Second Life

Well, we did it! We pulled off our first event in Second Life earlier this week with a screening of the feature film - Four Eyed Monsters - We had a great turnout and for those of you who were unable to make it, we held a film screening followed by Q&A with the filmmakers, Arin Crumley (SL: Arin Cannonball) and Susan Buice (SL: Animal Foxley), on Sundance Channel island.

A few highlights from the night:

- Around 5pm SLT our sim reached capacity (around 60 people). Obviously people were camping out and holding their space several hours before the screening began. Arin couldn't even get into our island and had to watch the film from another location!

- We had live feeds of the film in over 10 sims (other islands). Early estimates are that we had over 300 simultaneous streams going during the night. We were very excited with the audience and excitement.

- The screening started with the usual SL commotion. Arin and Susan prepared an intro countdown before the film to give people time to get situated but we had to troubleshoot all sorts of problems: some couldn't get the sound to work, some had the film projected upside down (we're still not sure what that was about!) and some couldn't seat their avatars. Welcome to Second Life! Things seemed to calm down about 5 minutes into the screening as people settled into the night.

- The video quality looked great. The stream was very clear and it was pretty easy to watch on most monitors.



- We recorded all the chat from the night so we'll post that later on. There was quite a debate in the screening room on whether people should chat during the screening or whether people should refrain from talking until the film ended. Arin and Susan were interested in hearing real-time comments so we encouraged conversation but most people seemed pretty focused on the film.

- At the end (last 7 minutes or so) we encountered some buffering problems. Sorry everyone! Thankfully we got a hold of our video serving company and were able to restart the ending. Everyone seemed to catch the end but we apologize for the problems. For those who didn't see the ending, go out and buy the DVD at www.foureyedmonsters.com

- Once the screening ended Vincent and Susan got up in front of the audience for some questions. Again, we’ll post the transcript later but thanks to everyone for the participation and thoughtful ideas. It got a little chaotic fielding chat and IMs simultaneously so we'll try to figure out a better way next time to keep the discussion organized. We are thinking about a video feed for our next event if we can get over the technical hurdles.

- We think this was the first time a feature-length film (4EM is approx. 70 minutes) has been streamed simultaneously before a live audience in Second Life - at least legally! It's always dangerous to claim to be "the first" but let us know if there have been other live events of this kind (you can email me at vincent.tibbett@sundancechannel.com).



We'll be announcing more events soon but we are off to the Sundance Film Festival in a few days so that will keep us pretty occupied. More to come soon.