Part II: Women Machinimists

A Gender Perspective

I was recently invited to write an article that focused on women machnimists in virtual worlds, particularly Second Life. This is an attempt to condense my lengthy academic discussion into a blog series on whether whether there is a a feminist perspective - or let's just say a woman's perspective - in machinima and how might it be utilized to understand the role of women in virtual worlds. This is part 2 of five commentaries that will be posted over the next month or so.

Numerous women have already contributed leadership among various gaming platforms, particularly Sims, World of Warcraft, and Second Life. In 2009, Hugh Hancock and Jonnie Ingram ("Women") organized a list of prominent women involved in machinima production. Some of the women who have made their mark include India Drummond, who maintains Sims99, one of the largest machinima sites on the Web, and Katherine Anna Kang, founding board member of the Academy of Machinima Arts and Sciences, among other machinima makers, namely Sally Brewer, Decorgal, JayDee, Jun Falkenstein, Kate Fosk, Ingrid Mood, Michelle Petit-Mee, Sasha Rudie (Moo Money, a recent and brilliant machinima associate of mine), Trace Sanderson (Lainy Voom), Kerria Seabrooke, Selserene, and Jackie Turnure. That is list is not complete, and is growing every several months.

Another not listed is Phaylen Fairchild, who has remained a longtime member of the Second Life community since 2002. She is known particularly well for her role as producer of DiVAS, a machinima sitcom, that made its debut on December 2007. She was involved in every aspect of the series, and she has added episodes over the past three years. She began Season Two set within the online game World of Warcraft (WOW). She entered WOW in her SL avatar form, where she engaged into a conversation with a virtual warrior and mused over the conventions of his guild. The dialogue is witty and plays off the gamer stereotypes of both platforms.

The action is well scripted. The production quality is excellent and professional. This episode alone provides an excellent starting point for a discussion on gender roles in the gaming world. Fairchild is an active voice among women machinima makers, and has earned respect among educators and machinimatographers for her work in elevating the quality of storytelling through machinima.

A talented young machinima artist, ColeMarie Soleil, has created numerous experimental videos, using music to tell her story.

An example of her work is a machinima that plays off of a song from Absolute Entity, Stay with Me Tonight. In the video introduction, she states that she tells the "story of a sad robot longing for a heart and wishing to be real." The female vocalist provides depth and resonance as an earthy drone keynotes the entire piece. The imagery is stunning in its employment of a wind-up doll as symbolic of emptiness (to me at least). The filmmaker, as puppeteer, juxtaposes the need for human emotion within an environment that is controlled and captive, as well as captivating in the sense that the viewer is intrigued by the imagery. The message is open for interpretation, but it is clear that the machinimist has demonstrated the power of machinima as an art form.


Another example is from machinimist Larkworthy Antfarm. Her work ranges from classic storytelling of Asian fables to social activism to her involvement in comedic works. Two works, in particular, are important to this discussion. The first work, Blessed are the Greedy is created to mock through machinima Wall Street corruption. She strategically places statistics on corporate wealth and homelessness at key points during the film. The second work specifically focuses on the plight of a homeless woman. Like Soleil, Antfarm creates her message through a music video, and in this case using Spare Change, a song from Automatic Quandry. The main character has been created to look like a destitute middle-aged woman. She wears a mix of worn odd clothing items, and spends her day and night on the city streets. In the day, she begs for spare change, and at night she sleeps near a building entrance.

Reflecting back nearly two years ago, in November 2008, the Women in Machinima panel at the Machinima Expo brought together some female machinimists to screen their work. One of the questions asked, Does gender matter in machinima?, had mixed reaction among the panelists. Might there be a woman's perspective that surfaces in some work, albeit sometimes even unintentionally? To create a credible film demands an investment of time and energy from the producer. It is only natural that one's gendered perspective might influence the storyline. The idea that many women machinimatographers are interested in meeting other women in the field is implicit of a need for continued efforts to improve communication and mentorship among them.

