trees are people too

Our first idea in second life was devised during brainstorming in the tute, and I think we are all pretty pleased.

Following on from the creative brief of ABC’s My Street (which is pretty broad, mind you) we have decided to do a piece based on the following concept:

Following a single central character, the narrative of the story will follow their life through the various streets they have lived in. Each street will represent an age, an emotion, an experience from their life as they grow and move over time. Starting at age 10 (childhood), then 20, 30 and finally forty, the four different street will (hopefully) encapsulate different stages of the characters life, moving from the innocence and nostalgia of childhood, to the more pacy life of your twenties and thirties, through to the more settled life of your forties, when the street you are living in will probably be the one you settle in. In this way, our My Street really become the road of life (cliche much lol) as traipsed by this central character.

After discussing the many different streets we had lived in during our lives, and also the different aspects we wanted to add to our machinima, this seemed like to perfect way to incorporate a number of experiences and scenarios within a limited amount of time and space, while still maintaining a fluid and continuous narrative. It’s also a story we can all relate too, as we all have memories of streets we have lived on in our lives, be they bad, good, fond or otherwise. I guess you could say we are are conceptualising that the story of my (our) street is also the story of my (our) life.

We have decided to divide our plot into 4 smaller streets, and the ‘camera’ (when we work out how to use it) will follow the character through the various streets chronologically, which also gives us all the opportunity to build our one complex prim/item/building to place in our section. The visuals will be accompanied by a narrative which gives a little further insight into each street and each period of life, even a little anecdote: When I was 20 we lived in an amazing skyhigh apartment, but all I did was party all the time so the place was a mess…. or something. You get our drift.

Of course, ‘complexity’ of objects/buildings is totally subjective (cough cough), and we are still discovering our limitations and abilities in SL. This should mean that we can capture a variety of scenes – perhaps implement a range of angles, themes, colours etc – which will keep the piece interesting, but will also not require too much camera movement, and so should translate well to machinima for mobile phone.

Teamsupersecondlife consists of:

Caroline (aka me) playing the part of Growler Xue
Danny as Dahnee Skytower
Ash as Adede Morpork and
Sofia as Jemima String.

So watch this space. It’s sure to be amazing. At the very least it will be a street or something.