation for my keynote next week, I have compiled some of the machinima from SL which I will be referring to / analysing / discussing etc.
META
NEW MEDIA CONSORTIUM
TOUR OF THE SOLAR SYSTEM
GOVERNOR MARK WARNER (Some US politician)
SUZANNE VEGA IN SL
SUZANNE’S GUITAR
A WHALE OF A TALE
SILVER BELLS AND GOLDEN SPURS
BETTER LIFE
LIP FLAP
These are hilarious - little machinima with grammatical rules driving their plots 
Warm congratulations to the team of Silver and Goldie, whose video “Second Life: Get One” won the 2006 trailer contest!!! (You can download better quality versions from their site) . Very cool indeed!
I was just sent the link to this machinima - surely a frontrunner now in the Linden Labs movie trailer competition! It’s a great trailer - go have a look! (Thanks Mathieu)
From the Infinite Mind comes the full show and comeplete appearance of Suzanne Vega.
I loved the reference to the radio show as being “radio 6.0″ I wonder what web 6.0 might look like - honestly once we measured history in moments of centuries, now we seem to measuring it in internet moments - maybe technology has become you the new organising principle of human existence?
And my favourite line from Suzanne Vega was the analogy she drew between music and virtual spaces, she said this:
“It’s a way to draw away from the real world, and also to connect with it”
How profound, and yet how simply stated - I love it! I think I am going to be using this line for many lectures, papers, and talks to come. Beautiful.
This is Suzanne Vega in Second Life - unfortunately she performed when I was fast asleep but luckily Hamlet from New World Notes filmed her:
It’s exciting to see that Lip Flap (the machinima I acted in) has been received so well. Recently it was added to the Second Life site itself as one of the “best made machinimas in Second Life” and now it has received attention from New World Notes here! This is a fabulous list of all the special film techniques Kronos used to achieve certain effects - and even though one comment might mislead people to imagine I was not impressed, trust me, I am incredibly impressed! To me, Kronos wrote a very clever script which was both comical and related to life inside the virtual world. It is the best SL script I have seen - in fact as I commented once before, there seem to be a lack of original scripted narratives being used in favour of experimenting with camera techniques. But Kronos does both - a fun narrative and groundbreaking techniques for machinima makers.
I believe Lip Flap has also been submitted here, so keep an eye out! The youtube version has been viewed over 600 times, which is great. Congratulations to Kronos for pushing machinima to a new level. It is so thrilling to have been a part of it. I have had a few unexpected ims but so far nobody has asked for my autograph *grin*.
