Pixie Rain: straddling Art and Porn in Second Life.
Some of the machinima and blog-posts on this site are adult in nature and contain scenes that some people may find disturbing.
If you feel this might be you, please exit now.
Other elements are warm and cuddly and have a "feel good" factor.
Click the "Film Link" tab below for all my films listed chronologically.
The votes have been counted and the results are in....
For the third time in a row, Tutsy Navarathna wins the
prestigious MachinimUWA contest - this time for his beautifully moving 'The Last Syllable of Record Time'.
'The Last Syllable' is arguably Tutsy's finest
machinima to date - it is a brilliant synthesis of sound and vision; the colour
palette of a true artist.
Congratulations on this marvellous achievement!
Additionally, Tutsy was also awarded the 'CinemaPop Award of
Excellence in Film Direction' and Violette Naidoo's poster for 'The Last Syllable' (pictured above) took 1st place in
the UWA Machinima Poster Contest.
2nd Place was taken by a machinima I have been
raving about since first seeing it - Natascha Randt and Karima Hoisan's 'Seek Wisdom'. A stunning work. Congrats
to both.
3rd Place was jointly awarded to Tikaf Viper for
'run RAM' and a number of others.
I am pleased to say that these three films are those I highlighted only yesterday as standing out for me and which I felt would win an award. Now, why oh why didn't I
enter the Audience Participation again this year!
For myself, I was pleased to have been awarded a 'CinemaPop
Award of Excellence in Film Narrative 2012'.
For a complete list of the MachinimUWA winners, visit the
UWA site (link not available at time of this writing).
Congrats to all winners and thanks to UWA for staging the
contest.
Here are a collection of pics I took at the Award
Ceremony...
The total prize pool is L$1,300,000 of which L$785,000
(approx. $3,400 USD) is for the machinima contest, split as follows:
·1st
Prize - L$140,000
·2nd
Prize - L$120,000
·3rd
Prize - L$100,000
·4th
Prize - L$70,000
·5th
Prize - L$55,000
·6th
to 10th Special Awards @ L$30,000 each
·UWA
Special Prize - L$100,000
·Audience Participation Prize: Three prizes totalling L$20,000
·Machinima
Poster Prize: Three prizes totalling L$20,000
Very healthy!
Last year I came 2nd in the Audience Participation contest
- a competition to predict the Top 10 machinima as would finally be decided by
the judges. I didn't enter this contest this year for a number of reasons - but
mainly time related.
Now, it has to be said - I have not watched all the entries!
But of those I have watched, these three stood out for me.
One thing that did occur to me while watching some of the
entries was that, even more than last year, there were quite a number of films
that *conceptually* were really very interesting. However, in my opinion the filmmaking/camera/editing was not able to do justice to the original concept. This is simply a matter of "technique and
practice" and so I assume we'll see more rounded and polished machinima
from these entrants in future years.
Having written the above, it would now be cowardice to avoid
saying where I believe my own entry - 'Fwd: Evolution' - falls. Despite many
encouraging and enthusiastic comments about this movie - including a dedicated thread on SLUniverse, no less - having seen some of
the other entries, I am unable to rank it in the Top 5. However, of those I
have watched, I was in fact able to rank it in the Top 10. We'll see tomorrow!
The Grande Finale ceremony starts at 6am SLT, Sunday. But
arrive in plenty of time to secure a place - it is strictly a 'first come,
first served' affair!
A movie review of ‘Fwd: Evolution by Serenity Juneberry which originally
appeared on ‘The Pornstars’ blog. Reproduced in whole
here. I wish to thank Serenity for this generous piece.
Adult Scene Director's MachinimUWA V
Entry
'Fwd: Evolution' by Pixie Rain
"A Cybernetic
Shaman and Cybernetic Dancer
travel through space, time and the inner dimensions in search of
wisdom..."
This is a non-adult film.
However, we've always supported our adult directors here at 'The Pornstars' when entering the UWA Machinima
contest. Last time around Bert Jedburgh, Pel Beaton and Scooby Mode all
submitted entries and were covered here on the blog.
This time we have Pixie Rain, who is of course one of the
most talented movie makers to work in the adult genre, doing what she does best
with her usual class and artistic style.
'Fwd: Evolution' is a superb movie, superbly titled
too as it aptly describes the journey you'll embark on when you watch this film.