References
Antfarm, Larkworthy. "Blessed are the Greedy." YouTube. Web. Feb 1, 2010, from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2iIf4tzeVRM
Antfarm, Larkworthy. "Spare Change." YouTube. Web. April 23, 2010, from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dXJuzL8Dw6I
Dulci's Perspective. Women in Machinima. Web. November 25, 2009, from http://dulcicinema.blogspot.com/2009/11/women-in-machinima.html
Fairchild, Phaylen. DiVAS: Season 2 Episode 2 - Phaylen and the World of Warcraft Group. YouTube. Web. August 29, 2010, from http://www.youtube.com/user/phaylen#p/a/u/2/x96UCFYInI0
Hancock, Hugh & Ingram, Jonnie. "Women Who Have Changed Machinma." Machinima for Dummies. Web. March 24, 2010, from http://machinimafordummies.com/
Phaylen Fairchild. http://phaylen.com/ Web. August 1, 2010.
Soleil, ColeMarie. Stay with Me Tonight. YouTube. Web. January 19, 2010, from
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VNIUU9VK794

Focus next blog, Chantal Harvey and Lainy Voom

Til then, Soni signing off :)

Forthcoming, Machinima: The Art & Practice (McFarland, 2011) by Sonicity Fitzroy and Lowe Runo. The Professional Machinima Artist Guild graciously provides syndication of Sonicity’s blog Magnum: The Machinima Review to Aview.TV/Sonicity/

Hollywood, SLollywood, So Why All The Fuss

Part I: Machinima in Context

Welcome to the many lives of Sonicity! That is something Second Life allows us to do, quite easily - you know, change the context of our life with the click of a mouse, as we teleport off to our next adventure.

"It's interesting that we control the content of what we do. We are not being told what to do by other people. And we're an amazingly creative group. And that creativity spreads across EVERY genre, EVERY form of art. It is really something that we should all be proud of. And I think we're pioneers in what we're doing here."(Larkworthy Antfarm, Machinima Roundtable, 2010)

***This blog is the first installment of a two part series that explores the undeniable give and take between machinima and cinematic filmmaking. The recipe for both - well - requires a bit of spice at times. So does that mean a film or a machinima is impure with a dash of CG - it's like making meatloaf. In the end, It's the taste that matters! Your mom might use a bit more or less condiments than Aunt Sadie down the street. ***

When Hollywood producers began to explore the potential of filmmaking through virtual technologies, storytelling techniques employed in traditional cinematic production began to incorporate computer-generated technologies that would save money but would extend the possibilities of what is achievable in real world settings. How do you make a film of the future, when you only have reality as your base of operation? It is possible, if you consider the Fritz Lang's Metropolis. However, to dazzle an increasingly sophisticated audience, the stakes become higher and more competitive among film studios. This attitude of course would also influence the nature of machinima making. The connection between Hollywood and machinima is an evolving relationship, most significantly intercepting in recent years.

Yet the story goes back much further, beyond video games. Consider George Lucas' revolutionary experimentation in 3D computer generated interactive graphics (CGI) and animation, and the subsequent release of Star Wars in 1977. Even before that, King Kong in 1933 was enhanced with stop motion and animatronics in its most crude form. and is recognized "as one of the pioneering films in the field" (Brophblog. 2007). In 1975, Steven Spielberg's Jaws was another landmark film notable for its special effects. These landmark technologies helped to shape the video game industry as well. Machinima, too, has evolved from such advances, and the larger cinematic world (Brophblog. 2007) concurrently became transformed by these new applications and programs. What we continue to see in the film and animation industry is a convergence of ideas and tools, and the purpose being varied depending on the goals of the producer. What machinima has done, similar to digital technologies in general, is open the playing the field to the consumer and amateur professional, as well as the indie producer hoping to find an inexpensive and creative way to tell a story or communicate a message.

Much of the machinima community, at large, is connected to the YouTube generation. Many producers post their works hoping to catch the viral waves of the Internet. It is difficult to navigate through this sea of videos about anything and everything. Other services such as AVIEW TV, Blip TV, and Daily Motion have attempted to organize machinima content, as well as other media, and serve to stream videos continuously on demand. These content providers provide clues to the increasing popularity of machinima, and other indie film projects. The convergence of media is not unique to the film industry, for these trends have propelled the launch of thousands and thousands of indie record labels and musicians to break free from traditional corporate business models.

On the other hand, Hollywood's growing awareness of machinima's potential among the gamers is nearly a decade old, gaining the attention of "mainstream, non-technical movie talent, who are attracted to the games-meet-Hollywood aesthetic exemplified by movies like The Matrix" (Kahney, 2007). In the 1990s, Kahney (2007) explains, "Gamers realized that instead of generating monsters to be blown away, game animation engines could be employed to conjure up imaginative sets, casts of thousands and spectacular special effects." Enter machinima as a mini Hollywood and accessible alternative to major production animation budget movies.

