Wiz Nordberg
Wednesday, 6 June 2007
No matter where you go, there you are
This past Friday, Bruce Willis was somewhere on his phone in LA. An interviewer was elsewhere. The film crew was here in Melbourne. The fans were all over the world at their computers.
But, to everybody involved, we were all gathered at Silverscreen, a Second Life "sim" built by Picture Production Company, asking Bruce questions about his new Die Hard movie while Fox execs watched the live TV coverage on SLCN. Cool huh?
The archived footage is just now available for viewing on the SLCN site. There is also a special That S'Life show with the "behind the scenes" story that you can also view on our site.
We talked to Dannyboy Lightfoot from the Picture Production Company, the visionary behind the amazing in-world effort, as well as Liam Kanno of The V3 Group who built the dioramas based on scenes from the film.
Liam calls the "frozen-in-time" shots "hyper-reality" and they will instantly remind you of scenes from The Matrix, except this time you can stand there in the midst of the scene yourself!
The first time we did something similar for Danny, we did the sound for Frank Miller while he talked at a "300" press junket. In that case, instead of people flying to LA for a press meeting, they simply met in Second Life.
This time, fans asked questions interactively. And Bruce got some unusual questions: "Are you an analog guy or a digital guy?" Even Bruce Willis commented during the interview that the event was refreshingly different from the many media interviews he is used to doing.
Events such as this are pioneering experiments at this point. Everybody involved is learning, taking risks, and seeing how they can push the envelope. It will take some time before strategies for success emerge.
Right now, everyone is looking for reinforcement that the immersive human contact of Second Life really adds value to their business. If you ask Dannyboy, or any of the fans who were in the audience on Friday, I can assure you the answer will be a resounding "yes".
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