The movie version of Canary Beck’s Paradise Lost premieres in Second Life and the world wide web this weekend. Canary Beck kindly provided previews for some people, including bloggers, so I will report that I’ve seen the movie and it’s quite an epic performance, exemplifying well what can be done with Second Life machinima and how performance art in Second Life is a viable use case.
This blog post will not contain a full review of the movie, I haven’t had enough time to take enough notes for that and therefore I would not be doing the production justice if I blogged a lazy review. However I will state that this is an adult production, which contains avatar nudity, both female and male. I will also note that the male nudity appears to pass the mull of kintyre test.
Canary Beck has also provided some excellent information for bloggers to share, which makes writing a post a lot easier! Here are some key facts about the production :
- Paradise Lost contains 14 Scenes (the 14 Movements of Mozart’s Requiem)
- Paradise Lost has 43 Roles performed by 8 players
- Paradise Lost runs for 59 minutes
- Paradise Lost is Canary Beck’s 3rd production, and first feature length movie
- Paradise Lost (the play) took 3 months to produce and required ±1000 hours in development, the movie took another 3 months to produce
- In total Paradise Lost cost half a million linden dollars to produce
- Paradise Lost (the play) premiered on April 5th, 2014
- Paradise Lost (the play) sold out every performance presented
- Paradise Lost (the play) received over 100 positive reviews
There are some eye watering figures there to take note of, including the time and cost of a production, but it’s good to have figures such as this released from someone such as Canary who has actually taking an idea from an idea and turned it into a full production.
Canary Beck has donned many caps for this production including director, narrator, actress, costume designer and more but this was not a one woman show. Canary has been supported well by Producer and main co-star Harvey Crabsticks.
Then there’s the work of Forren Ashford in areas such as sound and post production. Sion Pearl created the audience avatars.
Other performers include Syn Wytchwood, Sonia Yeu and Art Blue. Full credits will be available on the website, there are many people who receive credits.
Now just why has Canary Beck decided to take an inworld production to a movie production? The answer is reach :
We filmed the movie so that we can reach a larger audience in Second Life than we were able to reach with the live production limited by time and place.
Obviously in Second Life access is limited to how many people can get to a region at a certain time, a movie production allows people to view a performance when it’s suitable to them. This doesn’t mean live productions aren’t a good idea, it just means that people have more ways to view this production.
So the important question is how can you see this production? Canary Beck has posted a helpful blog post about this, some of the ways are :
- Register for free on Canary’s website by Saturday 19th September 2015 12:00 Noon SLT.
- You can see the movie for free at the Second Life Premiere on Friday 18th, 2015 at 4pm SLT.
- You can buy a ticket to see the movie on the website after Saturday 19th, 2015 at 12:00 noon. Tickets cost L$1,000 and are available inworld or on The Marketplace.
If you’re a blogger there’s another option, which is mentioned on Canary’s post, but time is running out for that so act quickly.
The inworld premiere is only a couple of hours ago and please note that an inworld premiere will obviously have restricted space.
SLURL To Basilique : http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Our%20Island/112/123/24