Last night crayon was one of the host islands for the Sundance Channel's entrance into Second Life with the premiere of Four Eyed Monsters. We did not have anything to do with the event except to provide a screen and a theater for people to view the movie in.
This was the first full length film I've watched in Second Life and it was quite different.
Anyone who has watched a streamed movie of any sort knows that sometimes it can get glitchy as it buffers and sometimes things get a little wonky. The stream ran very smooth except for the last 5 minutes of the film. I know it's not just me because the theater errupted in cries of "what's going on?"
So, that aside the interesting thing about watching the film in a social environment such as this is people want to talk to you. I'm a movie junkie and I HATE people talking to me during a film. I'll peg a sour patch kid at the nearest person on a cell phone to shut them up.
So mix avatars with a movie and you get people chattering. Thankfully after the first few minutes it quieted down and all conversations moved to IM. Thankfully I've got a big enough screen that I could zoom in on it and still have real estate to have the IM window not block the screen.
How was the movie? I loved it. This is the first time I had seen it and after making indie films for years with Random Foo I know how hard it can be and I've watched tons of crap. But, this film delivered. A quirky storyline told in a very unique fashion. The mixture of realness and absurdity was a beautiful combination. I made sure to order a DVD and make a donation to the filmmakers on the way out of the theater. I hope others did as well.
I also thought it was great that representatives from The Electric Sheep Company swung by the sim (and were swinging by all of them) to check in on how things were going. I got an IM when they arrived checking in on everything. I mentioned the feed problems that people had at the beginning but that everything seemed to get fixed when people logged in and out of SL. I actually had to do this to get it to work.
I'm looking forward to the DVD because even though it was cool to take part in this, the technology isn't there YET so that the experience is the same as watching it on DVD or in a real theater. But, it's going to get there. I've got faith in that.