Some wonderful imagery and some thoughtful
content mean I enjoyed watching several times for very different reasons. You
should listen, watch and absorb the movie in order to get the full effect and
the Director's message.
Also on later viewings you can, as I described to Pixie
yesterday when we spoke "take a magic carpet ride" and just let the
scenes and images flow past you. I think probably John Lennon put it best
"Switch off your mind, relax and float down stream".
The film does indeed take you on a journey and it feels like
a literal one as Pixie's editing and filming techniques really take you on a
flight through the movie's entire length - always going forward, always
evolving.
Look out for the Cybernetic Shamen, who can be seen
throughout, white rabbit like!
We wish Pixie all the best for the UWA Awards.
Machinima
of this stature from artists involved in the adult scene can only help gain
respect for some of the wonderfully produced adult content which gets released
by others too. Much of which fully deserves praise by a wider machinima loving
audience.
Additional sound effects: soundjay.com (in accordence ToS)
Soundtrack:
'Re:
Evolution' by The Shamen (1992) administered copyright to nemeton.com
Voiceover is an edited sample of Terence Kemp McKenna (1946
- 2000), Cybernetic Philosopher, to whom this machinima is dedicated
Transcript of
McKenna's lecture (courtesy of http://www.erowid.org):
If the truth can be told so as to be understood, it will be
believed.
Human history represents such a radical break with the
natural systems of biological organization that preceded it, that it must be
the response to a kind of attractor or dwell point that lies ahead in the
temporal dimension.
Persistently Western religions have integrated into their
theologies the notion of a kind of end of the world, and I think that a lot of
psychedelic experimentation sort of confirms this intuition. I mean, it isn't
going to happen according to any of the scenarios of orthodox religion, but the
basic intuition that the universe seeks closure in a kind of Omega Point of
Transcendence, is confirmed.
It's almost as though this object in Hyperspace, glittering
in Hyperspace, throws off reflections of itself, which actually ricochet into
the past, illuminating this Mystic, inspiring that Saint or Visionary and that
out of these fragmentary glimpses of eternity we can build a kind of map, of
not only the past of the Universe and the evolutionary egression into Novelty,
but a kind of map of the future. This is what shamanism is always been about.
A Shaman is someone who has been to the end. It's someone
who knows how the world really works, and knowing how the world really works
means to have risen outside, above, beyond the dimensions of ordinary space,
time, and casuistry and actually seen the wiring under the board; stepped
outside the confines of learned culture and learned and embedded language into
the domain of what Wittgenstein called "The Unspeakable" - the transcendental
presence of the other, which can be unsanctioned in various ways to yield
systems of knowledge which can be brought back into ordinary social space for
the good of the community.
So in the context of ninety percent of human culture the
shaman has been the Agent of Evolution because the shaman learns the techniques
to go between ordinary reality and the domain of the ideas. This higher
dimensional continuum that is somehow parallel to us, available to us, and yet
ordinarily occluded by cultural convention out of fear of the Mystery, I
believe.
And what shamans are, I believe, are people who have been
able to de-condition themselves from the community's instinctual distrust of
the Mystery, and to go into it, to go into this bewildering higher dimension,
and gain knowledge, recover the jewel lost at the beginning of time, to save
souls, cure, commune with the ancestors and so forth and so on.
Shamanism is not a religion - it's a set of techniques, and
the principal technique is the use of psychedelic plants. What psychedelics do
is they dissolve boundaries and in the presence of dissolved boundaries one
cannot continue to close one's eyes to the ruination of the earth, the
poisoning of the seas, and the consequences of two thousand years of
unchallenged dominator culture based on monotheism, hatred of nature,
suppression of the female and so forth and so on. So, what shamans have to do
is act as Exemplars by making this cosmic journey to the domain of the Gaian
ideas and then bringing them back in the form of Art to t struggle to save the
world.
The planet has a kind of intelligence that it can actually
open a channel of communication with an individual human being. The message
that nature sends is "transform your language" through a synergy
between electronic culture and the psychedelic imagination; a synergy between
dance and idea; a synergy between understanding and intuition and dissolve the
boundaries that your culture has sanctioned between you - to become part of
this Gaian Supermind.
