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Location: Whitfield Outdoor Theater
Beeble Baxter and I met Cecil Hirvi to see his ten-minute long film “From Cecil with Love.” We really enjoyed how Cecil, after many hours of production and editing, put together a short dramatic film using five actors from all over the globe.
He’s produced “about 24” shorter films, many of which can be seen on YouTube. This one is different in length and availability; not available on YouTube, this machinima is showing in two SL locations: the Whitfield Theater and the Premiere Theater of Profile Magazine.
We visited Whitfield Outdoor Theater, Somewhere in Time (180, 66, 2)
Cecil did some voice recording first, then some filming in-world at various Star-Trek-themed locations, then more voice overdub. Cecil recorded his actors’ voices using Skype and used off-the-shelf editing software. The results, to both me and Beeble, suggest how easily filmmakers can adapt, at low cost, their ideas to virtual worlds. Imagine:
No catering trucks. No whiny actors with bizarre dietary needs or rat-dogs in tow. No bad weather. For now, no wages or union contracts or percentages to consider.
As our Borg guest writer states in his press release how the film concerns the problems faced by a half-organic, half-cybernetic Borg who has left his “collective” but is still haunted by nightmares:
“The inner struggle of the main character causes him to look for redemption with the help of a ragtag group of friends from the SL grid,” Hirvi said.
“The parallel to Star Trek is fully intentional,” Hirvi said. “As a fan, it’s fun to be creative and pay homage to time-tested story concepts. I know there is a strong Trek community in SL.”
“I have always been a fan of sci-fi movies and I was heavily influenced by the original Star Trek series growing up,” Hirvi explained. “The stories of the original series are some of the best and influenced me in my real life. In many of my machinimas, I explore themes through the context of a pop culture sensibility mixed with a sci-fi story that is familiar to hundreds of millions of people.”
The future of filmmaking? I sure hope so. I’m ready for my close up, Mr. Hirvi….
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