Machinima

Arido Taurajo

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Arido Taurajo

An International collaboration that brought disciplines together, creating a production that embraces new music composing and film techniques.

(ALYSIA http://tryalysia.com/ : Automated LYrical Songwriting Application) was recently used to create an Italian aria that was filmed in virtual reality.

We trained our songwriting system on Puccini music, calling the resulting system ROBOCCINI. James Morgan (Faculty at the Department of Art and Art History at SJSU) then collaborated with ROBOCCINI to create the following Italian aria.

The aria tells the story of a female warrior from World of War Craft, struggling to balance her family life with the call to adventure.

The machine learning system used to make the melody is created by Maya Ackerman, David Loker, and Chris Cassion.

We are currently submitting the film to festivals.

Singer: Maya Ackerman

Director, lyrics, roboccini collaborator: James Morgan

Music accompaniment: Nicolas Mauthes

Machinima cinematographer: Chantal Harvey

Italian translation: Matteo Leva

Melody: Roboccini

Puppeteering: David Henderson, James Morgan, Chantal Harvey

Film editor: Chantal Harvey

International Woman’s Day 2018

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Roles 4 Women teamed up with the Odyssey Simulators to present a one day event of online performances and screenings in celebration of International Women’s Day 2018.
Performances by Nebulosus Severine, Bibbe Hansen, Yael Gilk/Fau Ferdinand, Tina Pearson/Humming Pera and Liz Solo.

I filmed Wet Snow, the performance art protest against tampon tax, designed and directed by Fau Ferdinand/Yael Gilks.

Watch the machinima HERE

Yael Gilks/Fau Ferdinand, Bibbe Oh and Liz Solo collaborate in this new piece for International Women’s Day. Three Women. A field of snow. A grey sky.

Metaphysical Revisceralization

The Bunnykins return, Artist Nebulosus Severine. 

bunnykin2

The Asteroid

Liz Solo presents her new installation/performance, The Asteroid. A lone woman stands in her private microcosm…

liz

 

 

The Spacenavigator

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Filming in Second Life with the Spacenavigator – I found out the hard way that the driver updates (for Windows 10) will not work with the 3dconnexion mouse. So, a clean install of the old 3.16.3 r1447 drivers fixed the problem! It is also on the cd that came with your SpaceNavigator 🙂
The link to the old driver is here:   3dconnexion

spacenavigator

In case this doesn’t work, as the issue is not related to the windows 10 driver of 3Dconnexion but to the poor implementation of Joystick API of Second Life viewers (standard & firestorm), follow the following steps after installing the drivers.

You need to deactivate the HID controller associated with “3Dconnexion KMJ Emulator”. Unfortunately second life viewer only recognizes the first alphabetic driver, i.e. K of KMJ before S of Spacenavigator. (Actually this was true with windows 7 as well, so it is definately not a W10 issue).

How?

In Windows, go to Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Computer Management. Select the Device Manager from the left pane, and then choose the Human Interface Devices and check to see if you have a device called 3Dconnexion KMJ Emulator. You may or may not be able to disable this device (Properties > Driver > Disable), but disable it if you can. Additionally, find a HID-compliant device, HID-compliant game controller, or HID-compliant consumer control device, and check the Hardware ID (Properties > Details > Hardware IDs), looking for HID\3DXKMJ_HIDMINI&Col03 as the topmost value. When you find the device, disable it from the Driver tab.

A brilliant explanation is to be found on NALATES blog.

She mentiones that you should close all other applications while setting the properties in your SpaceNavigator settings, and this did the trick for me. The nav will make any application that is open the key app, and as I use it mainly in Second Life……

Thanks, Erythro Asimov, for your help!

Save

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Spencer Museum of Art in Second Life – gone!

/ ChantalHarvey / 2 Comments

One of my favorite spots in the virtual world of Second Life is the Spencer Museum of Art. I have been filming there, for my Robotworld series. After weeks of trying to teleport over, with no luck, I contacted Inara Pey, and she investigated – only to come back to me with the bad news: the sim is gone.

Crazy, that it has been gone for weeks, and nobody even noticed, it seems?  Sigh. It cannot be just me, I heard that it is a favorite hangout for many Linden employees, and their director Ebbe Altberg.

Can one be sad, over the lost of a virtual place? Certainly. I am.

robotworld-chantalharvey-spencermuseumofart

robotworld-chantalharvey-spencermuseumofart

I met many people there, only recent spent hours talking with an Italian filmmaker and art curator, sitting on the giant couch, commenting in awe on the art surrounding us. The outstanding art machinima by Toxic Menges was shot there, recently showcased in Leicester UK, at the machinima convention – which featured mr. machinima Hugh Hancock himself (so glad I met him!).