I mean, I think it's fairly profound, it's fairly
apocalyptic. History is ending. I mean, we are to be the generation that
witnesses the revelation of the purpose of the cosmos. History is the shock
wave of the Eschaton. History is the shock wave of eschatology. And what this
means for those of us who will live through this transition into Hyperspace is
that we will be privileged to see the greatest release of compressed change
probably since the birth of the Universe.
The twentieth century is the shudder that announces the
approaching cataracts of time over which our species and the destiny of this
planet is about to be swept.
We're going to arrive in the third millennium in the middle
of an archaic revival, which will mean a revival of these physiologically
empowering rhythm signatures, a new Art, a new social vision, a new
relationship to Nature, to feminism, to ego.
All of these things are taking hold, and not a moment too
soon.
A new relationship
with Nature, to Feminism, to Ego.
All of these things
are taking hold...
And not a moment too
soon."
- "Fwd:
Evolution", released 1st July 2012
I had intended watching all of the UWA5 entries and posting
on this blog those which especially caught my attention.
You may have noticed that, apart from Tutsy
Navarathna's 'The Last Syllable of
Recorded Time' which I wrote about in April, I haven't blogged
any others.
The reason is simple. Once I decided to enter the
competition myself, I just didn't have enough time to watch, review and blog
others' films. There was also a fear of introducing an element of bias into my evaluations,
as I would unlikely to be as detached as last year when I won 2nd place in the Audience Participation Top 10
contest by correctly forecasting eight of the top ten winning
films from a pool of over 80 entries.
I will watch all of the films, but only once my own UWA 5
entry is released on 1st July 2012.
However, a UWA 5 entry has just been released that is so good that I was forced to break off
finalising my own film, watch it a number of times and write-up this blog-post.
Sometimes I can read a passage in a book or a quote, or see a photo, drawing or oil,
and think "Geez, I wish I had created that!" However, I can count on
one hand the number of times that I have had a similar thought about a
machinima.
Natascha and Karima's "Seek Wisdom" is one such
time....
I have to close off quickly now and get back to work on my own film,
but not before watching this wonderful machinima one more time.
It really has to be a serious contender this year....Enjoy!
Tim is also a prolific photographer who has seemingly attended
most all of the significant artistic events, installations and performances in Second Life since October 2007. His flickr consists of over
20,000 individually crafted photographs which document the creativity,
individuality and ingenuity of the SL experience.
Dido Haas by Tim Deschanel
I was thrilled to see Tim had taken these pic's of me in my Rabbit Girl Porn Star persona while we
were attending the opening of Dido Haas and Nitro Fireguard's new art gallery which exhibits
their own work and, until the end of this month, the work of artist Dannyboyo.
Ordinarily I'd blog Dannyboyo's work in its own right,
probably also cross-posting over at The Pornstars blog too for greater exposure. However, time pressures
have prevented me from doing so, as I'll explain a little later.
Dannyboyo's work comprises of manipulating pornographic
images to leave only abstract exaggerated shape and colour. Dannyboyo says,
"the ... pieces retain the erotic quality of the original photo, but
softened to a dreamlike, painterly state. For me, it brings new meaning." Well worth checking out.
Nitro Fireguard by Tim Deschnel
The reason I haven't blogged Dannyboyo's exhibition more
fully is that I am up to my eyeballs working on my UWA "Seeking Wisdom" machinima entry,
and have been for a few weeks now.
Sleep is suffering!
But,
the film will be ready for the deadline!
It will be released publically on You Tube (and
my blog here) sometime on Sunday 1st July. However, on the evening of Saturday 30th June,
Nasty Puddlegum is holding a small
"premiere" over at his gaff for a few invited friends.
We'll screen the film and then applause, shout
"WOW" and "AWESOME!", play "Woot!" and
"Hooo!" gestures and otherwise congratulate each other in that
over-sentimental, grossly emotional and vaguely embarrassing way that
is a hallmark of Second Life social gatherings. It goes without saying that
anyone refusing to participate in this traditional Second Life behaviour will
be summarily ejected and banned.
The MachinimUWA5 movies are starting to be released in
readiness for the deadline of 30th June and prize pool of L$725,000
I recently attended the premiere of Ambrosia Lanley’s ‘The
Unveiling’ which I thought was very well done. Ambrosia
invested over 400 hours of work over six weeks on this movie and her hard
effort shows. My only “criticism” – if “criticism” is indeed the right word –
is that I couldn’t really see the connection with the UWA5 theme of “Seeking
Wisdom”. But please do not let that put you off watching it – the film commends
itself in and of itself, irrespective of any reference to UWA5.
