HBO buys machinima film created in Second Life
By Adam Reuters
SECOND LIFE, Sept. 4 (Reuters) - HBO said on Tuesday it has acquired the rights to a short-form documentary shot entirely within Second Life, as entertainment companies turn to virtual worlds as a source for new content.
“My Second Life: The video diaries of Molotov Alta” purports to tell the story of a man who “disappeared from his California home” and began issuing video dispatches from Second Life. The HBO acquisition was first reported by New World Notes.
HBO, the premium channel owned by Time Warner, paid a six-figure sum for the rights, the filmmaker Douglas Gayeton said in an interview. It is scheduled for release in 2008.
Second Life has hosted dozens of real world companies in the past year, often as a means of promoting products like cars or movies. However, Hollywood has been increasingly interested in using worlds like Second Life as virtual movie sets, a process known as machinima.
For example, CBS created a machinima Super Bowl ad for its TV show “Two and a Half Men,” and will feature footage shot within Second Life in an upcoming episode of its popular show CSI.
“You can build visually rich dense environments in an incredibly short amount of time, and you can work collaboratively using the tools of Second Life,” said Gayeton, who currently works for the virtual world development agency Millions of Us. “It gives you an idea of how animation will look five years from now.”
Each of the 7 mini-episodes of “My Second Life” explore a different subculture within the virtual world, according to HBO, “everything from Furries to Cyberpunks to Neo-Luddites to Sex Slaves to the King of the Hobos.”