As early as 2001, machinima began a way for Steven Spielberg to storyboard his film projects, beginning with his Artificial Intelligence: AI. Other producers began to look toward machinima as way to present rough cuts of major motion pictures. Harz (2006) called attention to the significance of machnima in 2006, stating that "the holy grail of previs (previsualization) lies in the use of videogame production technology, especially that of the game engine." He continues, this is "the core of a game that allows the movement and manipulation of modeled people and creatures within 3D sets, together with lighting and camera moves — a process essentially the same as what previs supervisors do before a major movie starts production."

So maybe it is the "other" that we need to consider - computer generated technologies are becoming part of one's tool set in telling the story, whether we do so by traditional cinematic means or through machinima. The gaming world has evolved out of the CG world so how do you really separate all these converging forces.

Stay tuned, Part II next time, as I consider
Storytelling - and the CG Convergence.

:) Soni


Related News
http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/sony-pictures-imageworks-and-industrial-light--magic-join-forces-on-alembic-99337884.html


Part I: References

BrophBlog (2007). Acccessed at: http://brophinator.wordpress.com/2007/11/28/why-machinima-is-good-for-hollywood/

Harz, C. (2006, January). The Holy Grail of Previs: Gaming Technology. Retrieved November 14, 2007, from http://vfxworld.com/?sa=adv&code=911ac78c&atype=articles&id=2773

Industrial Light and Magic. (2010). http://www.ilm.com/

Kahney, L. (2007, September). Games Invade Hollywood’s Turf. Wired. Retrieved October 14, 2007, from http://www.wired.com/print/science/discoveries/news/2003/07/59566

This blog is based on a draft version of the forthcoming book, authored by Lowe Runo and Sonicity Fitzroy, Machinima: The Art & Practice (McFarland, 2011). The Professional Machinima Artist Guild graciously provides syndication of Sonicity’s blog Magnum: The Machinima Review to Aview.TV/Sonicity/

The Machinima Roundtables

So many of us are busy making films that we rarely have time to chat about the process, or even our dreams and aspirations for machinima as a profession and art. Of course there are those times when we gather for award shows hosted by the Machinima Artist Guild or more recently those sponsored by the University of Western Australia.

Of course, it is always a wonderful experience to rub shoulders with our colleagues at the MaMachinima International Festival.

But when do we just get to talk - to chat, converse, get down and dirty about machinima - the good, bad and evil (evil machinima, is there such a thing?! LOL), you can hear the pain and passion of being a pioneer on sometimes a lonely path. These roundtables allow producers to connect again to why they love machinima.

Over the past month, Lowe Runo Productions, Inc. has been the site for roundtables on various machinima themes. All have been well attended, productive and fun. Themes discussed have included -

ROUND ONE concentrated on MACHINIMA BASICS. Main questions included: What is machinima to you?, What are its genres?, What is the role of story in machinima?, Is storyline essential to machinima?, What makes a good story?, What makes a good machinima?, and other questions that pop up.

ROUND TWO focused on MACHINIMA PIONEERS - GOING ALONE OR TOGETHER. Discussions included what advances have been made through machinima - people, practices and technology, speculations about the future, machinima's role in advancing art and in advancing technology for commercialization (what are the opportunities now and ahead). Another related theme explores COLLABORATIONS (advantages/disadvantages on building a machinima crew; defining the various roles in machinima; considering how certain platforms encourage collaborations; looking toward partnerships with community groups or businesses).Then, finally, attendees were asked, Can machinima be an intimate experience for the producer and viewer and how so?

These sessions run about 60-90 minutes, with many people lingering to continue the discussions after the meetings. If nothing else, the roundtables have shown there is an interest in such gatherings - and although there are differing opinions, those involved have been respectful of each other's perspectives.

The Roundtable forums are open to the public, and all are invited to attend. Please join the SL Machinima Artist Guild inside the grid to receive notifications or contact me, Soni! Also, I am always open to future topics. Discussions are recorded and intended for public record, with some comments being published in a new book on machinima (Runo & Fitzroy) and some footage likely ending up for broadcast as well.

Next time, come to share your thoughts or just listen. It is through such discussions we come closer to understanding what machinima is to us as producers and viewers, and how to best create works that achieve some sort of intimacy and/or rapport with the viewer. Collaboration might come in the form of a production crew for a specific project or competition - or it might be coming together to explore new possibilities in machinima as a genre and tool.

:) Soni!