Over the next few weeks I’ll get around to watching all the UWA5 entries. I will embed here those which especially tweak my interest.
Confession time: Contrary to prior promises I may not be
able to enter. Sorry but time is against me.
It could very well be then that the nearest I will get to
“entering” UWA5 is my cameo appearances in Tutsy’s
latest movie.
Tutsy
Navarathna –
as any regular reader of my humble blog will doubtless already know - was
joint-winner of MachinimUWA3
and outright winner of UWA4.
Tutsy is certainly “the
man to beat”, so to speak, in UWA5.
“The Last Syllable of
Recorded Time” was filmed at a number of regions in Second Life, including
some scenes from when Tutsy and I visited ‘Daytime Dreams’ created by .::DoL::.. I have extensively blogged our
experiences on that region here.
I am not going to go on too much about this movie but
instead hope that you take the time to watch it. The one thing I would say
about it – or rather, I am now the third to say it after Larkworthy Antfarm and Iono Allen – is that it uses an absolutely
beautiful colour palette.
Tutsy’s delicacy of touch and deftness in post-production
colour correction/management is I think more apparent in this film than any of
his previous machinima.
I believe that this dexterity with colour is one of the four
or five factors which mark out Tutsy’s machinima amongst others. In this film particularly
Tutsy demonstrates that he is first and foremost an artist; an artist who just
happens to be currently working in the media of machinima.
To really grok what Larkworthy, Iono and I are referring to
you need to watch “The Last Syllable of
Recorded Time” at 1080i but, regardless, you can still very much enjoy it
at lesser resolutions.
At the moment I have one film in early post-production and two others in planning. All three are progressing *so* slowly – I always seem to find I have something else that needs doing; some other priority. This blog is one example; my University studies another.
I have also found recently that most of my time in Second Life is spent answering IMs rather than actually creating.
I suppose we are going to have to pull up our bootstraps and actually get some work done if we are going to finish before the deadline of 30 June.
Problem is, Bobo is gallivanting the oceans on a world cruise after winning 1st Prize in a competition to complete the following sentence in 10 words or less:
that I am afraid that I have shown in it the secret of my own soul."
Oscar Wilde
The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890)
(click to enlarge images)
For at least a year Bobo Puddlegum and I have been kicking around ideas for a machinima loosely based on the 1999 black comedy-fantasy ‘Being John Malkovich’ – a film which, seriously, if you haven’t already seen you really should make the effort to track down and watch.
It is brilliantly original, funny and, in parts, really quite bizarre.
Just like Bobo himself in fact!
However due to schedule conflicts, other project commitments and RL generally, none of these ideas have managed to come to fruition.
Three nights ago though, I had a dream!
Usually my dreams involve giving finite but infinitely-expanding blowjobs to respected UK physicist Brian Cox – a name which has more Freudian connotations and psychoanalytic comedy-value than anyone truly deserves, no matter how bad their karma. Whenever I dream of Cox, I always wake suddenly when, just as I approach the event horizon, Brian prematurely ejaculates down my throat at the speed of light.
I dream some weird shit sometimes.
But this particular dream, which dear reader I assure you I have no intention of boring you with, managed to combine elements from Wilde’s ‘The Importance of Being Earnest’* with ‘Being John Malkovich’, Bobo Puddlegum and, significantly, the forthcoming 2012 MachinimaUWA V machinima contest.
The dream of three nights ago provided the broad conceptual subject matter for my MachinimaUWA V entry. No! It doesn’t star Brian Cox (although I am sure I could find an opening or two for him!) but rather a film which is to be entitled “Being Bobo Puddlegum”.
Bobo & I will need to work out the details and finalise a script. We’ll also need to know what the MachinimaUWA V theme will be. However, there are some things which are already clear:
1)It will not be disrespectful to other peoples’ art work. Although, most likely it *will* be irreverent this will be done in a respectful and humorous way.
One day I intend writing about the work of SaveMe Oh who frequently walks the precarious tightrope between irreverence and disrespect. The debate rages which side of this equation she most often falls!
