Location: UR Island

Cecil Hirvi created, and Vivian Jackalope starred, in a short film, “Dance of the Hunted,” one of several pieces of “machinima” Cecil has created. These short films use video-capture techniques inside online games or virtual worlds such as Second Life. As Cecil puts it, machinima is “just using a game-type engine to create movie stories.”

Vivian and Cecil met me and Beeble on UR Island for an interview. I’ve been looking forward to meeting them since I saw Cecil’s work.

Cecil refers to his work as “cinepoetry,” and he employs his skills as an independent filmmaker in his first life to make things work.  He wanted to make money in-world, and feels that he “Lacked the werewithal to succeed as a lap dancer, camping chair mogul or prostitute.  Decided to try my hand at filmmaking to earn Lindens.  Made a music video for famous SL Jazz singer Paisley Beebe and thus began my SL videomaking career.”

For Vivian, her work in short films “comes out of my heart and with the pictures you get a perfect visual background for it.”  Cecil’s reply to my question supports that idea; he adds that his cinepoetry is a “marrying of cinema with poetry to create a unique work of mood and feeling”
These films are a good way for low-cost self-expression, just as SL itself can be.  It lets Vivian, a German, and Cecil, “from Borg Prime,” collaborate. I suspect that we’ll all be saying some easier-to-pronounce version of “machinima” as it gets onto the public’s radar screens. Given the junk that is most of commercial TV and Hollywood film today, it’s time for this infant medium to step into the howling creative gap. YouTube will be the Sundance for we avatar-actors and directors.

I will soon post a full-length interview with Cecil and Vivian. 

Are you a would-be actor?  Contact Cecil in-world for an interview, but beware: his avatar and backstory involve Star Trek’s Borg. You might get assimilated.

Cecil will assimilate us all! Cecil is optical poetry, indeed.

Cecil is going places that are out-a-this-universe

Nice story

Rg

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