Location: On the Virtual Road

Cecil Hirvi’s new machinima, Elegantly Forbidden, is an entry in a contest to promote Hosoi Ichiba, a new region in Second Life®  that captures the look of medieval Japan. It’s a worthy place to show off the newest features of the Second Life client. It renders sky and water with a clarity that rivals photography.

I was taking a road-trip in my car, in the newly improved virtual highway net, when I caught up to Cecil and asked him for more information. You can view the video at this Blip TV address.

Ignatius : tell me a bit about your inspirations.

Cecil : First of all, the sim itself is a very beautiful construction.

Cecil : the details were so good, I just felt I could really do something visually pretty.

Ignatius : true—the best builds are just like that

Cecil : I hadn’t really stretched my cinematographer skills either so it looked like a good film to try out the fun light and water tools in the candidate viewer.

Ignatius : what was the toughest part, for you as a filmmaker?

Cecil : working with an actor who only spoke Japanese.

Ignatius : you use a babbler? [A Second Life translation device]

Cecil : I needed a couple of translators…the babbler is so inadequate.

Cecil : It felt like I was making a foriegn film

Ignatius : how so?

Cecil : Well, the Japanese culture is fairly unknown to me, and I needed a consultant on the set with me!

Ignatius : amazing—like a RL shoot

Cecil : Artotem Tolsen, helped me understand some of the finer details of the ancient Japanese culture….

Cecil : ...which is why the outfits on everyone is completely legit

Ignatius : and this story is based on an ancient tale? poem?

Cecil : Originally I was going to use haikus by Basho and others…but realized it would have been too difficult to match the words with the scenery..

Cecil : ..so I decided to write them myself

Ignatius : well, if I may be an biased viewer..they were very lovely.

Cecil : Thank you. I hadn’t written a haiku in ages and had to get to speed on them…

Cecil : fortunately my RL gf is taking haiku courses.

Ignatius : did you get feedback from your judges?

Cecil : the contest ends mid June…but its received a lot of hits on youtube in a short time and many people responded well to it.

Ignatius : cool..I’ll be sending more your way

Cecil : Great.  I guess there just aren’t many haiku-based machinimas out there! Lol

Ignatius : thanks for your time, Cecil. 

Cecil : Thanks Iggy! 

Be sure to check the “In a Strange Land” Archive for old posts

nice post…i guess i am the first one to post…=)

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