Saturday, February 13, 2010

Film and Music collide at the Lab!

'MMIF 2010' is the second edition of an annual film festival in 3D cyberspace with a screening in physical space ('RL'). A seven hour movie marathon with a two hour afterparty. MMIF 2010 can also be followed on the web via live stream broadcasts. 




A month ago, while I was multitasking at a real life Sirikata workshop at Roskilde University, I happened to meet Chantal Harvey at the lab. Actually I had met and become friends with Chantal ages ago-well, that's what it feels like!

Back in 2008 she was a frequent visitor at the very beginning of Pop Art Lab. Then we both became busy with our separate projects, the years passed, but we managed to stay friends. Ok back to real life or whatever! We met in 3D and talked over this new project she was about to launch- the second global Machinima Festival MMIF which she had scheduled February 20th 2010.

The early days of the lab must have made some impact, because Chantal wanted to recreate the PAL vibe in the designs for the festival and also knew PAL had handled several quadsim events (where designs are centered in 4 sims to increase attendees up at 200+). 




Well, of course I was interested in hosting a Machinima event this size plus PAL has actually had screenings and a movie center since back in 2008. We also produce the Pop Vox music shows at Treet.tv of which I have never thought of as machinima-but it is!

So our common interests have both grown since our first meeting and Chantal and I somehow realized we have come a long way since 2008! (ain't virtual collaboration wonderful! I’m really excited about meeting her RL too at the Metameets conference in Dublin May 2010).

Back to MMIF festival! The lovely Linden Lab soon supported Chantal's non-profit project with 4 sims and within a short time, we mingled up Chantal's team with ours and decided to combine prefab designs from the lab and add new as well. By then setup was getting 4 sims 3 days before the event so timeline in design process had to be short. Days passed and Pop Art Labs chief commander/engineer Emily Hifeng quickly showed her building magic! Then magic collided when Linden Lab soon added 4 sims with full perms and freedom for the crew.



Ok so now the designs and set are close to finished and we are tweaking all kinds of details and also the set lists for the 2 hours after party Pop Art Lab has been asked to host there.

Many details and awesome weird rumors will be aired during next week. Let's start.. Will Torley Linden open the festival? Will M Linden step by late and do a dubstep dance? Will Linden Lab bring news on their new Amsterdam office? (The festival is screened real life there). Will some of the 52 short machinimas screened at festival be broadcasted at secondlife.com? Will event show up as message of the day at login screen?

What we do know by now is:

It will be action packed... no shit!

Pop Art Lab loves projects like this. This shows Chantal Harvey's love and passion for the art of machinima and will expose the talents of many of SL’s finest film makers. And we at the lab just add some sugar!



MMIF 2010 press release, info, promo video, full programme, live streams, contact and latest updates and changes at http://MMIF.org

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