2)It will not be a porn movie. I cannot rule out nakedness – Bobo’s natural state – but it most certainly will not be pornographic and very unlikely to have any sex scenes.
I understand and accept the fact that this almost certainly means that this particular film will be of no interest in certain circles. This is fine.
3)It will essentially be a comedy. We hope. Or light-hearted, at least.
With all that settled, Bobo & I thought it only right to give Jayjay Zifanwe fair notice to organise a Plague Doctor, because that pandemic pestilence that is the Puddlegum’s are about to befall the previous piety and purity that is MachinimaUWA.
Sorry.
Bobo & Pixie Puddlegum xx
* 'The Importance of Being Earnest' is subtitled 'A Trivial Comedy for Serious People'
The 'Being Bobo Puddlegum' poster created by Bobo Puddlegum.
All other images by Pixie Puddlegum.
The 'Plague Doctor' performed by Tutsy Navarathna at Innsmouth region
More precisely, *good* comedy is difficult to do. Shit comedy is perfectly easy to do!
Leaving aside the fact that most comedic events seem to centre around clown-like slapstick laughter at other peoples’ expense, creating good quality (and by that I mean *real* “laughing out loud” belly laughter) is actually very hard to do.
How much more so then in Second Life where avatar facial expressions are, at very best, basic and unconvincing, and most of the resident population do not use voice chat.
In a single stroke, two of the primarily mainstays of comedy – face making and voice intonation (which includes imitationary and onomatopoeic sounds) – are severely hampered when using SL.
Now, that’s not to say that there is not humour and laughter in SL – far, far from it.
I spend a goodly chunk of my time in SL sharing laughter with others. I know numerous people who are adept at using Second Life for “comedy” – a skilful combination of role playing, method acting, quick wit and fast typing; the Puddlegum Family being exemplary examples.
There are also Second Life “comedy clubs” which are almost always conducted in voice and try, as much as possible, to emulate the RL versions of such venues. They are popular and manage to create a fun atmosphere. The comedian could be a professional, semi-pro and there are even amateur “pass the mic” nights. It’s all good.
But these are not quite what I want to address in this blog-post.
Today I am considering Second Life being used as a platform for the production of a comedy machinima, or perhaps even a sit-com.
And here it gets sticky. If comedy is difficult to do even under the best of conditions then how much more so in…well, let’s just say, “in Second Life”.
It ain’t gonna be easy!
But it can be done! And it *has* been done.
Although I have seen quite a few SL machinima which have made me smile or amused me, a number that have made me giggle or chuckle, I can only think of four off the top of my head which have given me a hearty-healthy belly laugh (happy to be advised of others!):
The fourth film – 2nd Place Winner of MachinimUWA IV - is the subject of the remainder of this blog-post.
‘Artwashers’ (embedded blow) by Friday Siamendes is a very funny feel-good film. I am sure you’ll enjoy it.
But, I would be dishonest if I neglected to point out certain things about these four films.
The fact is none of them are particularly special or impressive cinemagraphically. There. I said it.
Sorry.
But the fact is most RL comedy films are not especially impressive cinemagraphically either – and they don’t need to be! What they need, above all else, is a bloody funny script! And these four films provide that aplenty.
I am trying to think of a film specifically billed as a “comedy” that *is* cinemagraphically impressive...’Time Bandits’ maybe? The Bill and Ted franchise perhaps? Woody Allen films are always funny and impressive but not quite what we are talking about here.
I am sure that there must be cinemagraphically impressive comedies. Tutsy is almost certainly going to supply me with a long list of impressive French-speaking comedies to watch to prove the point (but I haven’t even finished watching ‘Blue Angel’ with Marlene Dietrich yet!)
But what I am trying to say is that a good comedy script can easily make up for any perceived weakness in the technical quality of the filmmaking – in bucket loads, in fact!
‘Artwashers’ was awarded 2nd Place at MachinimUWA IV and I think this surprised quite a number of people, including me. In my MachinimUWA IV Top 10, I had it ranked at #7 (which is still bloody high, in a field of 80 entries!).
But it is a good film. A fun film. With a great script.
And these elements were strong enough to carry it to such a high ranking at a prestigious machinima award ceremony.
I hope to see more SL machinima comedies being created in the future – there is clearly a desire and a market for them – just look at the impressive view figures for the four films I have listed.
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