INternational Machinima Convention

I was filming, never finished the machinima – a hard lesson to be learned. As my mum used to tell me: never postphone … she was right, of course.

robotworld-chantalharvey-spencermuseumofart

robotworld-chantalharvey-spencermuseumofart

The Ma Machinima Salon 2016

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On October 7, my new movie ‘Activate Your Higher Mind’ is premiering in San Francisco, California. The show is an exclusive event, if you want to attend you need to contact me so I can put you on the guest list.  You are very welcome!

ChantalHarvey-2016-mamachinima-salon-invitation
 

The film (machinima) is a one hour vision on Art in Virtual Reality, and perhaps a retrospect on 8 years in Second Life, but more so a very personal journey into the future.

Please send me an email (chantalharvey -at -outlook-dot-com) or personal message on Facebook, so I can put you on the guest list, and give you details about location and time.
Special thanks to Cathy and DC Spensley for hosting the Mamachinima Salon.

No Way!

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No Way!

Re-edit of our 2011 official entry for the Doritos Super Bowl Contest.
Chantal Harvey & Tony Dyson,  a mamachinima.com production.

Awesome voice over work from Brian Albury and Liat Reina!
Tony wrote the story-line, and directed. I filmed and edited. The filming was done in Second Life, and it was absolute fun to do. We ran into many problems, I remember the frustration as Tony and Judi Newall (who handled the dragon avatars) would position their avatars in a straight line, but I would see them pointing sideways. I saw the dragon distorted in crazy positions, while they both insisted the dragon was flying around and looking fine. My recording software (Fraps) ate the frame rate, and the scripts caused lag, it messed up my camera view – and as I am the camera, what I see is what will be on the film…. I ended up clearing cache and logging out and back in, at least 15 times an hour, to get maybe 8 seconds of good film. It all came together when Markus Parker-Rhodes (yes, the Monty Pythons Flying Circus animator) created the scripted breaking glass prop for us. Ok, the glass would break too soon or too late, but we got it in the end.

We submitted the film for the Superbowl Doritos Contest in 2011, and it was disappointing to hear we didn’t make the selection. We published it anyway, under the title: Dad saved the Day.

I found the original files when clearing one of my hard-drives, and decided to have another go at it. Tony, I hope i did justice to the film 🙂

(click the picture to watch)

No Way!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tony Dyson.

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Au revoir, Tony Dyson.
Tony passed away on March 2, 2016.

©ChantalHarveyIMG_7078

 

I am thankful for the years we worked together and everything that he taught me, and for the inspirational roller-coaster ride that started when we met in Second Life in 2011.

Tony became my friend, teacher and business partner and we started a film production company called Scissores, producing machinima or as Tony called it: Real Time Animation.

Tony became head of jury when I produced the 48 Hour Film Project Machinima.
After working together online for 2 years,  we met in Finland and later in Gozo (Malta) and started working on educational and promotional machinima shorts and a book ‘Clive & Sue and the Medieval Farm’.
We created The Bobbekins movie, an animated short film, which I will be submitting to festivals soon.
While carrying on with our machinima work, nobody will miss you as much as I do.
With a different view on the world since we met, I thank you for re-activating the artist in me.

Some of our films:
Their time will come
It’s great to be alive
Robotworld, Sam and Sam
Android Love
Artists in the desert

The future of virtual reality

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The future of virtual reality and moviemaking.

ChantalHarvey2015

 

Pixar’s Ed Catmull: It’s not storytelling
David Attenborough: It gives you a dozen different stories
Chet Faliszek: You can slow gamers down
Mike Woods: VR demands interaction
Nicole Stenger: Hyperreality is a trend
Werner Herzog: We might live in VR
Baptiste Charles: VR is an insanely compelling way to tell stories, be they fiction or not
VR Circle: a lot of the excitement related to virtual reality has to do with the film industry, where the whole concept has disruptive potential.
The Wrap: it will likely be indie filmmakers who first master the format, Hollywood will follow

Sources:
http://www.raindance.org/virtual-reality-filmmaking-toolkit/
http://www.wareable.com/vr/storytellers-movies-games-vr-spat-2016
http://www.vrcircle.com/page/virtual-reality-360-degree-movies
http://www.thewrap.com/virtual-realitys-future-kings-major-studios-or-indie-upstarts/

Cupcake’s Christmas, an animated short story

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Our team, Jewell Theatre, entered the  48 Hour Film Project Machinima competition (2015).
Within 48 hours we made this film: Cupcake’s Christmas – a great team-effort. We won several awards, and would enter the contest any time, again!

Our genre was:     Holiday
Character:               Luke Goodwin, a spiritual Guru
Prop:                           a broom
Line of dialogue:  I want it, and I want it now.

happy endings_001